“At Aventine,” Hawk guessed. “In the Queens’ house.”
She nodded and returned her tea to the saucer, then leaned forward to set it on the coffee table before turning her cool gray gaze on me. “Your mother was at Bellepoint.”
“At the same time?” I knew my mom had attended Bellepoint, an all-girls school outside of Blackwell Falls. I’d just never imagined her having any contact with the kids from Aventine a couple miles away.
But of course she would. Any straight girl attending an all-girls college would probably be looking for boys, and Aventine was full of the beautiful and dangerous sons of criminals.
And the daughters, like Anna.
Anna nodded. “We met at a party at the quarry. I was called Irina back then, although I’m sure you already know that. Quarry parties were usually reserved for our kind but for some reason your mother was there. I’d later learn this was one of her superpowers.”
“What was?”
“Getting into places where she didn’t belong,” Anna said. “Finding out things she shouldn’t know.”
“You became friends?” I asked.
Her eye took on a faraway look. “Not right away. I didn’t trust outsiders easily — a byproduct of my family’s business — but I kept running into her and eventually we did indeed become friends.”
“What do you know about Dimitri Kaprolov?” Hawk asked.
I glared at him and returned my gaze to Anna. “And you stayed friends? With my mom?”
“More or less,” Anna said. “We grew apart some as our lives changed — I moved to London, she got married and had your brother, then you — but we stayed in touch.” She rose to her feet. “Actually, I have something you might like to see.”
She disappeared into one of the rooms off the hall and I looked at Hawk. “Let me talk to her,” I hissed.
“No offense, mouse,” Vigo said, his legs now draped over the side of Anna’s chair, “but you’re definitely taking your sweet time.”
“Too bad,” I said. “And sit up straight, get your legs off Anna’s chair.”
Vigo looked wounded but he sat up, his tea cup teetering in the saucer as he removed his legs from the furniture.
Anna returned to the room holding a photograph. She handed it to me and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.
It was a picture of my parents, only a little older than me. A little boy about six years old— Bram — frowned next to my father while my mom balanced me on her hips, my red hair curly around my chubby face.
My parents looked young and happy, my mom pretty, with long red hair and a breezy smile, my dad in glasses, one armslung easily over my mom’s shoulders, the other resting on Bram’s head.
“I think you were about three in this picture?” Anna said.
“I’ve never seen this before,” I said.
“Catherine sent it to me in a Christmas card, I believe.”
I took a deep breath, trying to find a polite way to the most important of my questions. “My parents left behind some papers. A lot of it doesn’t seem super important, but there were some bank records — wire transfers — that they’d highlighted from Kensington Trust. I wondered… well, I wondered if you knew anything about those.”
She reached for her tea and took another drink. Her hands were shaking again, and the cup rattled against the saucer.
“Of course, I do,” she said. “I was placed there. By the Bratva.”
43
HAWK
I wasonly half-listening to the walk down memory lane, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t taking it in. I’d been trained to listen during interrogations and interviews, and my brain filed it all away while I stared out the window, my eyes on the trees around the house.
I’d thought I’d seen movement in the shadows, but I couldn’t be sure, and I forced myself to stare into the understory, willing myself to see anything that didn’t belong.
