Page 44 of Forgotten Vows
If Ivan has to choose between me and his family again…
Ha.
I knew how that one would turn out.
He was a Dubinin, and nothing else.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied. Now that the near future was on my mind, though, and I’d been in New York for two weeks, I wondered if I would ever hear from Kalina again. I sent texts to her old number yet. Something about being back in the States propelled me to reach out to my distant cousin, but still, I received no reply. I wanted to assume it was nothing more than a case of her having her number changed, but I wasn’t ready to push the issue.
If Luka found out that I was trying to contact Kalina or anyone else loosely associated with the family my father once led, it could be perceived as a sign that I was trying to have correspondence with more rivals of the Dubinin Dynasty.
Lev laughed harder at something Ivan said. Just seeing them smiling and so content was like a knife in the heart.
We were safe here. For now.
My son was happy. For now.
Because I was born the enemy, I would never know when something good like this could last and have any staying power in the trajectory of our lives. It’d been a messy, complicated ride so far, and I bet no one would blame me if I had a low sense of confidence in things turning out well in the end.
19
IVAN
Watching Raisa lead Lev back to their guest room at the end of the night wasn’t easy. After spending so much time with my son, I was reluctant to ever see them go.
In a perfect world, Raisa and I should be taking Lev home. As a family. A cohesive unit of three people who belonged together.
But this wasn’t a perfect world. Every day felt like another drag of a waiting game.
Emil and Alexsei joined me for a late-night drink to hear me out about it, too.
“I don’t understand why it’s taking so long to check what she told us,” I admitted, sipping my drink.
“She was gone for eight years and stayed under the radar,” Emil reminded me.
“True. But we have so many men on it.” I told Luka all that Raisa shared. He hadn’t hesitated to direct men to investigate and make sure that she wasn’t lying. Answers were slow to come in, though. On one hand, I didn’t care. It was more downtime for me to be with Lev and get to know the smart, funny boy. It was more of an opportunity for Raisa to relax and not fear for her safety.
My uncle was reluctant to easily trust a Petrov in the house, but he wasn’t kicking her out. It was a tentative situation to get answers. So far, we’d tracked her previous places of employment over the years. She’d sat down with a couple of spies and told them where to look to prove she had been where she claimed to be. It wasn’t a matter of retracing all that she’d been up to over the years. It was a matter of figuring out if any rivals or enemies were setting her up to be here.
She swore that she’d cut ties with the Mafia world, with any organized crime family. But we had to check and make sure.
Emil shrugged. “The fact of the matter is that some men in the family are skeptical of Raisa just showing up like she had.”
“But we did find some evidence in that house outside Paris,” Alexsei said.
Emil nodded. “We did. The crew we sent there did find evidence of a fight.”
I scowled. “But no bodies.”
“Too bad her new neighbors moved out so quickly. They could’ve been witnesses or seen something,” Alexsei said.
“And I won’t lie, it’s not a surprise that some of the men in the family are worried she’s a spy sent here from the Italians.” He held his hands up in a truce-like manner when I opened my mouth to protest that. “I’m not sayingIbelieve that. But so far as I can follow, the Riveras have made no claim that they sent anyone after her. The way they act, they never even knew about her or Lev.”
I shook my head, pissed that anyone could want to accuse Raisa of lying about the Italians attacking her.
“You have to admit it’s suspicious,” Emil said. “She claims to be lying low and hiding, not wanting anything to do with any of us for years. Then all of a sudden, she has a change of heart?”
“She didn’t have a change of heart. Someone got too close for comfort. She came here to get help from me—from our family—because she worried Lev could be hurt.”
