Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (20 page)

Thel started to follow, only to have Alexei step in front of her. “No, little opera fighter, you will come with me to my study and we will talk now.”

“But—” she started, looking after Bair’s retreating figure.

“You and I have put off this conversation long enough. It is time we talk.”

Beyond Alexei’s shoulder, Thel could see Bair storming across the foyer. He yanked open the door, and the sound of it slamming behind him reverberated through the house. An Ozzy Osbourne chewed on Thel’s chest in the wake of his departure, making her feel like she had to go after him. Calm him down. Make sure he was okay.

“No, I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, trying to shove past Alexei. “I need to go after Bair.”,.

“Not until you hear me out,” Alexei answered, once again blocking her way.

She looked over her shoulder at Eva, the only woman who seemed to have any real control over this domineering billionaire. “Help me out here, E.”

But Eva just said, “You should go with him, honey. I don’t know what he wants to say to you, but he wouldn’t be insisting if it wasn’t important.”

S
O that was
how Thel ended up in the office of the man she most despised on Christmas Eve.

“I don’t know what Eva sees in you or why she trusts you enough to take your side in this,” Thel fumed as she walked through the door he held open for her. “But I swear if you keep me in here a second longer than it takes to say whatever you have to say, Real Thel’s coming out again.”

Alexei didn’t look too scared at the prospect. “No, she will not,” he answered. “You will sit. And you will listen. And
then
you may go.”

Thel folded her arms across her chest. Refusing to sit, and only listening so she could get to the “go” part.

“Please, sit,” Alexei said, like he was dealing with an idiot child. “You have already exerted yourself enough this evening, and I promised Boris I would make sure you were taken care of like my own wife if he would simply return to the first guesthouse without killing our cousin.”

Thel sat. But only because she now actually wanted to hear the rest of what Alexei had to say about how Bair was doing. “Is he okay? Is he…is he going dark again? I should go to him if he is.”

Alexei raised an eyebrow as he took a seat behind his desk. “What do you know about how your husband was raised?”

She blinked, her brain struggling to catch up with the subject change. “Um…not much, I guess. He told me a bunch of stories yesterday about his grandma bringing him up in Siberia. And after she died, he said he went to a German boarding school.”

“Boarding school. Is that what he called it?”

“No,” she answered, recalling their terse conversation more clearly. “He just called it a school in Germany.”

“That is because it was a school where boys were given rooms, but it was not the kind of boarding you are probably thinking of. More like a reform school. Much like a jail in some ways, where wealthy parents from around the world sent children who refused to behave. Apparently after Boris’s grandmother passed, the caretaker Ivan’s father hired to look after him said he was unmanageable. As you know, Sirena, when he becomes too angry, he can be…difficult. And so he was sent to this school and made to stay there until the age of eighteen.”

A not entirely unsympathetic expression passed over Alexei’s face as he spoke of Bair’s German years. But then he continued with the story.

“As soon as he reached his adult year, he became the fighter you met in Greece. By the time I found him, this was how he made his living. Fighting all over Europe in places that turn a blind eye if one of their fighters end up dead. That scar on his stomach was from a fight in Turkey—a fighter stabbed him before the fight could even start, because he was bitter about Bair’s many wins.”

Thel covered her mouth, remembering the angry scar. How he’d called it “a scratch” when they first met.

“So you understand why I did not want this life for him,” Alexei continued, seeing her horrified expression. “I had just come back from the States and I had decided to take the Rustanovs in a more legitimate direction. So I brought all the children of Rustanov pets into our fold, including Nikolai. But Bair was different. He was my blood. The only kin I had left after the death of my parents, even if neither of my uncles, Nikolai’s father, nor Ivan’s, wanted me to claim him. I wanted him beside me. Helping me run our empire. But when I visited him in that damn hospital and made him an offer to go to business school in Moscow, he told me no. That he wanted nothing to do with the family of the men who’d ‘killed his mother.’ And as soon as he was released, he went back to fighting.”

“For nearly a year after that hospital conversation, I did not hear from him. Of course, I had him followed, but I did not force communication.”

Having him followed wasn’t exactly an “of course” response to Bair’s initial refusal to have anything to do with his brother, in Thel’s opinion. But she was too fascinated by Alexei’s story to point that out.

Alexei folded his hands on top of his desk. “I had almost given up on him. But then one day I received a call. It was the man I had following him. He said Boris wanted to speak with me.”

