ALVARA

xxiii

"I have that effect on women," he says to Alvara, who looks revolted. Thankfully, she is alert now, eyes darting all over the place, taking in details and filing it away for later.

"If you mean you cause alcoholics to die from shock as soon as they look at you, then yes, you do have that effect on women," she mutters without missing a beat.

"Jessie here isn't an alcoholic," Nikita protests, offended.

"No one in their twenties has that many wrinkles on their face. She's a drug abuser too, by the looks of it," Alvara adds just to annoy him, nodding at the injection marks on her arms.

Nikita mutters something not-so-nice under his breath before nodding at the bar, where a certain blond is slumped on the counter. A girl with fiery-red hair is perched on a barstool next to him. Relief is evident on her face when she spots Nikita.

"Niki, thank God." The girl opens her mouth to say something else, but snaps it shut when she sees me and Alvara. The latter moves away from us to check on Aleksander without so much as a backward glance. I hide my surprise; I hadn't known she cared so much for him, especially after his betrayal.

"Annaliese, this is Kaiser." Nikita's voice caresses the girl's name in a way that makes me wonder if they've been intimate before. I turn to gauge Igor's reaction, but he and Imani are both gone.

Annaliese looks me up and down, before something like recognition flashes in her eyes. She glances at Nikita, who shakes his head imperceptibly.

My eyes narrow. Just what was that all about?

"Kaiser, Manisalchi's throwing dagger, eh? You certainly don't look German." She looks at me appraisingly.

"That's because I'm not," I say flatly.

Annaliese's eyebrow goes up before she turns to Nikita, who shrugs.

"I heard about your father. My condolences," she says in a voice that indicates the opposite.

My foot taps against the floor when Nikita replies something generic about how much he's going to miss the former Pakhan. They never got along, and everyone knew it.

After five minutes of listening to their mindless back-and-forths, I clear my throat and look at Nikita pointedly. This was the perfect time to talk; Alvara is still perched on a barstool and handing Aleksander a drink filled with murky liquid, while Igor and Imani are God knows where.

Nikita lets out an exaggerated sigh. "Anna, can you give us a minute?"

After the red-haired woman leaves, he crosses his arms. "Are you still hellbent on doing this?"

I straighten, mirroring his stance. My lower lip juts out stubbornly. "Yes."

"There's a high chance that this woman isn't her -"

"But she matches my mother's description perfectly," I say, undeterred. "Blonde hair, brown eyes, Russian, affilated with the mafia..."

Nikita sighs heavily. "She could have died in the fire that burned down -"

"There was no body," I interrupt. "She abandoned my father when he told her his diagnosis."

He raises his eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're about to kill the woman I'm about to introduce you to., because she's Igor's -"

I lift a shoulder, let it fall. The coolness of several daggers and a gun strapped into my side indicate otherwise, but I don't say anything. "Just closure, that's all," I say truthfully.

Nikita exhales. "Follow me."

He pushes aside a heavy velvet curtain to reveal a door and unlocks it with a key. We walk up the dimly-lit staircase in silence, and I'm hit with deja-vu when we are greeted by the smell of dark cedar.

A blonde woman lounges on a red velvet divan, a glass of white wine in one hand. When our eyes meet, I'm crushed by a disappointment so profound I nearly trip over the rug.

Nikita takes one look at my face and groans. "Not her?"

"May I help you?" the woman asks in a thick Russian accent. Her voice doesn't contain the gentle lilt I remember from my childhood. Granted I was seven when my mother took off and my memories of her face are blurred, but I never forgot the lullabies she sang me.

I glare at Nikita. "She's too young."

The woman looks extremely pleased with herself while Nikita splutters, "She's forty-four!"

"My mother didn't have me when she was nineteen," I snap, knowing I sound like an ungrateful child but not caring. I close my eyes. How could it have been so simple? I've spent the last fifteen years of my life searching for her; if she were cozying up with the Russian mafia, I would know.

"Sorry to bother you, Tati," Nikita says apologetically, before tugging me out the room and glaring at me.

I scrub a hand over my face. "I apologize for lashing out at you. It's just - well, I was really -"

My former best friend sighs heavily. "Let's go back downstairs."

"Why are you doing this for me, anyway?" I ask as he leads me through the throng of people and back to the bar. Aleksander and Alvara are nowhere to be seen; I assume our chauffeur brought them back to Nikita's place.

Niki signals for two drinks, which arrive immediately. He downs his glass of whiskey in one go, grimacing, while I leave mine untouched.

"I suppose you expect some sort of payment," I state when he doesn't reply.

Niki looks at me for a second with something like pity. "We were best friends, Kai," he says quietly. "What if I don't want to see you suffer? Have you thought about that?" And just like that, the masks slide off his face to reveal the boy I grew up with. I try not to snort at his naivete, but then again, he was never trained like his eldest brother, the next Pakhan, was. He was the second-born, partying and sleeping with women but never attending his father's meetings. It'd been a devastating blow to their father when he learned his eldest son had committed suicide.

"You forget where we are, Niki," I reply. "We are mortal enemies. Your family hates Maxine and Aleksander, and the rest of us."

He watches me steadily. "I am the Pakhan now, Kai. What I say is the law, no matter how much Father's advisors try to meddle in my affairs. I do not wish for the tensions between our clans to separate us. I've missed you."

I look at my childhood friend for a moment. In his pale-green eyes, I see our memories together at Hugo's mansion in New York before he moved back to Russia. He had been the one to clean up my cuts and bruises after Hugo backhanded me across the face, the one to practice throwing knives with me even though he was not training to cut people down. Though his face has lost the softness of youth, the fire in his eyes is how I remember it, before he nicked a pasty from the kitchens or set Remi's teddy bear on fire. At the last thought, my face cracks into a smile, and I am about to open my mouth to say yes, I have missed you too, but a gunshot interrupts me.

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hope everyone's having a good summer so far :D