When I come to, I’m lying on my back on a leather sofa with a cold washcloth on my forehead. Some time has passed, because the sun has set and crickets are chirping outside.
The room is large and airy, decorated in a tropical Balinese style. The polished dark wood floor gleams. Ferns, orchids, and palms nestle beside carved teak tables and smiling stone buddhas. Sheer white linen curtains sway in the breeze from a pair of open French doors. I smell salt air and hear seagulls crying somewhere far off, and try to remember how I got here.
David sits on the sofa opposite mine, watching me.
His tanned legs are crossed. His feet are bare. His gaze is fixed on me with unblinking intensity.
When I sit up too abruptly, the washcloth drops to my lap and the room starts to spin.
“You have heat exhaustion,” he says quietly.
His voice. That low, rich voice I’ve heard so often over the past five years in my dreams and cherished memories…here it is.
Doing nothing for me.
A square wooden coffee table separates us. On it are artifacts from his life: travel books, a glass bowl of pretty seashells, a small bronze sculpture of a reclining nude.
I’m seized by the urge to bludgeon him with that sculpture.
I meet his gaze and spend several silent moments just looking at him, trying not to smash in his skull. He looks good. Healthy and well rested. Like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
The lying, cheating, scheming, son of a one-legged dog.
“Or maybe it’s the five years I spent mourning your death while you were living like a king on an island paradise that’s getting to me.”
He blinks, slowly, like he’s taking that in. A small smile curves his lips.
“I’ve missed that lethal sense of humor, tulip.”
“Call me that old nickname again and I’ll shove that bowl of shells straight up your ass.”
We stare at each other. He finally moves, uncrossing his legs and sitting forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. He fixes me in his piercing gaze.
“What took you so long to get here?”
He says it gently, not like an accusation, but that’s what it feels like.
Like he thinks I failed.
“Gee, I don’t know. Could be the fact that I thought you were dead.”
“I sent you the key—”
“That stupid key got stuck in your outgoing mailbox. I only received it recently, after the owner of the Thornwood found it during renovations.”
His lips part. Then he closes his eyes and exhales.
“Yeah. Great plan, David. You know what would’ve been better? A phone call.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “I couldn’t take the risk of contacting you directly. The police were crawling all over you for months.”
“Okay, that covers the first few months. How about the four and a half years after that?”
When he looks at me now, his gaze is assessing, like I’m someone he hasn’t met before.
He says softly, “You’ve changed.”
“Yep. I’m not worried about being easy to swallow anymore. You can choke.”
After another beat of silence, he says, “Why are you so angry with me?”
I don’t recall him being this stupid.
“Gosh, where to start? Oh, here’s a good place: you disappeared. The day. Before. Our fucking. Wedding.”
He stands abruptly and walks across the room, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, his shoulders tense. Looking out the open French doors toward the sea, he says, “I’m not the man you think I am, tulip. There’s much I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m already caught up to date there, David. And don’t push me on the tulip thing. I meant what I said about the bowl of shells.”
He glances at me over his shoulder. Then he glances down at my left hand.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, too, isn’t there?”
I twist Kage’s promise ring around with my thumb. Suddenly, it feels hot, like it might burn through my skin and sear my bones.
When I remain silent, he prompts, “I know a Russian love knot when I see one, Natalie.”
“I bet you do. Did you give one to Claudia?”
Surprise flashes in his eyes. It’s followed quickly by alarm.
He turns from the French doors and walks back to me, his expression worried and his tone rising. “How do you know about Claudia? Who’s been talking to you?”
“What, no denials? It’s not like you to not have a good cover story all ready to go.”
He ignores my blistering sarcasm. “Whoever it is, you can’t trust him. He’s only trying to get close to you to find out information about me—”
I interrupt loudly, “I know. I’m caught up there, too. It’s been a laugh a minute the last few days, let me tell you.”
He crouches down in front of me, grasping my clammy hands and staring into my eyes.
“Tell me who contacted you. Tell me what’s happened. Tell me how you got here—everything.”
He must be able to see that I’m about to gouge out his eyes with a nice, sharp jab of my thumbs, because he adds softly, “Please.”