Now Thel was sitting all the way forward. “About what?” she asked.

Alexei’s eyes met hers. “About you, Sirena. He told me he’d just killed three Greek men. And not only did he need an old-fashioned clean up, but he also wanted a new life. For him and for you. He told me he’d do whatever I wanted him to do, if I made things safe for you. He told me, Sirena, that he wanted to marry you.”

Thel gasped. “What?!?! Wait, no! That’s not how it happened. He only wanted me to be his pet.”

Alexei chuffed. “Yes, that is because I told him he could not marry someone he had just met. I am like snow queen in the film my little Layla likes so much.”

“
Frozen
?” Thel asked, feeling liked she was in some kind of
Twilight Zone
episode. “You mean like Queen Elsa?”

“Yes, like Queen Elsa. I was sure you must be like the man with red hair in that film. A pretty demon who only wanted to take advantage of my brother. And I will admit, it did not help when he told me he wanted to take you back to Germany because he was not sure about Russia for you, since you are black. You see I was very bitter back then, because I’d had my heart broken by an American black girl. Eva and I were together when we were younger, and very much in love, but then she left me…”

Alexei heaved a pained sigh at the memory. “And I was…it is hard to explain, but an angry shell of the man I would have been if she’d stayed. Not even ten percent of the man I am now after finding her again. But I could see you were good in a way for him. You were somehow keeping him from ‘going dark’ as you called it. Making it so that he could not only go to school but excel there. You gave me my brother finally, but you had too much power over him. That is why I told Boris he must wait at least five years to marry you. That is why I advised him to hold you close.”

He raised his eyebrows and admitted, “You are a very compelling woman, Sirena. Even I might have broken my rule about black American girls and taken you as my pet if I’d met you before Bair. I would not have cared for you like I do my Eva, but it was clear to me from the start that other men would attempt to steal you from my brother. Richer men. Less volatile and difficult men. He knew this. I knew this, and I did not want him hurt. I did not want him destroyed by your leaving, as I had been destroyed by Eva’s departure.”

He regarded Thel with a sad expulsion of breath. “But then your five years were up. And he said he would not come to Russia without you. And that day in the office, I saw how—” Alexei broke off. “
Dedicated
is the wrong word. More like how
obsessed
he was with you. I knew then he would never let you go. Would never accept to come to Russia and let you go to another. So I agreed to let him marry you, which he did. But then my worst nightmare for him came true. You left. And Thel, he went very dark after you left. Very dark.”

“I…I…” Thel sat back in a daze, unable to align what Alexei was saying with the person she’d known in Germany. “I was sick. And I didn’t think—I didn’t know he actually cared anything about me. He never said anything to me about love, except that he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. And that ceremony…”

Thel shook her head with the memory of their “wedding.”

“It was basically a judge and a piece of paper. Plus, the way he treated me. It was so fucked up.
We
were so fucked up. I couldn’t stay with him.”

Alexei nodded. “I understand. Not then. But now, I truly understand all the reasons you had to leave my brother. However, when The Twins asked for you specifically for this show, I understood how dangerous this would be for him. You are different now. Not as docile. I could see the new steel in you, and I was concerned. Concerned for you. Concerned for my brother. Then you left him again. And once again, he was destroyed. In fact, after you turned down the opportunity to play Chrysanthemum in Pittsburgh, I found him once again fighting in Turkey. And he had gone dark again, almost as if he were seeking it out. In fact he might still be there if he had not come back to New Mexico to make sure you were all right. So you can see, Sirena, I am glad to have my brother finally with me this Christmas, but I remain concerned. Because if you leave him a third time…”

“I can’t leave him a third time, because I’m still trying to decide if we should even get back together.”

Thel shook her head, torn between guilt and complete disbelief of the Bair side of the tale Alexei was trying to tell her. “I wasn’t trying to destroy anybody. Especially not the second time we broke up. I wanted a child, and he made it clear he really didn’t. Like, he so didn’t want to have a kid,
he
left
me
. Not the other way around.” She glared at Alexei as she pointed out, “People all over the world split up for that exact same reason all the time, without either of them being accused of destroying the other.”

Alexei lowered his eyes. “Yes, I understand your desire for a child, but given his background, maybe you can understand why he would not want children. Why he would decide to break his own heart by letting you go before he would agree to have children with you.”

