Page 95 of Lethal Legacy

The man turns to my mother. “Rosa. Are you certain this is what you wish? It is a terrible thing, for a woman to leave her child.”

“It is the only way.” My mother’s voice is shaking but strong. “Let us do what we think best, Sergei. Just promise us that our son will be safe.”

“I will protect him with my life, Rosa.” From the landing, I see the visitor’s gnarled, twisted hand reach out and grip my father’s, who covers it just as tightly with his own.

“I want this over, Sergei,” my father says hoarsely.

“Very well.” The man’s voice is resigned. “You have my promise, Aleksander.”

An indignant car horn squeals, and I swerve just in time to avoid the blinding headlights, my heart racing. I pull the MTT to the roadside and pull my helmet off, taking deep gulps of clear mountain air. My body feels as if it is still on that landing, the conversation as clear in my mind as if it took place yesterday. It seems extraordinary that I could ever have forgotten it.

But I guess there was a lot that I tried to forget back then.

That long-ago night took place when I was still safe. When home meantalfajoreson a Friday afternoon and days spent sitting quietly on a small stool at the back of my father’s shop as he worked. Any memory of those days has, for many years now, lived in a box in my mind markedbefore.

That box was closed long ago, buried beneath a new, far harder reality.

What I do remember, with painful clarity, is that soon after I sat on that landing, my mother kissed me goodbye for the last time.

I left for school one day as a happy eight-year-old boy with a vague memory of a strange midnight conversation.

I came home to find my mother gone and my father sitting at the kitchen table, a half-empty vodka bottle on the table in front of him and eyes as dead as a winter sky.

After that, the days became lonely. Bewildering. And then they became frightening.

Two years later, I stood outside the kitchen window and watched men with red sparrows on their hands torture the life from my father’s body.

Then I ran.

I grip the handlebars on the bike, breathing slowly and steadily to calm the sudden rush of childish fear and anger.

I’ve punched bags hard as any boxer and ridden at speeds most racers would fear to go, but I realized long ago that some emotions can’t be outrun. They live in unseen places, emerging when I least expect them.

My right foot tingles like a reminder.

I haven’t thought about the old tattoo on that heel in a long time.

I guess that’s what happens when you take a trip down memory fucking lane.

It was my father who tattooed the small, neat series of numbers on the sole of my foot, only days before he died. Maybe he knew even then that time was running out. He made me memorize the name of the Swiss bank that held the safety deposit box the numbers opened.

“It is a precaution,moy syn, nothing more,”he told me as he worked.“If I should die before your mother comes back, this is how you can find her. But you must be careful. You cannot tell anyone the whereabouts of this box, and you must never be followed there. Do you understand?”

It was the first adult secret he entrusted me with, and the only reason I agreed to run when he ordered me to.

Either way, by the time I ran, Switzerland might as well have been Mars for all I was able to get there. It was only years later, after Yuri had adopted me and when I was certain the men with sparrow tattoos were long gone, that I finally made the journey to the Swiss safety deposit box that the tattooed numbers opened.

I went there hoping to find my mother, or at least a clue to her whereabouts.

Instead, I opened the box and discovered a priceless Fabergé egg.

I would have traded the former for the latter without a second’s thought.

First, I went to the nearest Swiss bar and got rolling drunk.

Then I got back to business.

I gave up any last hope I had of discovering what had become of Rosa Cardeñas Borovsky. Instead, I eventually used the Fabergé piece as collateral for the loan with which Mikhail and I started Hale and Mercura.

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