I can smell him now that he’s so close. That old, intoxicating mix of spice and sandalwood. Sweet and creamy, smooth and warm, it wafts into my nose like a siren’s call.
How I used to love that scent. How comforting it used to be.
Emphasis on “used to.”
Instead of feeling surprise or pain that his voice, scent, and lingering gaze no longer have the power to move me, I’m incredibly relieved.
It’s going to be so much easier to tell him to go to hell now that I’m not in love with him anymore.
The image of Kage’s handsome face flashes in front of my eyes. When I forcefully blink, it vanishes.
“You first, loverboy. Tell me why you left me the day before our wedding without so much as a goodbye. Massive case of cold feet? Or did you hit your head and remember you were already married?”
He draws a deep breath, then releases it, bowing his head to rest on our clasped hands. Unlike mine, his forehead is cool and dry.
He murmurs, “I never wanted to hurt you. I’m so sorry, Natalie.”
“Great. Skip to the good part.”
He exhales heavily, presses a soft kiss to the back of each of my hands, and releases them, rising. He returns to the sofa opposite mine and sits.
“I take it you know I was involved with the mafia.”
“Yes.”
“I was an accountant for the New York syndicate. I reported directly to the big boss.”
“Maxim Mogdonovich.”
David nods. “It was a desk job. I didn’t get my hands dirty. I never harmed anyone.”
“Whoopee for you. Keep talking.”
He pauses to grind his jaw for a while. He doesn’t like the new, bossy me.
“They recruited me right out of college with an offer of a ridiculous salary. At twenty-two, it was impossible for me to resist that much money. So I took the job. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I wasn’t hurting people. But after almost a decade of working for them, I changed my mind. I was an accomplice to their violence, even if I never shed a drop of blood. My skills helped them thrive. So I decided I wanted out. Permanently.”
He seems sincere, but this man is an accomplished liar. I slept with him for years and never had a clue he wasn’t who he said he was.
I gesture for him to continue.
“Except there isn’t a way out of the Bratva. You can’t submit your resignation and walk away. I had to make a careful plan, which I did.”
“So you turned Mogdonovich in to the government.”
“Yes. I gave them everything they needed to nail him for enough crimes to put him away for life. In return, they gave me a new identity, relocated me, and wiped my existence off the books. Those were things I couldn’t do myself.”
I look at him, so stuffy and studious. So different from Kage.
Stop thinking about Kage!
“And what about your wife, David? What about your kids?”
His expression hardens. For a moment, he looks more like a gangster than an accountant.
“Claudia hated my guts. It was an arranged marriage. She was from one of the Italian families Max wanted to make an alliance with. He was always forcing people into those kind of arrangements to prove their loyalty. She cheated on me all the time. Flagrantly. I don’t even think those kids were mine. They looked exactly like her hairy Sicilian bodyguard.”
I think of Kage telling me how he couldn’t marry me because Max had control over his whole life, including that, and feel a twinge of empathy for David.
Then I think of all the times I wanted to kill myself after he disappeared, and the twinge of empathy goes up in a poof of smoke.
“You could’ve told me. You could’ve told me all of this.”
His hazel eyes shine with emotion. He slowly shakes his head. “I should have. But I loved you too much. I wasn’t willing to take the risk that you’d leave me if you found out the truth.”
He always was risk averse. Feeling dizzy again, I look away.
“So you left me instead. Told me you were going on a hike and never came back.”
I find the will to make eye contact with him again and whisper, “Broke my heart a thousand ways and left me like a zombie. Left me for dead. Can you imagine what it’s been like for me? Not knowing what had happened to you? All this time…not being able to move on?”
I can tell he wants to jump off the sofa and take me in his arms, but he doesn’t. Instead, he glances at my ring.
His voice turns gruff. “You haven’t moved on?”
The hope in his voice makes me want to break something.
I say acidly, “Let’s get back to the part where you explain why you left the day before our wedding. Let’s talk about that for a while.”
He sits forward, props his elbows on his knees, and drops his face into his hands. His sigh is a huge, heavy gust of air.
“My handler in the witness protection program told me they’d gotten credible intel that my location in Lake Tahoe had been compromised. They insisted I relocate again, immediately. They gave me hardly any notice before they cleared me out.”