Thel rubbed her stomach. “Yeah, I guess I do, but I’m not sure what you want me to do with all of this information.”

“Other than stop hating me and offering my wife refuge, like I am a monster?” Alexei asked with a slight tilt upward of his lips.

Thel had to breathe out a little laugh. “Yeah, other than that. Though now I guess I kind of understand why you were so horrible back in the day. If someone as great as Eva broke up with me, I’d probably be real bitter and messed up, too.”

Alexei once again sat back in his chair, regarding her with a soft smile. “So I see you fully understand about Bair now.” Off her confused look, he explained. “You are Bair’s Eva. The woman he needs to make him not horrible, bitter man like I used to be.”

She shook her head. “If I’m Bair’s Eva, why did he treat me so bad in Germany? Why didn’t he ever tell me he loved me, or let me even think about saying it to him? Matter of fact, if I’m Bair’s Eva, why did he make me become his pet again in order to take that part in New Mexico?”

She stopped and pinned Alexei with an angry-sad look as she asked, “If I’m Bair’s Eva, why isn’t he here telling me all of this instead of you?”

“That is a good question, Sirena,” Alexei answered with a sad look of his own. “Go to Boris with the knowledge you now have. Go to him and ask if what I say is true.”

Alexei nodded as if a great decision had been made in this room. “
Da
, I think it is time—finally time—for you to make Boris explain himself to you.”

I
ain’t
afraid of you. I ain’t afraid of nothing!

She’d once told him that. Bold as brass.

But a tentative aria sung by an untrained newbie chewed on her chest as she approached him on the little stone bridge that ran over the small pond that separated the main house from the second guesthouse. The guesthouse Ivan had been escorted back to by Nikolai. He put her in mind of a statue as she walked up to him. Standing perfectly still, his bare hands flat on the bridge’s stone ledge, eyes trained on the fish below.

How long has he been out here?
she wondered, rubbing her gloved hands together as she approached him.

He’d looked completely lost in thought, yet as soon as she got within six feet of him, his head whipped to the side.

“Why are you out here in cold?” he demanded. “It is not good for you or…”

He didn’t finish. Just glanced down at her belly.

“We’ll be fine,” Thel answered. “My mom already said so. But how are you?” she asked, crooking her head at him.

He turned back to the koi hanging out under the bridge. “I am fine.”

“Are you? Because you don’t look it.”

No answer.

She jutted her chin toward the window. “You planning on going in there after Ivan? Because you know, I already kicked his ass pretty good.”

“You did not kick his ass,” Bair sneered back. “Ivan is stupid. And drunk. And bitter, ugly man now, but before his accident he was top fighter. I helped trained him. He could have killed you, but he knows better than to hit woman. Even when she hits him. Even when he is drunk.”

“Wait a minute, you helped
train
his ass even after how his father treated your mother? And he still had the nerve to come at you like that? What the hell!?”

She couldn’t believe that cousin of his. It made her want to go to the other guest house and kick the shit out of him all over again.

But Bair simply threw her an irritated look. “This should not be the part that upsets you, Sirena. The part about him possibly killing you with his bare hands—that is part that should upset you. Do you know what he could have done to you?”

“I don’t know…throw me over a table and fuck me in front of strangers to prove he owns me?” she asked, looking at him sideways.

Bair went very still beside her, but to his credit he didn’t deny it. “I was wrong to do that, Sirena. Wrong to try to control you in that way.”

“Yeah, you were,” she agreed. “A total asshole. And I was wrong to let you do it, to let you kill pieces of my soul because I didn’t feel like I deserved any better.”

Quiet. Then: “You deserved better. Than that. Than me. I knew it back then. And I knew it when I finally found you again.”

“Really?” she asked. “Then what was with all those weekends of you punishing me for leaving you? How does making me feel like I give terrible head and making me sit around naked and bored all dang day translate into you knowing I deserve better?”

He shook his head. Then shook it again with an expulsion of air that sent a small cloud of smoke out of his mouth.

“What?” she asked, not understanding his reaction.

“I wasn’t trying to punish you, Sirena. I had read your diary many times. I knew how you really felt about me during our time together. How…” He inhaled sharply, “How I made you feel about me. At first I am angry. For a very long time I am angry, feeling like you played me for fool. But then I find you. And I see your house. And I see you were not just living like dog when I found you, you always live like this. In this small house with possibly crazy woman.”

