Hotbox (80 page)

A move
ment at the hallway caught my
attention and I laid my eyes upon the woman standing there. She was slim and very pretty, with long brown hair and
dark
eyes…

A sound caught in my throat as she stepped into the room.
She was
looking me over like I was the most enthralling thing she had ever seen.

“Tyler?” she finally whispered.

I couldn’t even believe it. “Mom?”

With that she burst into tears and threw her arms around me, sobbing and holding me tight. My chest felt constricted, li
ke something was squeezing it,
b
ut from the inside out. I felt like my entire childhood was flashing before my eyes—how many times I had cried by myself, missing my mom or missing out because I didn’t
have
a mom.
She pulled away from me and her hands reached up to my face.
She felt it all over, like she had never seen it before. I suppose it was true; I looked much different than when I was four years old.

“It’s really you,” she breathed as tears poured down her face.
She ran her thumbs across my eyebrows.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to see you.” She ran her hands through my hair, but I just stood there, completely and utterly
shocked
.

“You don’t know how long I wished you were alive,” I said carefully
, taking a step back
. I knew she detected the anger in my voice because her face fell noticeably. “How…how…”

Kristof stepped toward me. “Tyler—”

“No,” I told him, shaking my head and pointing a finger at him. “I know this is your fault. This is- this is just too much. You took my
mother
away from me? How- how sick
is
that
? Do you know what kind of life I’ve lived? Do you have any idea what my life has been like?”

I knew I was spouting off like an angry teenager
, but I couldn’t help it. My mom was
still silently cry
ing, and although I was mad as hell
, I felt my heart break. I thought this
woman was dead, and now,
almost
nineteen
years later, she was standing right in front of me.

“It’s not what you think, Tyler,” Kristof said. He motioned for me to sit down again but I declined.

“He saved my life,” she said. I looked at her, unsure of what I actually heard. “Kristof saved my life. I’ve been…I’ve been unable to leave Russia, Tyler. I’ve been…”

She took a deep, shaky breath, but ultimately decided to sit, so I
cautiously
sat down
a few feet from
her on the
same
couch.
I still couldn’t believe she was alive, sitting right there in front of me.

Kristof sat across from us. “Tyler, your mother’s life was in danger when you were just a toddler. This is why… This is what I didn’t want to happen to Jayden.”

Just the mention of her name made my heart
bang in my chest
.

My mother took another deep breath. “I’m not
excusing anything that happened, Tyler, but I do want to explain. If you’ll let me?”

She waited expectantly until I slowly nodded my head.

“When you were
just barely
four years old we were at home—watching
Pi
no
c
chio
, ea
ting popcorn, drinking soda—and
something very bad happened. Your father was out of to
wn—we had separated for a while,
so it was just the two of us.” She was watching me very carefully, almost expecting me to recall what she was talking about. After a moment she
exhaled
. “So you don’t remember,” she stated, sounding very relieved.

But there was something about the mention of
Pinocchio
.
My mind was flashing little bits and pieces, but I couldn’t put it together.
Pinocchio
… I had never actually seen the movie, or so I thought, but now I was seeing parts of it in my head. Okay, I was sure I had probably seen segments of it from TV—advertisements or something—but now all I could hear was screaming
. Pinocchio was singing for the puppeteer
, but my mother was screaming; s
creaming at me to stay in the room and watch the movie.

“Tyler?” she said softly, breaking my thoughts.

“You were raped?”

Her face
fell slightly
and she swallowed. “You remember?” she barely whispered.

I shook my head. “Not really. There was…a loud sound at the
back
door and you jumped up…you told me to stay on the couch and watch the movie
…you screamed,
and then it was quiet.
I called for you and you
yelled
at me to stay where I was and watch the movie…”
She was crying again when I looked at her. “You were raped, weren’t you?”
She didn’t even have to answer because it all made sense to me no
w. Finally I took a deep breath and said,
“Dad thinks you cheated on him. He knew the baby wasn’t his.”

She nodd
ed. “I know.
”

“
But you didn’t tell him what happened
?”

She shook her head. “I
couldn’t. I
t would have been the end o
f us all.”

The room was quiet again until
I said, “
I don’t understand.
”

“It
was
my fault,” Kristof interrupted.

When I looked at him he actually looked ashamed.

“You see, Tyler, when you have enemies, the first thing they go after is the people you love. Although Olivia and I were no longer together, it became well known that I still cared about her very much.
She is the only woman I have ever loved.
That is something you never want your enemies to know…”

He looked at me with a sad expression and
it forced me to look down at the floor
.

“I had to be pretty firm with you, I know, to get you to see what kind of danger Jayden was in. I allowed Dean to play the games that he did, to threaten you and to cause you pain, so it would force you to stay away from her.”
             
