Close Up: Exposure Book Three (15 page)

Asher’s eyes got misty. “Well, before I got involved with the mob, she and I were very close. We were two children of the same age living hand to mouth, and trying very hard to survive without any assistance. We were both terrified that the government was going to find out that we were orphans, because neither of us wanted to be taken into state custody. We didn’t want to be separated, which would have happened for sure, and we also heard horror stories about some of the orphanages around. So, we were desperately trying to evade the authorities while trying to figure out a way for the two of us to live.”

I was quiet. I wanted him to tell me everything, and it was obvious that he was getting emotional while he was talking.

He shook his head. “She thought of me as her hero during this time. I wanted her to stay in school, so I was going to be the breadwinner. I didn’t want her to get out there and start working, mainly because she’s beautiful. I was afraid that she would have been tempted to go into prostitution or porn, just out of desperation alone. I knew that there would be plenty of men who would have loved to get her involved in the sex trade, and she might have done it. After all, it wasn’t like there was a ton of opportunity for her at that age. Or for me, for that matter.”

“So, you were her hero because you were willing to take the fall for the two of you? You were willing to do whatever it took for the two of you to stay together and not be separated or put into an orphanage?”

“Yes. She was so grateful to me, and she really looked up to me for quitting school and looking for work. She felt that I was making this huge sacrifice for her and for us, and she loved me for that. Then, when I actually started bringing in a lot of money, she looked up to me even more.. She didn’t know what I was doing, of course. She only knew that I saved both of us.”

My wheels were turning as he was talking. It sounded like there was, at one time, a lot of goodwill between the twin siblings. Perhaps, just maybe, there was some goodwill still there. It was a long-shot, of course, but that was what Asher and I were dealing with – one long-shot idea after another. No plan that we came up with sounded like something that was sure to work. This idea sounded like the best thing we had.

“Asher, she’s still your sister. You saved her at one time. I know that the two of you have grown apart over the years, but maybe you can uncover some of the love and goodwill that she felt for you at one time.”

Asher shook his head, but seemed to come around. “CJ, you do understand that this is not likely to work. I anticipate that she’s going to spit in my face.”

“She won’t. But I forgot to ask you if she’s here, too. I assumed that she was, but you didn’t tell me that for sure.”

“She is. She’s integral to the business, so she pretty much goes where my father goes.”

“Well, then, let’s work on her. Maybe you could even sweeten the pot.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’s probably unhappy doing what she’s doing,” I said, thinking of Andrea, who pretended that she loved her job, yet admitted that she really felt trapped and wasn’t happy. I imagined that Natalia was probably the same way. “Maybe you can find a way to get her out of it. Maybe you could buy her way out of it, or convince your father to let her out.”

“That’s going a bit too far,” he said. “I would love to do that, don’t get me wrong. There’s a part of me that still loves her very much. There’s also a part of me that hates her. But I do care about her, and I would love her to have a better life. But my father won’t let that happen. At least, I doubt that he will.”

“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said. “For now, it sounds like she might be our only hope.”

“I agree. Now, we need to come up with a plan that would give us the best chance.” He hesitated. “You’re beautiful, and she’s apparently now a lesbian. So, I think that you should probably be the person who’s going to work on it.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what, exactly, am I going to need to do?”

“Nothing, of course. I don’t want you to sleep with her or even hint that you want to sleep with her. I’m just thinking that she’s going to take to you, and that might make her more apt to listen to what we need to say.”

“Do you think that’s the best course of action?”

“I do, I really do. I don’t think that she’ll necessarily listen to me. But you could charm her. I’m almost positive of that.”

“What happens if she finds out what I’m doing and gets pissed?”

“We’re not going to hide that I’m behind this whole thing,” Asher said. He gently pinched my shoulder and I hung my head. “She needs to know that you and I are in this together all the way. So, we should definitely go and see her together, but maybe you can take the lead on this.”

I took a deep breath. “Let’s do it. Let’s give her a call and see if she’ll meet with us.”

Asher gave her a call, and the two of them seemed to talk for only a short time. He was speaking Russian over the phone, and his voice got louder and louder. At some point, he hung up the phone and came back into the room. “She agreed to meet us,” he said, to my surprise. From the sound of the conversation on the phone, at least from my perspective, it sounded as if her seeing us was the last thing that she wanted to do.

“I’m surprised that she would agree to meet us. It sounded as if you and she were fighting.”

“We were. But she still said that she wants to see me. I told her about you, too. She’s interested in meeting you.”

