She was about to get out of the car, but she paused just a moment, rummaging around in her purse. She pulled out a photograph from an interior pocket.
“Nik,” she said, “do you recognize this egg? In this picture of my mother?”
Nikolai took the photograph from her hand, but he was distracted for a moment looking at Samara Lebedev herself. The resemblance to Nadia was striking. Both women had such a unique beauty that captured the eye, that made it hard to look away from them.
He did notice at last, however, that Samara had the Crimson Heart cradled in her lap.
He squinted at the picture, to be sure.
“How did she have that?” he asked in surprise.
“I don’t know!” Nadia said. “That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
“I don’t think my family stole it, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Nikolai said.
“I didn’t think that,” Nadia said, but from her blush, Nikolai knew the thought had at least crossed her mind.
And to be fair, some of his father’s rarest works of art probably weren’t acquired by strictly legal means. However, the vast majority was bought at auction.
“I don’t know where it came from,” Nikolai said. “We’ve had it for years, but I can’t say I paid any attention to that egg until I saw you standing next to it.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Nadia said. “I was just curious.”
She tucked the picture back into her purse, then leaned over to kiss him once more.
Then, all too soon, she was out of the car.
Nikolai watched her striding toward the house, her slim, upright figure climbing the steps in those adorable little shorts and that crisp white blouse.
As the door closed behind her, he saw the twitch of a curtain in an upper window. Probably the aunt. It certainly wasn’t the grandfather, bedridden and out of his mind.
Nikolai disliked the look of the dilapidated old mansion. He didn’t like to see Nadia disappearing inside of it. He had once viewed the Lebedev house as a gratifying symbol of their defeat. Now he saw it as a place completely unfit for the last Lebedev. He could build Nadia the kind of palace she deserved—bright, warm, and beautiful, just like herself.
He amused himself all the way home, imagining what that house might look like.
But when he pulled up to his father’s modern glass mansion, he found Zavier Markov waiting for him.
Zavier was standing in the entryway, smoking the expensive imported cigarettes he preferred. When Nikolai’s mother was alive, she had never allowed Zavier to smoke in the house. But now he did it all the time.
He offered one to Nikolai. Nikolai shook his head. He’d quit five years ago, but his father hadn’t seemed to notice.
Zavier was wearing a plain black pullover, not his usual suit. He looked younger this way, as if he might have been Nikolai’s older brother. But it gave him a slightly menacing appearance, the dark clothes and the veil of smoke drifting around his face.
“Out with Nadia Turgenev?” Zavier asked calmly.
Nikolai knew his father would already know the answer to that question. Though Leonid, Dima, Oleg, and the others worked directly for Nikolai and were loyal to him, in the hierarchy of the Markov family, Zavier stood at the top. The men would answer his questions and keep him apprised of Nikolai’s progress.
“She showed me a picture of the Crimson Heart,” Nikolai said. “It looked like it used to belong to the Lebedevs. How did we get it?”
Zavier scowled at his son.
“At auction,” he said. “The same place we get all those old pieces.”
“Did you know it belonged to the Lebedevs when you bought it?”
“What’s the point of these questions?” Zavier said.
“Just trying to figure out the history,” Nikolai said.