“And why couldn’t you just tell me the truth?” I asked bitterly.

“Because it doesn’t work that way.
I had to play things just right.
Because of who we are dealing with, I had to be prepared for his methods.
”

It clearly wasn’t making sense to me, so he began to give me a history lesson.

“When I was twelve years old, I escaped from a horrible, abusive, disgusting orphanage. I ran away and never looked back, deciding that I could take care of myself no matter what, even if I had to live on the streets. And I did, for
almost
five
years. Until one day I picked the pocket of the wrong man—or the right man, depending on how you look at it—and he caught me.
He talked me into coming to work for him, a business where I could earn more money than I could dream of.
I had no values; I had no sense of what was right or wrong.
I held no concern for what he did for a living
. He was kind to me and he took care of the people that were important to him. He took me in.
I even ended up moving into his home and it was more lavish than I could ever imagine a home to be.

“
This man’s name was Vladimir Meinikov, and he had a son
a year my elder
, Aleksey.” He paused for a momen
t and crossed his legs. “Alek
was…” he
chuckled
with disbeli
ef “…something else
.
He was spoiled
and arrogant…and he despised me. The jealousy in that boy was unmatched by anything I had ever seen of jealousy. He did all sorts of awful things to me, just so I would be punished
and looked down upon by his father
. But
over the years
, Vladimir was able to see the things his son was capable of. And after one very large, very costly mis
take, Vladimir dismissed Alek
from the organization, and allowed me to take over his part of the business. This was a very risky decision on Vladimir’s part, for the smart decision would have been to have Aleksey eliminated…
albeit
he was his son.

“
But Vladimir wasn’t your typical
crime
boss,” he smiled. “He was a little…unorthodox. What he wanted w
as for Aleksey to see the error
of his ways and desire to return. He wanted him to learn humility. But he soon learned that Aleksey had no intention of making such change, and Vladimir knew that he had released his son into the world: a smart and
cunning
young man
, yet lacking a soul entirely and completely evil to the core. Vladimir
felt
that his own days were numbered, so he reinforced his home to become a refuge,” he motioned throughout the house, “a safe haven for him to live out his days until his son finally came
for his revenge
.”

He glanced
toward
the window and I realized for the first time that it was beginning to get light out. I stood up and walked toward it, and I was surprised that I
wasn’t
surprised. There were acres of grass that surrounded the estate, and beyond that were miles of trees.
Just before the trees was a black
iron
fence that seemed to surround the entire property. I couldn’t tell how tall it was,
but
it looked pretty high tech.
I could see cities in the distance, but they must have been miles away.

I returned to the couch and sat down.
“So what happened with Vladimir?” I asked.

“Well, fortunately he
exceeded his own
estimated
life expectancy
. His son never came to claim his life as he feared
, but it didn’t mean that the day would not one day come
. He continued his business affairs effectively and the organization was a monumental success.” He saw my disapproval and nodded his head. “I understand your hatred of my
work
, Tyler, and I’m sure I could never get you to understand. I’ve accepted that. Obviously I have taken Vladimir’s place since his death twelve years ago. This is who I am. This is all I know.”

I didn’t respond, so he continued.

“Aleksey disappeared for some time after his father refused him. When I
began to spend more time in
the United States, I naïvely disregarded Aleksey as a threat. I met a beautiful woman—” he glanced at my mother “—and had my head in the clouds.
Aleksey seemed to disappear for a time, but what I later learned was that he’d been spending his time
getting in
with another organization—a very powerful and ruthless family by the name of
Derevenko
.
This family was still offended
by a bad business transaction from
decades
prior
, and Aleksey was determined to
fuel the fire
. In no time he had their trust by divulging inside secrets about the Meinikov organization and their associates. To make a very long story a little shorter, this began the war between the Meinikovs and the Derevenkos. And the breaking point for me
has now become
…what happened to your mother.”

“They were responsible for…?”

Kristof
slowly
nodded his head.

I had way too many questions, but the first thing I asked my mom was,
“And what about
your
‘
death
’
?
Why- what did that accomplish?”

“That was Aleksey and the Derevenkos. They found out about the baby and—”

“Th
e baby? You mean…? Who
…
?”

“Aleksey,” she said quietly. “Aleksey Meinikov b
roke into our home and…” She took a deep breath
and slowly released it
.
“
He was hoping that Kristof would find out about it, but I didn’t tell anyone.
Things like that have to be overlooked. You retaliate in any degree and something worse will happen. I didn’t even want to believe that it happened. I just wanted to move on, hoping that I could protect my family from further suffering
.”

My stomach churned. It was awful enough knowing that my own mother had been raped, but then to find out it was because of a vengeance that had nothing to do with her?