“Well, if it’s any consolation, you look just like her. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought I’d seen a ghost on my doorstep this morning.”
Kat nods, too choked up to speak.
“Anyway, I used to see her there every week. Vasily would come down and talk to her, and then she’d leave. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t until I saw her at a Vory gathering on Gleb’s arm that I started to piece shit together for myself.”
“Gleb, the boss?” Kat looks at me.
“Yes.” I nod.
“Vasily was using her. I don’t know how she got wrapped up with him in the first place, but I figured maybe he had something on her. That’s how he got her to do his bidding.”
“What do you mean?” Kat asks. “What was she doing?”
“She was running information about Gleb back to Vasily,” I reply. “Vasily used her as a pawn. He wanted to take down Gleb.”
“But things got complicated when your mother got pregnant,” Maxim adds.
Kat’s face pales, and she looks at me for confirmation of her silent thoughts. “Are you telling me that Gleb, the Russian mafia boss, is my father?”
“There’s a strong possibility.” I wrap my arm around her, brushing the hair off her shoulders as I do.
Kat seems to process that reality for a long time. “But why would she do that? Why would she help Vasily with anything?”
“She never told me.” Maxim shrugs. “And I didn’t ask. I figured that was her business, and in the end, she was so spooked, she wasn’t going to tell anyone anything that wasn’t necessary.”
“Did she love Gleb?” Kat’s voice fractures.
“It’s hard to say.” Maxim looks at me. “But if you’re asking my two cents, I think she did. I think, in the end, it was really hard for her to know which way was up. By that point, it didn’t matter what she did because the walls were closing in on her. If she came clean to Gleb, that was a big risk. And by turning her back on Vasily, she knew she was starting a war. But she did what she thought was best. For you.”
Kat swipes away a few silent tears that have leaked from the edges of her eyes and shakes her head as she tries to process everything. It’s a lot. But I know now that it was the right thing to do. She deserves to know her truth. Her backstory. Even if it’s difficult.
“When I saw the name Kieran on the disk, I never even looked twice. I just assumed it was someone else.”
“I think Vasily coded her that way in his own contacts,” Maxim explains. “That way, if any of the Vory saw it, they wouldn’t think anything of it either. He didn’t want to take the chance of their connection getting back to Gleb.”
“That makes sense,” Kat murmurs. “I just… I still can’t believe that he might be my father.”
“Yeah.” Maxim eyeballs me as he leans back into his recliner. “That could complicate things.”
Kat looks at me. “How?”
“If Vasily makes this connection himself, then there’s a chance he could try to use that against us. He could get to Gleb first. Spin this in another direction. I don’t know.”
“So we need to go to Gleb?” She twists her hands together in her lap.
“I need to go to Gleb,” I clarify. “Test the waters. Then we can go from there. I’m not taking you anywhere near him until I have an idea how he’s going to react to this news.”
Maxim stands up and pads to the kitchen. “I think I have something that might help. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt.”
When he returns, he has a file in his hands. It looks like it’s about a hundred years old. And I’m curious what it could be.
“Your mother’s notes.” He sets the file on the coffee table in front of us. “If you see Gleb, you can give these to him as proof that she didn’t give Vasily everything. They are the original copies. The only copies.”
“How did you get those?” Kat narrows her eyes at the yellow folder.
“Honestly?” Maxim sighs. “Vasily sent me after your mother. It wasn’t something I was keen on doing, but you have to understand that in this line of work, you don’t get much of a choice.”
Horror washes over Kat’s face as her gaze meets his. “Did you—?”
“No,” he cuts her off. “The minute I saw she had a kid, I backed out. My loyalties to Vasily were already on thin ice at that point in my life, so I didn’t want that on my conscience. I told your mother the truth. What I was sent there to do, and that I wouldn’t be the only one. She understood that. But I suppose it was only a matter of time before it happened.”