A fresh wave of shame washed over her as she asked, “So you felt sorry for me? That’s why you decided to act like you didn’t want me anymore?”

“No, you twist my words.” He sighed, then started again. “Your home. It is like my home in Siberia. Filled with wood and Buddha statues and my grandmother, who people say is crazy because of her stories about our tiger ancestor. When I see you live like this, too, I understand. You are siren and I am tiger, but we are same.”

He looked over at her then. “I did not bring you to me all those weekends to punish you. I did it because I was trying to let you go. Trying to kill my addiction to you, so I can let you have the life you deserved without me.”

“The life I deserve without you…” Thel let out a bitter laugh and came to stand right beside him on the bridge. “Do you know what most women do when they get a new pair of breasts like these and an all clear to finally put the pieces of their life together again?”

She answered her own question before he could. “They have sex!” she answered, voice frank with self-recrimination. “But not me. I got my new breasts and even after the swelling went down, I didn’t do anything with them. Didn’t let anyone else touch me, because I
only
get wet for you.”

“You never believed me when I told you that, but I haven’t had sex with anyone else in six years. Six years! Even though I knew you were probably getting with a whole lot of women after me, switching out pets every few months like Alexei before he got back together with Eva—”

“No, no!” he said with a hard swipe of his head. “I am Rustanov, but not like that. I did not—I
could
not—disrespect my vows. Even when I wanted to forget you and be with another woman, I couldn’t bring myself to…”

He broke off, hands fisting on top of the bridge’s stone ledge. “For six years there was no one else, Sirena, and it was making me crazy to think of you with another man after you left.”

Thel sucked in a breath. What fools they’d been back then. Too crazy to handle what they had. Too addicted to move on.

Staring down at the koi, she said, “Alexei just told me you wanted to marry me from the start, but he wouldn’t let you. Is that true?”

Beside her, Bair went very tense, his body once again becoming a statue.

“Bair?” she asked after long minutes of watching his statue stare at the fish. “You going to answer or what?”

Bair’s eyes stayed on the fish, but his mouth finally started moving again. “He shouldn’t have told you.”

Thel tilted her head at him. “He shouldn’t have told me? That’s your answer?”

More fish staring. Like they, not her, had his complete attention. “I told you earlier, I am trying now. Trying for you. Trying for…”

He still couldn’t say it. Could barely talk about the baby headed for their lives like an oncoming train.

She looked away from him. At least she tried to, but her eyes immediately came back to him. She couldn’t keep herself from staring at him back then, and she still couldn’t now.

But Alexei was right. She couldn’t let him get away with not talking to her anymore. They had to talk. About the past. And more importantly, about the thing they never talked about, even in their happiest moments.

“What are you taking for it?”

The simple six-word question exploded the night into silence.

He hesitated, his body stiffening beside her. And the quiet aftermath of her question vibrated for a long, long time.

But in the end, he answered her truthfully. “A mix of things.”

“A mix of things,” she repeated, silently giving him points for not lying or pretending not to know what she was talking about. “Prescribed by a doctor?”

He looked over at her, then away again, face harsh with emotion. Shame that could easily be mistaken for anger. Shame that had probably been mistaken for anger by so many others in his life, she realized.

But not by her. Not then. Not now. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I already understand. I just need to hear it from you.”

“
Da
,” he finally said, his voice clipped. “Prescribed by doctor. For the Darkness.”

“Have you ever taken anything for it before?”

“In Russia. After you left. Alexei made me see doctor. He talked to me and gave me these pills. He told me I was…”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. “Yeah,” she said, thinking of the first time she’d encountered someone like him in the hospital where she used to work. A man who they’d thought was drunk, but as it turned out was having something that the psychiatrist who later came by to okay his release had termed an “episode.”

“Do the pills help?”

“
Da
,” he sounded beyond weary now, like this conversation was draining everything out of him. “The first time, I didn’t think so. They don’t give me light, they only keep me out of dark. That is all they can do. I took them, but I wanted you back. Always I wanted you back. But I couldn’t find you. After a year, after I gave up looking for you, I stopped taking them. I came up with my own therapy. I exercise. I eat best foods. I don’t drink, except for one day a year. This regimen kept the Darkness away for many years, but then…”

“Then you found me,” she answered, her heart clenching. “Finding me triggered you again.”

