Chapter 3 - WHAT HER MOTHER KNEW
Z
Aliyah did not sleep.
At four in the morning, she sat in Victor Malenkov’s penthouse wearing borrowed sweatpants, staring at Boston through glass walls while armed men moved quietly through the rooms behind her.
Victor’s home looked nothing like she expected.
There were no gold statues.
No ridiculous fountains.
No photographs of politicians shaking his hand.
The place was almost painfully simple.
Dark wood.
Books.
Gray furniture.
And one grand piano nobody appeared to touch.
Victor stood near the kitchen counter pouring coffee.
“You knew my mother.”
“I met her once.”
“You said you knew her.”
“I chose the wrong word.”
“You seem like a man who chooses words carefully.”
Victor placed a cup beside her.
Aliyah didn’t touch it.
“Start again.”
He sat across from her.
“Twelve years ago, Elena was shot outside a charity event in Beacon Hill.”
Aliyah waited.
“The bullet damaged an artery. My men took her to Saint Agnes because it was closest.”
“My mother worked emergency trauma.”
“Yes.”
Victor’s eyes dropped.
“She stayed with Elena.”
“You weren’t there?”
“I was.”
“But?”
Victor turned his wedding ring.
“I was trying to find the man who arranged the shooting.”
Aliyah stared at him.
“You left your dying wife?”
The words struck.
Victor did not defend himself.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer was worse than an excuse.
Aliyah leaned back.
“Why?”
“Because I was thirty-two years old, furious, arrogant, and convinced I could correct everything through violence.”
His mouth tightened.
“By the time I returned, Elena was unconscious.”
Silence stretched between them.
“Your mother found me in the hallway,” Victor continued. “She told me Elena had asked for me until she no longer could.”
Aliyah looked toward the rain.
“That sounds like Mom.”
Victor studied her.
“She also slapped me.”
Aliyah slowly turned back.
“What?”
“Nobody else had ever done it.”
A surprised laugh escaped her.
Victor’s expression softened.
“She told me I had spent my life making men afraid of disappointing me, and now I would have to spend the rest of it knowing I had disappointed the only person who mattered.”
Aliyah swallowed.
“That definitely sounds like her.”
Victor reached into his jacket.
From an inner pocket, he removed a folded piece of paper protected inside a plastic sleeve.
Aliyah frowned.
“What is that?”
“Something your mother gave me after Elena died.”
He slid it across the table.
The paper was old.
The handwriting belonged to Denise Brooks.
Aliyah recognized it immediately.
Victor—
She said the name Petrov, but she also said, “Not Sergei. The other one.”
She was frightened. She made me promise to tell you privately.
I don’t know what this means.
—Denise
Aliyah read it twice.
“The other one?”
Victor nodded.
“For twelve years, I believed Sergei Petrov ordered Elena’s death.”
“But my mother wrote that Elena said it wasn’t Sergei.”
“She said ‘the other one.’”
“Who else was named Petrov?”
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Anton Petrov. Sergei’s younger brother.”
Aliyah frowned.
“Was?”
“He disappeared eleven years ago.”
“You killed him?”
“No.”
She searched his face.
“You’re sure?”
Victor looked almost offended.
“I remember the people I kill.”
Aliyah set the paper down slowly.
That was perhaps the most disturbing sentence anyone had ever said over coffee.
“Why didn’t my mother go to police?”
“She tried.”
Aliyah’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
Victor removed another document.
A photocopied police report.
Denise Brooks had reported receiving threats three days after Elena’s death.
Case closed.
No arrest.
Six weeks later, Denise transferred hospitals.
Three years after that, she died in what Aliyah had always believed was a highway accident.
Aliyah stopped breathing.
“No.”
Victor’s expression became grim.
“Aliyah—”
“No.”
She stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“My mother fell asleep driving.”
“That was the official conclusion.”
“She worked nights. She was exhausted.”
“I know.”
“You do not get to walk into my life and turn every tragedy into one of your conspiracies.”
“I am not trying to.”
“Yes, you are.”
She crossed her arms tightly.
Victor remained seated.
That restraint made her angrier.
“Say it.”
“I don’t have enough evidence.”
“Say what you think.”
Victor looked at her.
“I think we need to investigate the accident.”
Aliyah’s eyes filled before she could stop them.
She turned away.
Her mother had been tired.
That was the story Aliyah had survived.
Her mother had worked two jobs.
Her mother had taken an extra shift.
Her mother had fallen asleep.
Accidents had no villains.
No one to hate.
No one to punish.
Victor’s version opened a door Aliyah did not want opened.
“Why keep her note?”
“Because Denise Brooks gave my wife dignity when I failed to.”
Aliyah closed her eyes.
Behind her, Victor continued quietly.
“She washed Elena’s hair because there was blood in it.”
Aliyah turned.
“She what?”
Victor stared at his hands.
“Elena hated feeling dirty. Your mother somehow understood that. After Elena died, Denise cleaned her face and brushed her hair before allowing me into the room.”
His voice roughened.
“She knew the final image would stay with me forever.”
Aliyah sat again.
“She did things like that.”
“I know.”
For a moment, they were not waitress and mafia boss.
They were simply two people whose lives had been touched by the same woman.
Victor pushed the coffee closer.
This time Aliyah drank.
At eight, she insisted on attending class.
Victor objected.
Aliyah won.
Mostly.
She discovered the compromise when Nikolai entered the lecture hall disguised badly as a visiting graduate student.
Aliyah stared at his suit.
“You know nursing students don’t wear three-thousand-dollar jackets, right?”
“I was told to blend.”
“You look like you’re here to repossess the building.”
The girl sitting beside Aliyah laughed.
Nikolai did not.
After class, Aliyah found Victor waiting near the curb.
“You own phones,” she said.
“I wanted to speak in person.”
“That sentence never leads anywhere good.”
Victor opened the passenger door.
Aliyah got inside.
He handed her a folder.
Inside were photographs from her mother’s accident.
Vehicle damage.
Highway reports.
Insurance paperwork.
Then Aliyah saw one image that made her stomach turn.
The brake line.
Cut cleanly.
She looked at Victor.
“That could have happened during the crash.”
“The mechanic who examined the car originally wrote that it was severed before impact.”
“Then why wasn’t that in the police report?”
“It was removed.”
Aliyah stared down at the photograph.
Someone had killed her mother.
The idea settled inside her with terrible calm.
“Who signed the final report?”
Victor hesitated.
“Detective Thomas Reed.”
Aliyah’s eyes widened.
She knew that name.
Everyone in Boston did.
Thomas Reed was now the city’s deputy police commissioner.
And three weeks earlier, he had given a speech at her nursing school fundraiser.
Aliyah remembered shaking his hand.
Victor watched the recognition spread across her face.
“There is more.”
“I don’t want more.”
“You need it.”
She looked at him sharply.
Victor handed her one final photograph.
Taken outside Saint Agnes twelve years earlier.
Her mother was walking toward her car.
Twenty feet behind her stood a younger Thomas Reed.
Beside him was another man.
A man Aliyah recognized instantly.
The stranger from the Red Lion.
The one who had pushed the chair into her path.
Victor’s voice lowered.
“His name is Mark Voss.”
Aliyah stared at the photo.
“He works for Petrov?”
May you like
Victor nodded.
“And apparently,” he added, “he has worked with Boston police for twelve years.”
