“She was no mother,” he snapped. “The boys hardly remember her. Sofiya not at all. She got herself killed trying to bring my family and me down from within. So yeah, I have trust issues.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, relaxing into his arms again after hearing the truth about the woman that Sofiya never even had a picture of in her home. “But I do trust enough for the both of us. Papa didn’t do anything wrong, and the sooner we find that shooter—”
“They’re gone,” he said, looking down at me. “I wasn’t going to tell you until tomorrow. I wanted you to have this day. But they’re in the wind, probably on their way back to Tokyo.”
A sob ripped from my throat, and I stumbled back. The only lead we had was lost. I was as far from finding Papa as when I first found out he was gone.
Kon gripped my shoulders. His eyes were fierce, his hold on me tight and sure. “Tati. This isn’t a dead end. We will find Grigor.”
His words were so forceful that I melted against him, almost believing. Wanting to believe he could make the impossible happen. And that finding my father was far from impossible.
Chapter 23 - Tatiana
I hissed with pain and broke free from the thoughts that had me in a different world. Looking down, a drop of blood from where I’d carelessly nicked the side of my finger mingled with the tomato I was slicing for a sandwich.
Three days had gone by since that wonderful vacation from reality, where Kon had literally carried me off to bed after trying to show me I wasn’t truly a prisoner here. But the day after that, everything went back to normal in the worst possible way. It didn’t seem possible that this was my normal now, waiting and worrying, and not a word from Kon to put my mind at ease.
“When there’s something to tell, you’ll be the first person I tell,” he said every time I asked.
His scowls got darker, and I stopped asking, but that didn’t mean the questions weren’t still boiling my brain to mush.
I sucked on my finger and decided I didn’t need a tomato slice on my sandwich, or even anything at all, since I didn’t have much of an appetite.
Kon promised I could help and that I’d be kept in the loop, but it was almost as if we never had that beautiful day and mindblowing night together. He had shared something with me about his late wife that I didn’t think he ever talked about, let alone thought about. He opened a window to his soul and let me have a peek at his true self, gave me a reason why he was being so brickheaded about not believing the best of my father. I thought that meant something changed between us, that he trusted me.
I was wrong, and it was that, along with the growing fears for Papa, that had me slicing my finger.
Kon wasn’t in a much better state than me, which was why I gave up asking for updates and left him alone. The last three days, he’d been in and out of the apartment at all hours, on edge, brushing off my arguments that I might be helpful. Always telling me to be patient, but not giving me any reason why I should be.
My worst fears were rushing back, no longer kept away by the facade of Kon’s kindness. He only wanted to find Papa so he could have his vengeance and punish someone who’d betrayed him. I was only useful if I had information, and without the shooter, I didn’t.
The ham sandwich I ended up making, despite my lack of appetite, was dry, and as usual, my stomach was tied up in knots, refusing to accept one more bite. I was washing the crumbs off the plate when I heard the front door open. Great. Would this be the beginning of another argument, or would I barely get the cold shoulder before Kon retreated to his office and shut me out?
It wasn’t Kon at all who the guard escorted into the kitchen, but a bright-eyed woman, probably only a few years older than me. As if she owned the place, she shooed the guard away.
To my surprise, he listened, though she was more than a foot shorter than he was. As soon as he was gone, she smoothed her tunic down over her curvy figure and tossed her pin-straight brown hair behind her shoulder. Who was this confident, much-too-pretty woman?
And why did I have that sickening, dull ball of jealousy forming in my already twisted stomach? I didn’t return her smile when she held her hand out to me, and was wary when I reached out my own to shake.
“I’m Celia Jane,” she said, blinking her green eyes at my confusion and obvious distrust. “Sorry, you probably know me as CJ. That’s what everyone calls me.”
I shrugged, watching her take a folder out of her enormous designer satchel. “You’re…”
Her head snapped up as she lay the folder on the table, surreptitiously wiping away the sandwich crumbs I hadn’t gotten around to yet, and making me feel incompetent for some reason.
“Oh, good heavens, does Kon not tell you anything at all?” she asked, expressing my own frustration with the man so completely that I relaxed a little.
“Nothing. Not a word.”
“I’m Mat’s wife. Mat’s his—”
“Oh, I know, Mat,” I said. Kon’s nephew had lived and worked in Moscow up until a couple of years ago, when he made the leap to LA along with his brothers and two of his younger cousins. “It’s nice to meet you.” I was able to smile sincerely now that she wasn’t a threat.
Not that she was a threat if she wasn’t married to Kon’s relative. Why did I ever think she was? But the horrible jealousy, which I was certain was just indigestion now, was gone. CJ sat down and opened her file, taking out dozens of pictures and lining them up like a game of cards.
I offered her a cup of coffee or tea, and she looked at me as if she didn’t understand why. I recognized the concentration that Papa sometimes got when he was deep in a project, and I interrupted him to remind him he needed to eat. Now I could see she had the same bluish smudges under her eyes that Kon had.She must have been working night and day, just like he was, and probably the rest of his family members, too.
This was war, I had to remind myself.