He nodded. “Since then their lives have been running smoothly and uneventfully. My three younger sisters and brother, who came to America very young, integrated totally. They have successful careers and stable personal lives. My parents, now John and Glenda Evans, have lives that are as respectable, comfortable and secure. It’s as if I never existed to any of them. I live trying to forget them, too.”
“You shouldn’t.” Antonio shredded the words through gritted teeth. “For parents to toss their firstborn to the sharks, to live a prosperous life at the price of his life... No, Ivan, this shouldn’t go unpunished.”
He shook his head. “But it will, Tonio. I don’t have the thirst for retribution like you did.”
Antonio’s fists bunched as he visibly struggled to bring his outrage under control. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Ivan nodded, his throat tightening at his best friend’s solidarity.
Antonio sat back, the gears of his formidable mind clearly changing. “But what does all this have to do with Anastasia and her brother?”
Ivan sipped his cooling coffee before putting his cup down, buying himself time to rein in the memories of his family and the devastation of their betrayal.
“They come in seven years ago,” he finally said. “After five years out of The Organization’s prison, with only you and our brothers as my sole human connections, I’d resigned myself I’d never have anyone outside of you. Then one day, during the first conference I sponsored, I met a blast from my past. A man I recognized at once as my pre-Organization childhood best friend.
“Alexei Mikhailov left Russia with his parents just days before I was sent to The Organization. It was one of the reasons I was so eager to leave. His parents, prominent scientists in soviet Russia, defected to the States and changed identities, too, becoming the Shepherds. The father, Sergei, became Michael, the mother Ludmila, Grace, and Alexei, who’d followed in his father’s footsteps in the same branch of science in the States, became Alexander, or Alex. But because I’d changed too much...” They’d all made sure they did, so they’d be beyond recognition to their former captors even after they’d erased all evidence of their existence from their databases. “...Alex didn’t recognize me. And I intended he never would. But I was still compelled to get closer. To my delight, even without knowing me, we hit it off all over again, resuming our former rapport as if the intervening years hadn’t happened.”
He paused, savoring the agony of the sweet memories. Then he went on. “Later that same night, I met Anastasia, Alex’s younger sister, whom I remembered as a two-year-old child called Nastya, who used to be my youngest sister’s playmate. She’d been twenty three years old then, and the most stunning creature I’d ever seen.”
And the only woman he’d ever wanted, unstoppably, on sight.
From that first glance, the desire had been mutual and beyond either of them to resist...which they hadn’t.
“For the next few weeks, as Alex and I became close friends again, I plunged into a passionate but secret affair with her.” He leaned forward as echoes of this magical interlude that had never stopped haunting him deluged him again. Body hardening and heart thundering at the mere memories, he raked a hand through his hair, dragged himself back to the bleak reality. “I was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of being with her, not to mention by the delight of being with Alex again. Yet it haunted me that I might expose them to danger if one day the past caught up with me. And though that was my main fear, there was another problem.
“Through the escape and identity changes, not only had their family never lost contact with mine, they’d become like one family. My parents were like a second mother and father to them, with my sisters Anastasia’s best friends and Alex in love with my youngest sister, Katerina, Cathy now. I knew being involved with Anastasia and Alex would bring my family crashing back into my life. My dread was validated when Alex kept trying to suck me into their extended family. It all came to a head when he asked me to be his best man.”
He closed his eyes as memories of Alex, alive and in love and eager for his closeness, tore at him all over again.
His breath left him on a ragged hiss. “I considered putting the past behind me, for his sake, for Anastasia’s. But I couldn’t do it. I was unable to bear the thought of being around my family again. It was the shove I needed to leave them alone. So I told Anastasia and Alex that I had inescapable business on his wedding day and withdrew from both their lives.”
Silence lengthened in the wake of his last words.
Then Antonio asked, “Without explanation?”
He’d driven himself crazy ever since thinking how he could have handled it better. He’d always come to the same conclusion. “Any excuse I invented to explain my withdrawal would have only hurt more than letting them think I was just an unfeeling jerk.”
Antonio inclined his head. “So now you don’t want her going back to her life because you can’t walk away again and you’re worried your family might somehow recognize you when they eventually see you with her? Or are you afraid you’d change your mind about punishing them once you see them again?”
“Neither. The years haven’t lessened my aversion to being anywhere near them, but intensified it. If she goes back to her family, I won’t be able to be there for her anymore. And she still needs my support, my protection. She isn’t ready to face the world without them yet.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “So now you have the reason you asked for.”
After another beat of silence, Antonio rose to his feet. “I will still discharge her, Ivan.”
Ivan heaved up to his feet, blood shooting to his head. “What? After what I just told you?”
“I actually now believe it’s even more imperative to let her go back to her life.”
“You bastard, you make me spill my guts—”
“Which you should have done ages ago. But what you told me only reinforces what I already decided.” An outstretched arm aborted Ivan’s outraged step forward. “When you first told me you’d be there for her during the hard journey back to her old self, I assumed she had no one else. But she has a family who loves her. She needs to go back to them, to bury her brother, so she’ll get closure and start the healing process. Keeping her isolated with only you hovering over her is keeping her in a limbo of unresolved tension and grief.”
“That’s only your opinion.”
“It’s the truth. And there’s also another reason why I will discharge her against your wishes.”
“Brilliant. You have more bloody reasons to screw me over?”
“You always turn into Richard when you’re frustrated.” Before Ivan could blast him for likening him to that pain-in-the-ass Brit partner and former jailor of theirs, Richard Graves, Antonio sighed. “But yes, I do have another reason. You.”
“Me?”
“Believe it or not, I’m stopping you from making a catastrophic mistake with the woman you care about.” Antonio waited a moment to let his words settle on Ivan before he went on. “No matter how justified you think you are, the day she discovers you kept her away from her loved ones when she most needed them for your own ends, you’ll find yourself in my same position with Liliana, with her feeling manipulated and betrayed, and with you unable to reach her again. And you already have a huge strike against you with her for the way you deserted her in the past. I don’t want you to meet my same fate.”
Ivan almost staggered back under the barrage of truths he hated to hear. “Dammit, Tonio. You were supposed to be too messed up to offer any resistance, let alone come up with a reasoned argument this ironclad.”
“Just your luck I have a separate compartment in my head for my inner Vulcan.” Antonio took him by the shoulders this time. “Let her go, Ivan. And after she’s done what she needs to do, find a way to be there