Aleks nods, already seeing how this story ends. “He made you go.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. You think your mother is stubborn? You never met him. He wanted me to have fun, be young, all that. Living is for the brave—that’s what he used to tell me.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“He was in this case,” I say bitterly. “Because he had a massive heart attack about an hour after I left the house. Mom came home from church to find him lying in the middle of the living room floor with his hand over his heart. The coroner said he’d been dead for at least ten minutes by the time she found him.”
When I look up, I realize three things at the same time.
First, Aleks is looking at me with the softest expression I’ve ever seen on him. It’s by no means sympathetic. But it’s the least severe he’s ever looked.
Second, I’ve somehow ended up sitting in the chair opposite him.
And third, I’ve got tears running down my cheeks.
Crying over my dad has never felt weak or embarrassing. I’m happy to cry for him and I don’t care who sees those tears. Each one is a testament to how much I loved him. How much I still love him.
“His death broke you.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “It did. There was a time when I didn’t think I would ever be whole again.”
“Maybe you were right,” he says. “Because all I see is a woman made of pieces.”
“It’s the price you pay when you love someone.”
“I’ve loved, too,” he says to my surprise. “But no death will ever break me. I take the pain and use it to make me stronger.”
“Who have you loved?” I scoff. “The man in the mirror?”
“It’s irrelevant.”
I look down, wondering why my stomach is flipping nervously. “Right. Why should you open up to me?” I seethe. “I’m only going to be around for a year, right?”
“Unless you decide you want to stay longer.”
“In your dreams, asshole.”
“You’re right about that.” He gets to his feet.
“I won’t stay with you, you know,” I snap up at him. “There’s nothing you can say or do to make me change my mind about that. The minute I’m free, I’m going back to my family.”
He shrugs as though it doesn’t matter to him either way. Then he glances over his now-defaced walls. “I was coming in here to give you freedom of the house, you know. But now, I’m not so sure.”
I jerk to my feet. “Freedom of the house?”
“Only if you promise to keep your doodles confined to the walls of this one room.”
I nod fervently, desperate to get out of this jail cell. “I will.”
“Then you have the freedom to move around the compound as you like.”
“Thank you,” I say—even though he doesn’t deserve it. But it comes out before I can stop it. An instinct from another life.
“And eat more,” he tells me as he heads for the door. “I’m not interested in having a skeleton for a bride.”
“I’m not your bride!”
He laughs darkly. “You are whatever I want you to be.”
Then, just like that, he’s gone. I sigh into the silence.
Three days down as Aleksandr Makarova’s wife.
Only three hundred sixty-two to go.
23
ALEKS
“Have you seen this shit?”
Demyan storms into my office with a newspaper in hand. He shakes it before slamming it down on the table in front of me.
“The society section?” I scoff. “You really do have too much time on your hands, Dem.”
He isn’t in a joking mood, though. “Look at the third page. Bottom left.”
Frowning, I glance down and see what Demyan is talking about, and instantly, my mood gets as foul as his.
My mother takes up one entire picture all by herself. She’s looking straight at the camera with a high-society sneer on her face. There’s no doubt that she knew she was being photographed. She owns the spotlight in a way I’m not quite expecting.
My eyes slide to the next photo in the array. This one includes my mother again.
But this time, she’s not alone.
Her gaze is focused on a tall, silver-haired man at her side. He’s laughing, his head thrown back with ease. Her hand rests casually on his arm.
“Who is this fucker?” I grit out.
“You’re joking, right?” Demyan asks. “You don’t recognize him?”
I peer closer at the man. He’s tall. Distinguished. Older, but he’s aged well, in the kind of way that only lots of money can buy.
Then it hits me.
“Donald Hargrove.”
Demyan smiles and nods. “The one and only. Son of a bitch looks like he just stepped out of a fuckin’ Brooks Brothers ad.”
“Remind me—some kind of media enterprise, right?”
“Television mogul,” Demyan corrects. “Owns the news network you see in every goddamn waiting room in the whole goddamn country.”
“What do we know about him?” I ask. “Apart from the obvious.”
Demyan rattles off the facts on his fingers. “He’s been married once before. Divorced now, for a couple of years, I believe. Apparently, the ex-wife still speaks highly of him.”
“How big was her settlement?”
“Big enough to buy France.”
“That explains that, then,” I say dismissively. “Kids?”
“Two,” Demyan says. “A pair of pretty boys in their twenties who are both modeling for European luxury brands. Social media follower counts like you wouldn’t believe.”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus. Stop before I puke.”
“You wanna read the article?”
“Blyat’。 I suppose I should.”
I skim through the article until I stumble across my mother’s name. “Julia Makarova” is what they wrote, not “Yulia.” Leave it to Americans to make everything about their way of doing things. Somehow, that makes me feel slightly better about the whole debacle.
A quick passthrough of the first paragraph makes me turn up my nose. The piece reeks of cheap gossip and shallow humor.
The Svenson-Met Gala is the crown jewel of the city’s social calendar. In attendance was a who’s who of comedy legends, full-blown rock stars, and Oscar-nominated actors. （Apparently, the actual Oscar winners had a fancier charity to attend. Cancer is so last season.） But there was no disappointment, because anyone who purchased the ten-thousand-dollar ticket to last night’s event was able to rub shoulders with the media mogul of media moguls: none other than the dashingly debonair Donald Hargrove.
This particular reporter came within a hair’s breadth of the man, and let me tell you, he smells as good as he looks.
Which is probably why it shocked quite a few to see him spend most of his evening with philanthropist and activist, Julia Makarova. As a woman of a certain age, one would think she would fly under Mr. Hargrove’s notoriously particular radar. But apparently, the man values personality as much as youth.
When pressed for information about his personal life, the silver fox played coy while Ms. Makarova just laughed me off. According to both, they’re just friends. Easier to believe than you might think. Especially with the legion of models and young actresses following the man around most of the night.