And still ...
It didn’t help.
Vera opened her hands and arms in a sign of surrender. “I’m fine. I’m okay, look at me. I was going to tell you that I’d met someone. Soon,” she hedged.
At that, her father’s posture loosened up again. Not that it helped with the tension between them.
“It’s not the state of you that worries me, Vera. It takes very little research to understand the kind of man you’re involved with and let me tell you, I didn’t like a lot of what I found.”
“Because he’s criminally affiliated, really?”
“Don’t even start.” Demyan shook his head, and eyed the house. “The whys. Why all of this, why him? Why does he do the fucking things he does? Why, Vera? Have you asked him any of that yet? Because when I ask why, I don’t get answers. Does he at least answer to you?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
“Is he forcing you—”
“I’m where I want to be,” Vera said. “I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do, too.”
It was that second when she knew it was true, too. The one thing she learned from Vaslav in their short, sporadically chaotic time together was that whatever she said, she needed to mean it. Especially because he wasn’t a man who said things that he didn’t mean. Even if they were in anger, he could apologize for it later, or a truth that would sting her from its reality.
It didn’t matter.
If he said it, it was true, and he meant it.
Vera extended the same respect to Vaslav, and her promise of that only strengthened the moment she agreed to be his wife, and he slid the ring down her finger. It wouldn’t matter if she did ask Vaslav the things Demyan said she should, and her questions might not even revolve around why like his had, but she didn’t say that to her father.
Instead, she asked, “Could I have a hug? We can yell at each other later, you know? There’s always time to fight.”
And not nearly enough to catch up.
Demyan blinked. “What?”
“A hug from my father. I missed you. I can’t remember the last time you hugged me, and—”
“God, yes. Come here.”
That was all she needed to tell him. Demyan closed the distance separating him and his adult daughter. Time had changed a lot of things for the two of them, but the way he could make the world disappear when he wrapped her in a hug wasn’t one of them.
Yes, her communication skills had been lacking. No, his worries weren’t for nothing.
The hug took it all away ... at least, for a moment.
“It all happened really fast,” she whispered, not knowing how else to explain the strange relationship she had stumbled into with Vaslav since their first meeting. None of it had been normal, certainly not the standard, and she couldn't say she wanted to change what she found because of it, either. Even if she wasn't ready to say what that thing she found was; how could she when she had yet to make sense of it herself?
“And I don’t regret any of it,” Vera added after a second.
Demyan huffed a breath into Vera’s hair, squeezing her tighter when he muttered, “He’s goddamn crazy, Vera.”
“Don’t say th—”
He held her away from him. Far enough that the two had to stare one another in the face as he said to her, “I can’t even remember getting off my plane.” Demyan jammed a finger into his chest. “I woke up again and again only to get a rag over my face the second I was conscious. He had my associate shot in the face while he drank tea and told me where I would be staying like he was checking me into a hotel, Vera. Where I walked to, by the way, in the middle of the night while the bald one followed me.”
Demyan scoffed. “Follow the road. Door’s unlocked.”
She blinked at the callous way he mocked Vaslav’s amusement but was more struck by how unsurprised she was at the way her father had been treated by the man. It wasn’t like Demyan to just talk that way to her. So frankly. Hell, she was a teenager before she got him to admit he was affiliated to the mob.
Her grandfather, on the other hand ... well, Anton Avdonin never had a problem saying exactly who and what he was when asked. As long as it wasn’t a cop asking the question.
“He’s dangerous, likely unstable, and that’s concerning to me. Whether you’re willing to admit it, or not.”
“He takes some getting used to,” Vera tried to say.
“He woke me up with breakfast,” Demyan said, “before the sun was even in the sky. With a job, he said! His mood was a hell of a lot better, mind, but given the way I was dumped on his floor, I don’t particularly trust his smiles. The enemy you know is better than the one you don’t.”
“That’s the thing, Papa.”
“What thing?”
“You don’t know him, but even if you did, that’s not the point. He handles people better when he believes they don’t know anything about him at all.”
Demyan blinked at that, dropping his hands from her and taking a small step back. “Vera, do you hear yourself say that, it’s insane!”
“Well ...” So be it, Vera thought. She folded her arms over her chest, and planted her booted feet, Mira managed to find a pair of hikers that fit, firmly into the ground. No doubt, the sight of her, the contrast between her dress and footwear, and the entire scene was silly to Demyan. She wished she cared. “Nobody said you had to like it. You came here.”
She expected anger.
Maybe it was even justified.
After a pause that made Demyan look frozen in time against the soft movement of the lake and breeze in the trees, he barked out a laugh.
“Oh, God,” he crowed.
Vera shifted a bit on her heels. “Why are you laughing?”
It took another low rumble of laughter before Demyan managed to mumble his reply, “That’s what he told me, too.”
“I mean ...” She let her palms helplessly slap against her thighs over the cashmere dress. “It’s true.”
“Was that a cooler I saw on the ROV?” Demyan asked, then.
The change of subject brought Vera sweet relief. “Yeah. Salad, bread, coffee. Something sweet, too.”
“Is he going to give me back the rest of my things, too?”
Vera hesitated long enough for her father to roll her eyes. Defensively, she said, “I didn’t know he’d taken your things.”
“And my phone!”
“I’ll get your phone back,” Vera snapped. “Did you even bother to ask for it yourself?”
“I asked enough questions to learn he didn’t like to be asked questions, Vera.”
Fair enough.
There was one thing she could fix.
Vera pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress, one of the best features next to the neckline, in her opinion, and offered it to her father. “Here. Call Ma. She’s very worried.”
She didn’t need to say it twice.
Demyan took the phone and grumbled, “Yeah, I bet.”
4.
I’m where I want to be.
Vaslav was left to ponder those words while he should have been enjoying the Olivier salad and sourdough rye bread Mira had made to go with the dark roasted coffee to wash the dense food down. Instead, he’d made it halfway through his lunch as Vera’s conversation trailed on with her father and Vaslav made no effort to engage.