Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 113324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Sevastyan had told me he wasn’t a good guy. I’d thought he meant because he was a hit man. So what was he hiding from me?
“Perhaps I would tell you more about myself,” he said, “if I were more certain of you.”
The finish line was still between us, a glaring line of chalk. “Then we’re right back in the same catch-22. I find it difficult to throw all-in when I know so little about you. You give me a crumb of information only every few days. At the rate we’re going, by the time I’m ready to sign on, twenty years will have passed.”
Speaking of time . . . We’d drifted to stand in front of the great d’Orsay clock window. Between the roman numerals, I could gaze out and see the misty Seine below, the lights of the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden.
Faced with this view, my current friction with Sevastyan faded, giving way to memories of my father, the Clockmaker. When the minute hand ground forward, I had to stem my tears. “How are you doing, Sevastyan?” I didn’t have to be more specific.
His face was granite under pressure. “I grieve, as you do. I think about him a lot.”
I took Sevastyan’s hand in mine. “Thoughts of him come all the time, sparked by so many different things.” Tonight, I’d reflected on his letter, on his hopes for me. Earlier this week, I’d seen white tigers on a street-side billboard, and my mind had snapped right back to laughing with him. “Will you tell me a story about him?”
Sevastyan was opening his mouth—doubtless to decline.
“Just one,” I hastily said. “Pozhaluista.” Please.
Looking like he was about to speak in front of thousands, he cleared his throat. “When I’d been with him for a few months, he took me to a summit meeting. Another vor’s son said something about Paxán that I took as an insult. I got into it with the older boy—which meant the two of us were sentenced to fight in the middle of a packed warehouse. ‘You’re too smart to be taking blows to the head,’ Paxán told me as he walked me through the crowd.” Sevastyan frowned. “He was always telling me that I was smart. So I told him I would ‘fight smart.’ ”
I could imagine this exchange so vividly: Paxán shepherding him through a throng of mafiya, tough Sevastyan with his chin jutted—even as he soaked up the attention from Paxán. Because no one had given it to him before?
“As I headed toward the makeshift ring, men were yelling all around us, placing bets. I was just fourteen, and it was . . . a lot to handle.” Understatement. “Paxán looked so concerned that I’d get hurt. I told him he shouldn’t worry about me.”
“What did he say?”
“He sighed and told me, ‘Best get used to it, Son.’ The first time he’d called me Son. Something clicked in my head, and I finally accepted that I would have a home with him, that it was permanent.”
Had he been worried for months that he would have to return to the streets? To leave a place like Berezka? Oh, Sevastyan.
“After that, I was determined to make him proud, to win.”
“And you did?”
“It took three men to haul me off my unconscious opponent.”
At fourteen. “Paxán let you continue fighting after that?”
“I convinced him I’d do it for no reason at all—or for money and respect. He had no choice but to agree.”
“You didn’t go to school?”
“I was learning from him,” Sevastyan said matter-of-factly. He didn’t have a chip on his shoulder about schooling; no surprise, Filip had lied. It was clear Sevastyan was confident in his intelligence and learning. It was also clear Paxán had nurtured that confidence.
“Each week, he bought me books. Mathematics, economic theory, philosophy, great Russian literature. And history,” he said. “He never told me I had to read them, but the reward was discussing the books with him, usually while he tinkered with those damned clocks.”
Sevastyan’s unmistakable affection made my eyes water anew. “Thank you for telling me that story.” He’d opened up to me about something! Every time he showed me these glimpses of himself, I fell a little bit more in love with him.
He raised his brows. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever spoken.”
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.
At that moment, the clouds parted for us, revealing the moon. Its light spilled down over the river and illuminated the numbers of this clock, making them glow.
The full moon. Had it been a month since Sevastyan had taken me to Russia? Since he’d first kissed me?
I wondered if he realized this. It seemed that everything he did was by design. Might Sevastyan be a closet romantic? In a casual tone, I said, “This is an anniversary of sorts for us.”
He didn’t look surprised at all. “Yes. It is.”
“Are we commemorating the first night we kissed?” Before I’d had any idea what this man would mean to me.
“I want to.” He drew me against him. “You can’t imagine how badly I’d wanted to claim that kiss.”
“You claimed far more than that on the plane.”
His lids grew heavy as he obviously thought back to what we’d done. “I was a very lucky man that night.”
“And now?”
“I’ll consider myself lucky, my elusive girl, once you consider yourself taken. Every man has a weakness; you are mine. I’ve accepted that. Now you must accept me.”
No, every person had a weakness. Aleksandr Sevastyan was my own.
“I need you all in, Natalie.”
He had opened up to me tonight, and we could build from that. I smiled up at him. “I haven’t ruled anything out, Siberian.”
“I suppose that’s good enough—for now.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb over my cheek. “Do you want to see your painting again? We can go back.”
Back? When the minute hand ground on once more, I didn’t feel sadness. This time I felt a tiny bloom of optimism.
Maybe we were at last moving forward.
CHAPTER 39
“The plighted life’s not treating you well?” Jess queried a couple of days later. “I thought you guys were lovey-dovey all the time after the museum.”