“I have to admit that I feel that we’re lucky that she gave you the time of day.” And I did feel lucky about that. Judging by the tenor of the conversation on the phone, she was none too happy to talk to Asher.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Natalia and I usually do have harsh words for one another, but there is still love there underneath. I’m just happy that she’s open to meet us.”

I drew a breath and let it out slowly. I was feeling very anxious about all of this. If Natalia couldn’t get on board, then what? Asher and I would have to figure something else out, and I wasn’t at all anxious to go to Plan B. None of the Plan Bs sounded remotely possible. This plan was the best plan we had, and it wasn’t much.

Asher put his arm around me and kissed me lightly on the forehead. “You’re nervous, I can see that. But it’s going to be okay. We have to think positive here.”

“I am, I am. By the way, I forgot to even ask this. Does Natalia speak English?”

“She does. She’s like me – she has a knack for languages. Neither of us knew a word of English until my father showed up. Then he made sure that I learned it well. He does business around the world, so it was important to him that I learn it. Natalia learned it when she started working for my father as well.”

“Well, that’s a good thing. Now, how do we go about this? How do I bond with her, so that I can get her on our side?”

“Play it by ear.”

I nodded my head, thinking that there was something that I could possibly use – my time in captivity. I was remembering, more and more, what had happened to me after I was kidnapped. I wasn’t at all sure if that was something that Natalia might want to know, though, considering she was involved in that line of work. She might not be sympathetic to my plight, simply because, if she knew that I had suffered, it might make her question her role in that trade. That would be fatal for her, if Asher was correct, as Natalia had to stay in the mob until her father released her.

I therefore decided against doing that. Perhaps Asher was right – I should just play it be ear. I hated doing that way, because this was so important.

It was literally a matter of life or death.

T
he next day
, we met Natalia. We met her in a café, where she was sitting on the patio sipping a glass of wine. She saw us and gave us a quick nod. As Asher said, she was beautiful – the same blue eyes and dark hair as Asher, with cheekbones that could cut glass and full lips. She was extremely thin, yet seemed to be in excellent shape. She looked like a runner with her long legs and slight, yet muscular, frame. She was wearing jeans and a colorful top that accentuated her stunning eyes.

Asher approached her. She didn’t stand up, but she did motion, with her eyes, to the chair next to her. We sat down. I could almost feel my heart pounding out of my chest. I was surprised that I was so nervous, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. After all, this was a do or die thing. If things didn’t go well, Asher might end up marrying that horrible Sophie.

“Alexei,” she said in clipped tones. Her face was impassive. Then she looked at me, and her face lit up. “You must be CJ.” It was remarkable how different her face looked when she addressed me, as opposed to when she addressed Asher.

“I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was low and husky and had a very slight accent. I could tell that she was Russian by her slight accent, although it was practically extinguished. There were just certain words that didn’t quite sound like English was her first language. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

The waiter came by and took our orders, and Asher ordered a bottle of wine.

Natalia nodded her head. “Still generous, Alexei.” She didn’t smile, so I had no idea if she was teasing him or if she was serious.

“I try.”

She looked at me. “CJ, I cannot say that I have known about you before yesterday. My brother does not keep much in touch with me. But I am glad that you are with him.”

“I am too.” I felt uncomfortable, wondering how to break the ice.

She started to speak to Asher in Russian, and he shook his head. “Not here, Natalia. It’s rude to speak in another language around an English-speaking person when you know English.”

“I am sorry, Alexei. I do not know English as well as you.”

I was surprised about that. She certainly did seem to know the language very well.

Then she explained. “I do know English. But sometimes I get confused. I do not always know, what’s the word?” Then she thought about it. “Slang. That is the word. I do not always know slang.”

I supposed that would be the hardest part for anybody trying to learn a different language – the slang and colloquial expressions. Asher had mastered that part, too, but he had been living in America for a decade. Natalia, on the other hand, had been living in Russia up until recently, when she relocated to London with her father.

“Well, that’s okay,” I said to her, trying to reassure her. “Asher and I will try not to speak in slang.”

“Asher,” she said, looking at him. “Oh, yes, I forget how much you hate your Russian heritage, Alexei. How much you have forgotten everything Russian.”

“Natalia,” he said, “I don’t hate my Russian heritage. You know why I changed my name.”

“Certainly. But you could not have chosen another name that was also Russian?”

Asher’s face got red. “I didn’t want there to be any suspicions. I certainly didn’t want the media in America to try to trace my roots back to Russia. I figured that I chose something that sounded sufficiently WASPy that I could get by without anybody trying to sniff around. I was right, too.”