He nodded. “I hated you. I wanted to punish you for showing me your light and then leaving me alone in my hell. But then I saw your house, and I…I could not. I knew then I had to let you go. But I did not know how. I tried. Every way I could think of I tried to kill my addiction to you. To not want or need your light, because I knew I didn’t deserve it. Every time you came to me, I would think, ‘Maybe this will be last time. Maybe I will be able to not send for her next weekend.’ But that time never came. And then…”

“Chicago happened,” she finished for him. She could barely breath as piece after piece of Bair’s puzzle finally clicked into place. “When you said ‘I have decided to try with you’ that first time in San Francisco, you meant you were going back on your meds, didn’t you?”

He nodded, then he glanced over at her. “I was better in New Mexico,
da
? I was better man for you?”

The question nearly broke her heart. “Yeah, Beast. New Mexico was the best we’ve ever been.”

“That was because I had the pills and your light. It made the pills not so bad. I really tried in New Mexico.”

As touching as his words were, she had to softly remind him, “Then you flew off the fucking handle when I introduced the topic of children.”

He sighed, sad and heavy. “I am my mother’s child. She was much more charming than me. Prettier. But she, my grandmother…they were both like me. They both had this Darkness. The tiger’s curse, my grandmother called it. A roaring hunger inside us that must be fed. My grandmother had her religion and I had my fighting, but my mother—she only had the Rustanovs. That is why Alexei has always been so afraid for me when it comes to you. He did not want me to turn out like her. And that is why I am afraid for…”

He once again trailed off and glanced down at her stomach. “I never wanted a child to suffer this tiger’s curse. But there is nothing to be done for it now. Now all I can do is try. Try to be better man for you. Try to protect, try to teach…”

“I understand now, and I think you’re right about how you should handle being a father, but…” She shook her head at him. “You can’t even say it. You can’t say ‘our daughter.’”

“I do not have to say these words to be man that is needed,” he answered with a frustrated sneer. “I am trying now, like I told you. I will do whatever it takes to make this work.”

Would he, really
? she wondered, thinking about all the things he’d just told her. Then she asked, “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this before? In Germany or in New Mexico? Why did you let me think I was just this
thing
you owned?”

“I don’t know,” he answered between gritted teeth. “I have already told you everything I have to tell about why I treated you the way I did in Germany. I don’t know what other answers you want to these other questions. How should I answer them, Sirena? What do you want me to say?”

She stared at him. And stared at him. And stared at him some more. Then she said, “I love you, Beast.”

He flinched, jerking around to face her. “No. Do not say that. I told you before—”

He stopped when she grabbed his hands and placed them on her belly. Placed them where he’d have no choice but to feel the life moving around inside her. His daughter. Her daughter. The miracle they’d made together.

“No,” he whispered, hands tremulous under hers.

“
Yes
, this is happening, Beast. We have a baby on the way and
I love you
,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “I love you and I want you to say it back to me.
That’s
how I want you to answer my questions.”

But Bair kept shaking his head, his words coming out fast and scared, like she and their baby were the most terrifying things this 6’6” undefeated fighter had ever encountered.

“You do not understand. You ask me why I did not tell you any of this. It is because I was fucked in the head. When you met me, I am like dog, too. Going from fight to fight. Not caring if I die in one. Not caring if I kill in one. I was in the dark, and then you
happened
as you like to say. You bring me out of the dark, you keep me in the light. But I knew you were damaged, too. Knew you would only be with me until you met somebody better. I had so much passion for you, Sirena, but I could not figure out how to keep you without cruelty. For this I am sorry, Sirena. You will never know how sorry I am for ruining us...”

Thel stopped him right there.

“We were
both
too young and damaged back then. Twenty and twenty-one—come on! Neither of us were equipped to handle what we started in Greece and Germany. But we’re better now, and I’m talking about now. I love you
now
. I believe in us
now
. And if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life helping you stay in the light. I promise you…for real this time. But I need more than a try from you. I need to know you love me. I need you to tell me you’re going to love this baby like she deserves to be loved.”

Bair had never looked more the Beast. Eyes rolling, nose flaring with the frustrated, angry breaths of a predator at the end of a hunter’s gun. But then he somehow found the strength to pull his hands away from her. Balling them up into fists lest she think about trying to take them into her hands again.

“Do you know what has happened to every person I love?” he asked her, the ugly Rustanov sneer practically etched into his face. “They die. My father is killed. My mother takes her own life. My grandmother…”