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“Alena! You poor thing, come here!” She flaps one hand at me and pats a stool on her way past. “Tell me, are you hungry? Let me make you something.”
I take the indicated seat, tucking my feet up onto the wooden bar and curling my hands together on the countertop.
“I’m not hungry. Thank you, though.”
“Nonsense,” Alyona snaps, tending to one pot that threatens to bubble over. “When did you last eat?”
“Uhm…” Casting my mind back, I haven’t had a full meal since before the argument with Kristof. We only snacked on the plane amid all the sex. “It’s been a while.”
“Exactly.” Alyona sucks on her teeth and weaves around the kitchen with a practiced ease that only comes from decades of experience. “So, what will you eat? Tell me, I must know these things.”
“Honestly, I’m feeling a bit sick.”
“Sick?” Alyona pauses and rakes her eyes down at me, her lips pressing so firmly together they almost disappear. “Hmm. I will fix.”
I want to ask her how, but Alyona is quickly in a world of her own. Within five minutes, she’s sliding a smoothie toward me and shoving a straw into my hand.
“Drink,” she barks, and I obey quickly.
It’s cold and sweet, so cold in fact that the chill seeps down my breastbone as I swallow, and I tense the moment the coldness reaches my gut.
“Good?” She eyes me.
I nod. “Yes, thank you.” I can’t quite work out the different tastes and flavors other than the cherries and berries I glimpsed when she was making it. She returns to her cooking, managing each pot like a different potion, and a comfortable silence falls while I work up the courage to talk.
“So, uhm… Alyona.”
“Yes?”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Worked?” She throws a scoff over her shoulder. “I haven’t taken a penny from Kristof in years. Although he thinks I don’t know about how he squirrels money away for me. I won’t accept it, I won’t do it, I tell you!”
She flaps a cloth at me and chuckles dryly.
“He told me that you… you were a maid for his mother?”
Alyona pauses, and she nods, shaking her head. “She was a good woman. His father, not so much, but we do not speak of him. He grew up too fast, that poor child. I look at him and still see the scrawny kid telling me he’ll take care of Ivan and Nastja.” Alyona laughs warmly. “He was a man when he should have been playing hopscotch. He still makes the same stupid mistakes, though, I see.”
“Mistakes?”
She waves a hand at me, seemingly not wanting to elaborate, so I return to my smoothie.
She pulls several pots off the stove with her impressive strength and empties some kind of stew into a waiting glass dish.
“It is nice to see him bring someone home. I fear he is too hard, you know? His work with the Family is important. I know this. We owe them too much, but…” She sucks on her teeth again. “Not my business. But it makes him hard and he has no choice. I know it will make him stronger one day, but still. It warms my heart to see him finally meet someone.”
The urge to make a joke about kidnapping rises in me, but I refrain. I don’t get the impression that Alyona will see the funny side.
“You, child?” She peers at me over the edge of her dish as I sip my smoothie.
“Me?”
“Your parents, do they know you are in Russia?”
“Oh, no, they don’t.” I scoff. “I doubt they’d even care. Not much can make it past my father, but my mother?” I roll my eyes slightly. “I’m not costing her money, so I doubt Mara will ever care.”
“Mara?” Alyona’s hands pause.