“What is it that you say ‘WASPy?’” she asked with a furrowed brow. Then she whipped out a little notebook and pencil, and wrote down the word.

“White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” Asher said. “It’s the paragon of all that’s good in America. At least in some circles it’s considered to be that.”

She wrote down the words “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” and smiled. “You certainly look like WASPy, Alexei.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Asher said.

The bottle of wine arrived at the table, and the waiter poured a glass for Asher and me. “I am not going to, what you say, beat the tree,” Natalia said, apparently trying to say that she didn’t want to beat around the bush. “CJ, I think that Alexei probably told you about me.”

“Beat around the bush,” Asher said.

“What?” Natalia asked.

“You said ‘beat the tree.’ You meant to say ‘beat around the bush.’”

At that, Natalia got her little notebook out again and wrote the phrase down. “What a peculiar saying. What does that mean?”

Asher shook his head. “I often wonder myself where these sayings come from. For this saying, I’m at a loss. I should really look that up sometime.”

“Okay,” Natalia said. “I cannot beat around the bush.” Then she looked at Asher, who nodded his head and smiled. “You probably know about me, CJ.”

“I do,” I confirmed. “And I don’t judge you.”

She shook her head. “You should. I do not like what I am or what I am doing. But I have no choice.” Then she shot a look at Asher. “Do I, Alexei?”

“Natalia, you know that I tried.”

“You did not try hard enough.”

I looked at Asher, who was sipping his glass of wine and looking embarrassed. “I did what I could.”

She rolled her eyes, and then addressed me. “I am not a bad person. I do not feel that I have a choice. I would like for Alexei to talk to our father again about allowing me into America. I could do very well there, I believe.”

“Uh,” I said, looking to Asher. The conversation was taking a turn for the worse, that was for sure. It seemed like that there was one more thing that Asher was hiding from me – the possibility that Asher might have been able to negotiate for Natalia to be released, yet failed to do so. In looking at Asher’s face, I knew that he felt some degree of guilt about it.

She looked over at Asher, and then back to me. “I guess Alexei never told you about how I could have gotten out of working for my father and join him in America. But he’s too much of, what do you say – a chicken? So, here I sit.” She then glared at Asher.

“Asher,” I said. “Can I talk to you privately?”

“No,” Natalia said. “You can talk right here in front of me. There can be no secrets.”

Asher’s face was white, and his hands were shaking. He brought the glass of wine to his lips and sipped it lightly. He wasn’t saying a word, so I felt that I needed to prod him into a new confession. “Asher, what was Natalia talking about?”

Then his face went from white to beet red. “Natalia is right. I
was
a chicken.”

Natalia smiled and then got out her little book and wrote in it. She wrote the words
I used the word chicken correctly. It means a person without courage.
Then she stopped writing and looked at Asher expectantly.

I, too, looked at Asher expectantly. I couldn’t believe that there was something more that he didn’t tell me, but there apparently was.

“Four years ago, right when I founded my company, I had the opportunity to bring Natalia into America to work for me. Our father had just had heart bypass surgery and he didn’t think that he would be in business for much longer. He was very weak,” Asher said.

I felt my eyes get wide. Asher was apparently still lying. “What? What do you mean? You told me, point blank, that Natalia had to work for your father now because he hasn’t released her.”

Natalia put one perfectly manicured hand on my forearm and put the finger from her other hand up to her lips. Then she shook her head.

I took her cues and let Asher keep speaking. “That’s not a lie. That reflects the situation right now. Natalia is currently trapped. She can’t leave my father’s business.” Then he took a deep breath. “But there was a window four years ago when Natalia could have left. Unfortunately, that window shut when our father recovered from surgery and got back into business. When he resumed his business, he needed Natalia to keep working for him. So I lost my chance to get her out of the trade, and Natalia lost her chance to come to America.”

I felt a little stunned. This was yet another omission that was coming out. It wasn’t quite a lie, because he had only told me that, presently, Natalia was stuck. That appeared to be the truth. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Why, Asher, didn’t you get her out of Russia when you had the chance?”

“He is a turkey,” Natalia said. Then she shook her head. “I mean chicken.”

“Sounds like he’s a turkey as well,” I said, looking at Asher suspiciously. “Answer my question.”

He sighed. “I wish that I could go back in time and change things. I would have done things much differently. But, I admit, that I was selfish. I thought that Natalia might blow my cover in America, so I blew it. My father would have only sent her to America if I agreed to make her a part of my new business, which was then just called Sloane, Inc., and I…refused.” His face continued to look ashamed, and he hung his head. “I didn’t want to explain to people who she was. I had long since lost any trace of an accent and had adopted my new name. I wanted to pass as American, and having Natalia around would have brought questions about my background.”