When he lifts his head and looks at me, his eyes are full of pain.
“They said I could never contact you again. They said you’d be under surveillance forever by Max’s people. That they’d use you as a trap to lure me back in. And if I ever made the mistake of falling into the trap, they’d have no use for you any longer. You’d be killed. I might as well be pulling the trigger myself. But as long as I stayed away, you stayed alive. And I thought…I thought you’d get the key and find the letter, and you’d understand you had to take extreme precautions…”
“That’s a big assumption about my ability to connect some spaced-very-far-apart dots.”
He says softly, “You were always smarter than you gave yourself credit for. I had faith.”
We stare at each other. A million memories of our life together crowd my head. It’s a moment before I can finally speak again.
“What about the money you embezzled from Max? We lived like paupers. You pinched every damn penny. You used to make me rinse out and reuse plastic sandwich bags, remember? And now you’re here, living like a movie star.”
“The feds didn’t know I took the money. But if I’d started buying flashy cars and big houses, they would’ve figured out what I’d done. And believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing more the federal government wants than money. They’d have figured out how to get it out of me, one way or another. They probably would’ve sent me to jail if I didn’t comply. And I wouldn’t put it beyond them to stick me in the same prison as Max.”
This keeps getting worse and worse.
It’s my turn to drop my face into my hands and exhale heavily.
David continues. “I spent the first week after I left you in Juneau, Alaska, living in a studio apartment the feds rented for me under the name Antoni Kowalski. Then I split. I knew you’d look for me in Panama, so I came here. The long way. Hitchhiked down the Pan-American highway so there was no trace of where I’d gone. Then, after I got here, I liquidated some of the cryptocurrency I’d invested Max’s money in and bought this place. Then I waited.”
He pauses for a moment to draw a slow breath. “I’ve been waiting ever since.”
I liked it better when I was angry. Now I’m just worn out and depressed.
When I don’t say anything, he asks gently, “Who told you about me?”
I lift my head and meet his gaze, knowing this next part is going to be bad. “Kazimir Portnov.”
David’s face instantly turns sheet white.
“Yeah. That’s pretty much everyone’s reaction when they hear his name.”
“He…he…” David swallows, blinking hard. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not physically.”
“I don’t understand.”
I try to think of a way to say it aloud that won’t sound ridiculous. There isn’t one, so I just tell him the truth.
“He came to Tahoe last September to torture me for information about you, then kill me.”
David makes a small, horrified noise. I smile grimly.
“Wait. It gets worse. Instead of being a good assassin and shooting me in the head then dumping me into the lake, he thought it would be fun to make me fall in love with him first. Which he did, the bastard.”
David’s mouth drops open. He looks like he’s about to throw up.
“I know. I’m an idiot. Apparently, I have a very specific type: mafia men who lie through their teeth to get into my pants, but have no intention of staying with me. Or keeping me alive. Anyway, fast forward five months, and Mogdonovich discovers Kage hasn’t murdered me yet. He’s still fooling around with the big dumbass he was supposed to kill. Like a cat with a mouse. You know how cats will bat mice around for a while, enjoying the hunting and maiming phase before they finally get down to business and bite the head off? That was Kage with me. But I digress—so Mogdonovich gets pissed I’m not dead and sends Viktor.”
David makes a choking sound.
“Oh, you know Viktor? Old blue eyes? Such a charmer. At least he didn’t try to make me fall in love with him. He was all business, that one. Except the joke’s on him, because he got his head blown off with a shotgun.”
David wheezes in horror. I keep talking.
“I figured out about the money and the clue in the letter because of Viktor, by the way. If he hadn’t shown up, I’d still be blissfully unaware that you were alive and Kage was playing me like a violin.”
I stop to draw a breath, but can’t. My lungs are frozen. This is when I realize my face is screwed up and my cheeks are wet.
I’m crying.
Then a deep voice from behind me says, “I was never playing you, baby. I loved you from day one.”
I whirl around. David leaps to his feet.
Both of us stare in horror at Kage, emerging from the shadows of a doorway.
His expression is stone cold, he’s got a lethal look in his eyes, and he’s holding a gun.
It’s pointed at David.
