Chapter 2
A knock came at the door.
“Damon?”
Kirill.
Damon glanced toward me.
“Come in.”
Kirill entered cautiously.
He stopped when he saw me.
Then his eyes moved toward the photograph.
Whatever he saw there made his shoulders drop.
“So,” he said quietly. “We’re finally having that conversation.”
I turned toward him.
“You knew too?”
Kirill looked apologetic.
“I knew there was a photograph.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Yes.”
The answer landed harder than I expected.
“How many people in this house know my life better than I do?”
“Very few,” Damon said.
“That is not reassuring.”
Kirill crossed the room.
“I came to tell you the doctor is still downstairs.”
Damon frowned.
“Send him home.”
“No.”
I looked at Kirill.
He looked at me.
For the first time since I had known him, we were in complete agreement.
Kirill folded his arms.
“You have two choices. The doctor comes upstairs, or I carry you downstairs.”
Damon’s stare could probably have frozen boiling water.
Kirill appeared unaffected.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I absolutely would.”
Something about the exchange changed my understanding of them.
I had always assumed Kirill obeyed Damon because everyone did.
But this was not obedience.
It was friendship disguised as irritation.
Damon muttered something in Russian.
Kirill smiled.
“I’ll tell the doctor you’re ready.”
“I did not say—”
The door closed behind him.
For the first time that night, I almost laughed.
Damon noticed.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“A little.”
“That’s disappointing.”
I picked up the medical case.
“You should let him help you.”
“He usually does.”
“Then maybe try making it easier once in a while.”
His gaze rested on me.
“Is that advice?”
“Yes.”
“From my maid?”
There was no cruelty in it.
Only dry amusement.
I lifted my chin.
“From someone who has seen you behave badly while injured.”
“That seems fair.”
I reached for the photograph.
“Can I keep this?”
His eyes shifted to it.
For the first time, hesitation entered his expression.
Then he nodded.
“It was yours before it was mine.”
I slipped it carefully into my apron pocket.
At the door, I stopped.
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“About my father?”
“Yes.”
I waited.
Damon’s voice lowered.
“But tonight isn’t the night to tell it badly.”
Part of me wanted to demand everything immediately.
Another part understood.
Truth told carelessly could become another kind of lie.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
He nodded.
“Tomorrow.”
I left before I could change my mind.
Sloan was waiting in the kitchen.
Of course she was.
At two in the morning, the estate kitchen should have been dark.
Instead, every light was on, and Sloan sat at the long wooden table with two mugs of tea between us.
She took one look at my face.
“Oh no.”
I pulled out the chair opposite her.
“What?”
“That is your ‘my entire understanding of reality has changed’ face.”
“I have a face for that?”
“You do now.”
I took the photograph from my pocket.
Sloan stared.
“Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Why does Damon Volkov have a picture of you?”
“He knew my father.”
Sloan blinked.
Then again.
“I’m going to need more tea.”
I told her everything.
Or almost everything.
The photograph.
The old property.
The missing file.
My father asking Damon to find me.
When I finished, Sloan sat silently.
That frightened me more than her usual commentary.
Finally she said, “Your father never told you?”
“No.”
“Maybe he planned to.”
“He had a year.”
“He also had cancer.”
I looked down at my tea.
Sloan’s voice softened.
“People think dying makes everything clear. It doesn’t. Sometimes it makes people more afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
I knew she was right.
I hated that she was right.
My father had spent his final year protecting me from his fear.
Maybe he had believed he was protecting me from something else too.
“What would you do?” I asked.
Sloan leaned back.
“If Damon has information about my father?”
“Yes.”
“I’d hear it.”
“Even after he watched me for years without saying anything?”
“I don’t think that’s the right question.”
I frowned.
“What is?”
“Do you think he was watching you?”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it again.
Sloan continued.
“Because from everything you’ve said, it sounds like he was avoiding you.”
The hallway.
The flickering light.
The way Damon had turned around rather than pass me.
The strange moment that morning when his hand remained around my sleeve.
I had interpreted every detail as intimidation because that was the story everyone told about Damon Volkov.
Maybe not every silence meant danger.
Maybe some meant restraint.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Sloan nodded.
“Then find out.”
The estate seemed unusually quiet the next morning.
Word had spread that Damon would recover.
That was all anyone said.
No one asked questions.
No one ever did.
At nine, Mrs. Petrova called me into her small office near the pantry.
She was sixty-three, silver-haired, sharp-eyed, and somehow capable of knowing whenever a teaspoon disappeared from the kitchen.
“Sit.”
I sat.
She studied me.
“You were upstairs last night.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Volkov asked for you.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Petrova sighed.
“I wondered when this would happen.”
My stomach tightened.
“You knew too?”
“Not everything.”
Apparently that phrase would haunt me forever.
“What did you know?”
She folded her hands.
“Your father recommended you.”
I stared.
“For this job?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible. He died four years before I applied.”
“He spoke to me before he became ill.”
My mind struggled to catch up.
“You knew him?”
“Briefly.”
“How?”
“He came here once.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
The same year he contacted Damon.
Mrs. Petrova opened a drawer.
From it, she removed a small envelope.
My name was written across the front.
In my father’s handwriting.
I stopped breathing.
Mrs. Petrova placed it on the desk.
“He asked me to give you this only if you ever came to work here.”
I looked at her.
“You’ve had this for two years?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because he added another instruction.”
She turned the envelope over.
On the back, in smaller handwriting, were the words:
Only if Alina learns why I came.
My eyes burned.
I touched the ink.
It had faded slightly with time.
“He knew I might work here?”
“He thought it was possible.”
“How?”
Mrs. Petrova gave a small smile.
“Your father believed people repeat the paths their families leave unfinished.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He also said you were stubborn.”
“That definitely sounds like him.”
For the first time since last night, something warm moved through the confusion.
A memory.
Dad repairing our kitchen sink while insisting the instructions were wrong rather than admitting he had attached something backward.
Mrs. Petrova pushed the envelope closer.
“I think it belongs to you now.”
My hands trembled when I opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
My daughter,
If you are reading this, then two things happened that I hoped might not.
First, I failed to finish something.
Second, you found your way to the Volkov house.
I almost laughed through the sudden tears.
Typical Dad.
Even from beyond the grave, he wrote like he was explaining how to fix a furnace.
I continued.
Do not be frightened by what you hear.
There is no crime hidden in our family.
There is no debt you owe.
There is only a promise I made long ago to someone who had no one else willing to keep it.
I believed I could settle it quietly.
Maybe I was wrong.
If Damon Volkov gives you a choice, ask questions before you make it.
He is not his father.
Remember that.
And remember something else.
People will tell you who a man is based on what they fear from him.
Watch what he does when he gains nothing from being kind.
That will tell you more.
Love,
Dad
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Mrs. Petrova passed me a tissue.
“He liked him,” I whispered.
“Your father?”
“Damon.”
Mrs. Petrova considered that.
“I think he trusted him enough.”
“That was rare.”
“So I gathered.”
I folded the letter carefully.
“What promise?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did my father tell you anything else?”
“Only that the matter involved someone named Elena.”
My fingers stopped.
“Elena?”
Mrs. Petrova nodded.
“Does the name mean something?”
It did.
May you like
But I could not immediately remember why.
Then it came to me.
