Like I wasn’t the one who fucking started it.
“He’s beautiful.”
And I mean it. Alessandroisbeautiful. He has Slava’s features, but there’s also an unmistakable hint of Italian to him.
“He takes after his mother.”
Is that whose clothes I’m wearing? The perfume clinging to my clothes has grown less overwhelming. But now, I can practicallyfeel Alessandro’s mother’s presence in this room with me. I can hear the angry ghost of her words snarling at my ear.
Dirty little sneak! How dare you! How could you!
And with every imagined curse, her perfume wraps around my throat, choking the life out of me.
I’m sorry, I want to sob and beg her forgiveness.I didn’t know!
But instead, all I do is continue smiling at Slava. “I didn’t know you had a son.”
Pain flickers across Slava’s face, and I recognize the shadow of a story he hasn’t told me yet.
“Very few people do.”
The implication couldn’t be clearer. He trusts me enough to let me glimpse this single most terrible truth he’s hidden from the world.
And I’ve already betrayed him.
34
SLAVA
NIGHT
Alessandro is asleep.I checked on him twice—standing in his doorway like I used to when he was born, watching the rise and fall of his small chest. All to confirm with my own eyes that he is alive and safe.
That whatever horror didn’t reach him.
The dread still hasn’t faded. But a hint of relief has seeped in, chasing away the cold. But the more I speak with Lavoisier and gain a fuller picture about the security breach at L’Ecole Beaumont-sur-Loire, the more dread snakes its way back into my heart.
Bella sits beside me in my office as Lavoisier continues his report. Her hand found mine under the table twenty minutes ago, and she hasn’t let go.
A week ago, I might’ve shied away from it because even the lightest touch from her threatens to make me lose control.
But tonight, it keeps me from disappearing entirely into the frozen fury pounding in my blood. Her fingers are warm, and Ican’t help but think about how our positions have reversed since Don Leo’s yacht.
There, she gripped my hand beneath the churning water before Don Leo sent her sinking into the black water of Long Island Sound.
Now I’m the one sinking, and she’s the one dragging me back from under the surface.
“The assailant entered through the east perimeter at approximately 0300,” Lavoisier says. “He bypassed two checkpoints using forged credentials. Excellent forgeries. Good enough to get him to the dormitory.”
My teeth grind together and I start seeing red.Dormitory.Where children sleep.
“He was searching specifically for your son.” Lavoisier doesn’t soften the statement. I respect him for that. “We have reasons to believe that he’d been looking for your son for quite some time now.”
The fury crystallizes in layers, each one layering onto the other. “How?”
“We detected a minor intrusion in our IT system about twelve hours ago,” Lavoisier says. “Our staff shut it down quickly enough, but not before it managed to pull a list of currently enrolled students.”
I slam my fist on the table. “I’m not paying the school this much fucking money for you to be sloppy about security!”
