“Fuck you!” I said, cutting him off as fury ran through me. Forcing myself to calm, I shook my head. “Listen, shame I can handle. But your death? That is something I’m not willing to witness.” Releasing his arm, I took Clara’s hand and pried it from Yuri’s sleeve as well. Pulling her against me, noticing her slight wince as I did so, I wondered at what other bruises she was hiding beneath that sweatshirt. Looking back at my brother, I made him a promise I planned to keep. “I’m not saying we let Nikolai off. Believe me, we’re going to make him pay, but we’re going to do it in a way no one besides those who deserve it are hurt.”
Yuri looked unconvinced, his fists still clenched at his sides.
“Mother would want us to take a moment and think this through,” I said.
It wasn’t a lie. Our mother had constantly drilled into us the value of not going off the handle on a whim. She’d never admitted that perhaps my father had done that very thing, and it had cost him his life. Another memory surfaced, and I sat down again, turning Clara to face me.
“Tell us again what he said about his cousin.”
“Nikolai said his name was Luka and he shot him because he made some comment about Nikolai being a… you know. I think that was the first time Nikolai had ever been tested, and when his cousin made fun of him, suggesting he wasn’t a real man—”
“Nikolai shot him and made it look like his cousin had committed suicide after being involved in a hit-and-run accident,” I completed for her. “He couldn’t exactly kill the son of Grigori Petrov and get away with it.”
It wasn’t pretty, but it filled in a few gaps that I’d discovered in researching the accident. Like, why was my father walking on a seldom-used road so far away from his work or our apartment? How could there be such deep bruising visible when death would have stopped his blood from flowing? What was the likelihood of a member of the bratva taking his own life in some sign of regret over doing what was considered more a rite of passage than a crime in the ranks of the Russian bratva? One easily overlooked when enough rubles were pressed into the hands of the right people. Nikolai had done everything he could to make sure his cousin was seen as some sort of weakling, a coward who’d taken his own life. Suddenly, the beginning of a plan started to take shape.
“I-I have to go,” Clara said, the wisps of the plan vanishing with her words.
“Over my dead body,” I said, tightening my hold on her hands.
“I have to,” Clara said, pulling free though it cost her a wince of pain. “If I don’t… if he discovers I’ve told you anything at all, he’ll hurt Baba first.” When I opened my mouth, it was her turn to shake her head. “You know I’m right, Alek. I’d rather die myself than to allow that to happen.”
“Fuck,” I said, knowing she was right though the truth didn’t make it any easier.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “It’s not too bad if I obey him. He is taking me out to eat somewhere, and there will be others there as well. Something about showing me off before we go to New York to do the show there.”
Thoughts were flooding into my head, and I snagged one before it rushed by. “Wait… how did Nikolai even know where you were?”
Clara looked away for the first time since she’d spilled the truth, and warning bells began to ring again.
“Fuck… it was our fault, wasn’t it?”
“Our fault? How in the hell do you figure it’s our fault?” Yuri asked brusquely.
Keeping my eyes on Clara, I pointed out what had become crystal clear in my head. “Clara successfully remained hidden for four years… until the day I brought her into the company. And when you agreed she was principal material after that first performance, who came calling?”
Understanding removed the anger from his expression as his gaze also moved to Clara. “The committee… from New York.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And Nikolai is a huge benefactor of the ballet in New York, so it stands to reason Jason Maxwell couldn’t wait to reveal he was the one responsible for bringing Nikolai’s once-favored ballerina back to Broadway.”
“I-I don’t really understand why,” Clara said so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard her actually speaking, but evidently Yuri didn’t have the same difficulty.
“I understand,” Yuri said. “You have no idea of the treasure you are, Clara; that’s one thing that still amazes me. If we’d left you in peace… if I hadn’t pushed you to do all those interviews, perhaps Nikolai would have been satisfied knowing he might have lost you but at the cost of you losing what you were born to do.”