Natalia shook her head. “Chicken.”

And, just like that, I got an idea. “Asher, what’s the situation now? Is there any way possible that Natalia might be able to get out of your father’s service if enough money changes hands?”

Natalia shook her head. “No chance. My father has come to rely on me. I cannot stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore, but that does not matter to him.”

Asher drew a breath. “Natalia is correct about that. I’ve spoken to my father many times, and every time I talk to him, it’s the same – he won’t let Natalia come to America. He says that he can’t lose her.”

“Well, maybe it’s time to ask again,” I said.

Natalia gave me a look of puzzlement. “Why do you care so much?” she asked.

I looked at Asher, and he nodded to me. “It’s like this,” I said. And then I proceeded to tell her everything about Sophie and what she was trying to do, and how Asher and I wanted to be married, but Sophie was standing in our way. Natalia listened intently and said very little while I told her our story.

Finally, after I told her the entire sad story, she said “sounds like the two of you are in a pepper,” she said. “Did I say that right?”

I suppressed a smile. “I think that you meant to say ‘pickle.’”

“Oh, okay.” And then she got out her little book again and wrote “pickle, not pepper.” Then she put her pencil away. “You and Alexei are in a pickle. And you need my help, no?”

“Yes,” I said. Asher wasn’t going to make the request himself, as it was clear that there was still some residual hard feelings, which was understandable, considering the fact that Asher basically left Natalia high and dry. “And we need your help.”

“My help? How can I help?”

“Asher and his father aren’t on the best of terms,” I said. “Asher’s afraid that his father won’t believe him, but will believe Sophie instead. I understand that you and your father are on better terms than Asher and your father. So, the hope is that he’ll listen to you.”

Natalia nodded her head. “What is in it for me?” Then she raised a single eyebrow at Asher, and Asher didn’t meet her eyes. “Well, Alexei? I can do that for you, and our father will probably believe me. I have never given him reason not to trust me. But am I supposed to do this because you ask me, Alexei, or can I actually benefit from this in some way?”

Asher picked up his glass of wine and contemplated it. “Natalia, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Yes, you do.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “It seems that I finally have something that you really want and need. Now, perhaps it’s time that you make some sacrifices to give me what I really want and need.”

“Natalia, if I do that, then we’re both dead. You know this.”

“No, I do not know this.”

I looked at both of them. I had no idea what Natalia was getting at. No clue. “Asher, what’s going on?”

Asher drew a breath and looked defeated. “Natalia wants me to help her fake her own death. She’s been giving blood over in Russia, once a month, and has stored it in a blood bank. She wants to use this blood to create an elaborate crime scene and then just disappear. I think that’s a terrible idea and our father will be wise to that immediately. Then she really will be dead, and so will I.”

“Alexei, it can work.”

“No, it can’t. What happens when you come to America and start working for me? You forget that our father has men over in America who are, in essence, protecting me. They’re the ones who are neutralizing any kind of conflict that might occur between the Pushkin interests and all others. Then you start working for me, and the jig is up right away.”

Natalia made a face and got her book out. “What do you mean, ‘the jig is up?’” she asked, writing in her book.

Asher sighed. “It means that all is revealed,” he said. “In plainer English, when you come to work for me, our father will immediately know what happened, and then neither you nor I will be safe.”

“Alexei, you make a point. And I am willing to help you out, but you have to scratch my leg first.”

“Um, it’s ‘scratch my back,’ not ‘scratch my leg,’” I told her, and she got out her book again and wrote it down.

Asher started to look pissed. “I see. So, you’re not going to help us unless we figure out a way for you to come to America?”

“Yes. You need me, that is clear. If I do not help you, it sounds like you will have no choice but to marry Sophie. You need me, and I need you. I have waited for years for this moment. I have always wanted for there to be something you need from me so that I could use it for....what's the word?"

"Leverage?" I volunteered.

"Yes," she said. "I guess that's the word. Leverage."

Asher took a deep breath. “You haven’t changed. You’re still very much about what’s in it for you.”

“Listen, Alexei, you do not get to lecture me. You left many years ago and just forgot that I was even alive. You had a chance to help me out and get me out of here, and you did not take that chance. You did not take that chance because you were more concerned about people finding out who you were than in helping me. So, yes, I would like something from you if I give you what you need. I do not think that you should blame me for this, and I do think that you would be the same.” At that, she leaned back in her chair and looked at him with a look of clear contempt.