If I still harbored any doubts about Sergei Belov being a complete cuckoo, this stunt would have laid them all to rest. Besides him, who in the world would ever call a guard dog by a name like Taffy? A male canine to boot. And to make matters worse, by the time I gotTaffy, he wouldn’t respond to anything else. That is, on the rare occasion when he actually bothers to obey one of my commands.
“Mm-hmm. In all of our sessions, why haven’t you mentioned you own a dog?”
“Why would that matter?”
“It doesn’t. But I find it interesting you never mentioned it.”
“You find the most asinine things interesting, doc.” I settle into the recliner across from Barty. “We should discuss my emergency instead.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Why did you marry your wife?”
The slight furrow of Bartholomew’s eyebrows is the only evidence that my question caught him off guard. “Because I was in love with her, of course,” he answers after composing himself.
Poor bastard. The bitch ran off as soon as the misconduct allegations were made against him, and never looked back. Just more proof that “love” is nothing but a pathetic delusion.
“Why?” I press.
“Why was I in love with her?” His brows rise. “Well, I could list all the usual reasons, like she was a kind person, and I enjoyed spending time with her, but I don’t think that’s what you’re after. My guess is you want to hear that I married my wife because with her, my world was simply better. The grass was always greener around her. The sky more blue.”
“You chose to tie yourself to another human being because she made the sky look bluer?”
A long, exasperated sigh leaves Barty’s lips. He lowers his cup of tea to the coffee table and leans toward me, pinning me with his earnest gaze. “I see how the concept of love is hard for you to understand. We learn by example. But the examples you were shown in your early life, I’m afraid, caused irreparable damage.”
I meet his eyes, daring him to raise that particular subject again. In the decade we’ve known each other, only once did I open up to him about my childhood. Which nearly made him squeal with glee. He was certain he had uncovered the root of all my problems. Problems he alone believed I have. Barty was beside himself, excited at the prospect of being a hero, of being able to fix me. But very quickly, I made sure he understood that I don’t require fixing, and put the lid on the topic for good.
Not that it stopped him from trying to bring up what happened almost thirty years ago from time to time. The incident I’d rather never think about again. But that is forcing itself into my thoughts even now.
Like many other privileged children of the elite, I attended one of the most prestigious boarding schools in Switzerland. Nothing less was good enough for a blue-blood family like mine. But ancient titles don’t always come with wealth. And my father’s bank accounts weren’t sufficiently filled to afford such an expense. Not that he would have admitted that to anyone. Status and image were everything in his world. So Father kept up appearances by bragging to all his acquaintances about wealth he really didn’t have. Meanwhile, he was reduced to securing a loan to send me to this school to save face in front of his various business partners, who also had kids attending the same school.
My freshman year, mere weeks before finals, one of the most notorious gangs in Boston got the idea to score some easy money by kidnapping a kid from a wealthy family. Thanks to my father’s loud, obnoxious boasting and my mother’s delusions of grandeur, they made me their mark, even though there were far wealthier families than mine, and targets much closer. Obviously, they hadn’t done their homework.
I was snatched off the street during a visit to a nearby village. Stuffed into the back of a minivan, I was taken to a cabin somewhere in the wilderness of the Swiss Alps. Eventually, once it became apparent that my father would not pay the ransom they’d demanded, I was roughed up and then dumped in a clearing in the middle of nowhere, left to my own devices to find my way back to civilization.
“Why do you love bringing that shit up?” I roll my eyes. “It’s getting tiresome, and it has nothing to do with why you are here. I survived. I’m not haunted by the experience. End of story.”
“You were held hostage for two months! Your kidnappers starved you and beat you nearly to death, all the while sendingyour father videos of them torturing you. And despite that, he still wouldn’t pay the ransom!”
“He didn’t have the money, Bartholomew. In order to get it, he would have needed to sell everything he owned, including the ancestral estate near Lake Como that had been in our family for generations. But even that probably wouldn’t have been enough. Father would have had to part with the royal jewels his grandfather was gifted by the Italian king. Our legacy.”
“You were his only child, for God’s sake!”
“A lost child brings condolences. A lost legacy brings shame. He chose mourning over disgrace. For a man of his status, I understand his choice.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? With that kind of humiliation, my father would have been dead in every way that mattered. Socially, at least.”
“Would you have done the same? Chosen prosperity over the life of your child? Chosen your own life, for all intents and purposes, over his?”
I grit my teeth. “Considering I will never have a child, your question is irrelevant. But for the sake of this hypothetical discussion, yes. I would have likely made the same choice.”
My response must stun him. I’ve never seen such a shocked expression on his face before. Barty seems truly appalled.
“You’re seriously fucked-up, Adriano. Much more than I ever thought.”
“You think so?”
