“Alright. I’ll serve now,” Greta pointed out as Anna went back into the kitchen.
So I ate, chatted with them about things I wasn’t interested in for a bit, and went back upstairs. Later that afternoon, Greta came knocking on my door.
“I brought your lunch,” she said with a kind smile as she stepped into my room.
“Oh, I would have come down for it. Thank you,” I replied as she placed the tray on a stool. “I just didn’t feel like taking anything yet.”
I moved away from the head of the bed to the edge, bringing my feet to the floor.
“I can’t say I understand, but it’ll get better,” she said.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as she moved the stool closer to me, and I opened the dish, filling my nose with a delicious and spicy scent. She sat on the couch, and it suddenly felt like she had come visiting and not just to bring my food.
“This looks…Italian,” I commented.
“Ah, yes,” she confirmed. “Boss likes my Italian dishes, too. So, sometimes, aside from Russian or regular American dishes, we do Italian.”
“Wow,” I commented after a forkful of the delicious pasta and sauce. “Did you ever live in Italy?”
“No. But my father is Italian, so he taught me. My mother is the American one. But she had her childhood in Russia because her father came from there. She knew how to make countless Russian meals, and because we lived in New Jersey, we often ate American food. So, we were always mixing and matching in our kitchen.”
“Oh, wow. So many places to call home.”
“Hmm, no,” she negated, her voice soft. “Home is wherever the heart is.”
“Oh, well,” I stated, sighing. “Clearly, not everyone is destined to have that.”
“Everyone is. The only hurdle is finding it.”
“It’s harder than that. Much harder than that. When you’re suddenly uprooted from place to place by reasons that are bigger than you, finding your home becomes an unachievable dream. Totally unattainable. Take it from me, Greta.”
She shook her head, insisting. “It might be harder for some who keep running away from home because they think they’re not qualified enough to be there. But even then, it finds them. It’s not unattainable.”
I kept eating as she went on.
“Adjusting to your life away from Russia can’t be easy, only a dullard will argue that. But it won’t always be like this.”
I sighed, dropping the fork.
“I just miss working. I miss doing my work. I don’t even know who I am without it. I don’t know how to be anything else. This is not my life, and I’m stuck in it.”
“What type of work did you do in Russia?”
“I’m a nurse. I worked at a small clinic in St. Petersburg,” I explained, adding with a sad chuckle, “That feels like a lifetime ago, anyway.”
“You certainly look it,” she replied, making me raise a brow. “If it really was your life’s purpose, you’ll find a way to still do it, one way or the other. And if it’s not, you’ll surely find your real purpose. Unexpected doesn’t always mean bad.”
“I’ve worked as a nurse under the Bratva before, at Konstantin’s brother’s house. I used to care for his wife. Even before then, I worked for powerful men. Dangerous men. So I’m not new to this world, and I’m not sad about my skills not having a place here. The problem is that my current situation is different. I wasn’t married to a mafia boss then.”
She nodded slowly before talking again. “That can feel very complicated.”
“It is. Being held in suspicion and watched day and night because of some history with a betrayer, it’s more than complicated. Because now marriage is in the mix.”
“It might all end better than you expect, you know. I’ve seen you and the boss communicate, and I see the fire between you both. And something else that I’d rather not mention because you’ll surely deny,” she said, her smile becoming teasing.
I was suddenly curious about the ‘something else’ she wouldn’t mention.
“Fire couldn’t be more apt,” I told her. “Because I doubt if anything will be able to erase the burns his hold on my life will give me.”
