I feel a little more at ease and like he’s accepted me in some why for his acknowledgement. “I did my best. I would have never wanted you to go through all that. It was scary. You must be still scared by it.”

“Yes. Grandpa used to tell me stories of mom whenever I was scared.”

“I can do that.” A smile tugs at the corners of my lips. “Nobody knew your mother like I did.” Not even her father.

“Really.”

“Yeah. I think I can say that.”

“Tell me something.”

“How about I tell you the story of how we met,” I suggest and he nods excitedly.

“Yes.”

“It was at school. She was the new girl and threw a ball at my head.”

He already looks intrigued. “She hit you?”

“Uh huhh. We had one big argument and she couldn’t stand me after that. On the Sunday of that week my dad told me we were having guests for dinner. Guess who came to dinner?”

“Oh my gosh. It was Mom?”

“It was. Imagine my surprise. We had to call a truce and promised never to fight again after I rescued her cat when it climbed up a tree and couldn’t come down.”

I knew even as I took the forty minute drive to her house that she must have meant something to me if I was driving all that way to rescue a cat. She’d worked some magic on me to get me to agree to something like that.

Aleksei and I end up talking for hours and then we watch T.V until he falls asleep in my arms like he used to when he was born.

It’s a sight to savor. Something good amongst the bad.

Something I’ll remember when I leave for Russia on Sunday to bury Ilya.

* * *

“This was just delivered,” Maksim says walking toward me, with the confidence and strength of a man in charge. No one would ever guess that he’d gone through so much only weeks ago.

He holds up a brown manila envelope. The sort you get documents delivered in.

“What is it?”

“It’s a special delivery from Ilya’s executor.”

I narrow my eyes, not quite understanding what it could be.

“His executor?”

“Yeah. He didn’t say much, only who he was.”

We’ve been in Russia for a few days. The funeral was two days ago and we’re leaving tomorrow.

I take the envelope from Maksim and open it.

“I’m going to leave you to that and start packing,” he says and makes his way back out the living room door.

I straighten up and pull out a sheet of paper with Ilya’s handwriting on it and then another envelope.

The sheet of paper says:

Tags: Faith Summers Dark Syndicate Dark
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