Part 57 (1/2)
I put my hands up and stand.
”Put the book on the desk,” the other one says, indicating with his gun.
Eve rests the sc.r.a.pbook on the desk and puts her hands up.
”Very good. You are coming with us now. Quietly.”
One walks in front and holds the door while the other two walk behind. I can practically feel the guns pointed at my back. There's a nondescript gray van sitting out front, idling on the street. If somebody would just look they'd see three men with very illegal guns leading us outside, but in cities people have a way of not seeing, if there's anybody to see at all. The street looks deserted. They push Eve in first, then me. I sit next to her and two gunmen sit a cross from us, pistols resting on their laps, ready to shoot us. The third drives.
”So,” I say. ”Your place, or mine?”
”Shut up.”
Turns out they're going to my place. I don't mean the apartment. I know as soon as I realize the route we're taking.
They're taking us back to the estate.
Chapter Twenty.
Evelyn Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, Oh G.o.d.
Victor doesn't move. His face is a frozen mask. I know my own is just as still, but I'm losing my mind. Please, not now. Don't let me have so short a time with him and take him away again. I press against him as much as I can.
I don't remember the ride back to the estate being so short. It feels like five hours. It feels like five minutes. When the van doors open into the dark and they push me out I stumble up the front steps, along with Victor, and into the house.
My father is sitting in a side chair in the foyer, as still as a statue. He might as well be cut from marble. Seated across from him, smoking a cigar, is a ma.s.sive slab of a man, bald but with hairy hands and thick sausage fingers. Every one has at least one ring, and he's wearing gold chains around his neck. Big, ostentatious ones. From the description that Victor gave me, he can only be this Vitali person. He looks at me with something his eyes that makes me s.h.i.+ver. I feel like I'm being undressed. His expression goes flat when my father turns and looks at him over steepled fingers.
”There you are,” Father says, in his usual expressionless tone.
”h.e.l.lo, Martin,” Victor says, his voice edged with malice.
”You,” Father says. ”You don't know how to behave, do you?”
”Out,” says Vitali.
His three men leave, but Vitali pulls out a gun and rests it on his thigh.
”Do not be getting any ideas, boy.”
”What's going on here?” Victor demands. He looks from one to the other. ”What the h.e.l.l?”
”You've been played,” Vitali chuckles.
”I was willing to let this farce continue. Now it must come to an end. This is your fault, Eve. I want you to understand that.”
I swallow.
”What is?”
”If you'd done as you were told, I'd have been willing to let you run off with him, until he was dealt with. Now you go behind my back, and force my hand.”
”You two are working together?” Victor says, incredulous.
”No,” Father says. ”Vitali works for me.”
There's something wrong with his voice. Father's diction and enunciation were always so perfect, so practiced. He sounds like a voice coach when he speaks, but his voice... slips.
He says something to Vitali in Russian and they both start laughing. When he switches back to English, he has an accent.
”You,” he looks at Victor. ”You are no end of trouble. So unpredictable. I should have known giving you two any time alone was a mistake, yes. I cannot have you two going behind our backs, trying to stop me. I had planned a more sophisticated means to deal with our problem, but you force my hand and brute force will have to do.”
I feel my legs shaking, trying to collapse under me.
”The problem is this. When Karen died, everything pa.s.sed to you, as per her will, as Victor had been disinherited. Somehow she grew...” his eyes roll as he searches for the word, ”Disenchanted with me and decided she would rather pa.s.s all the Amsel holdings to you. Necessitating that I waste years of time working through you. I had hoped to make better use of you. Perhaps even come to trust you, but like your wh.o.r.e mother you are useless and must be gotten rid of.”
”What?” I blurt out.
”You've pieced it together by now, I'm sure. Yes, I killed your mother. Not with my own hands, of course. I always have clean hands. I tried to teach you that, but you never learned. So long I tried to teach you, and you picked up all the wrong lessons,” he shoots Victor a scathing glance. ”You. I keep trying to turn you into an a.s.set but you become a thorn in my side. I can't have you exposing me or interfering anymore. If you'd cooperated I'd have let you have her. She'd no longer have been any use to me. Truth is, some sentimentality leads me to prefer not to dispose of my only blood, but practicality must overrule sentimentality. You both have to die. With you gone there will be no one to contest my daughter's last will and testament or my status as her sole beneficiary.”
”You think you can just get away with killing your own daughter?”
”No,” he sighs. ”You will. Or rather, you will commit murder suicide. You see, you were released from prison and began stalking and hara.s.sing her. I have evidence of this, of course. Once it was clear she'd moved on and rejected you, you lost your mind. Unable to cope, you broke in here, killed her, and set the house on fire.”
”Tragic,” Vitali adds, chuckling.
”I wait an appropriate time, of course, and after the necessary legal wrangling everything that belongs to your family is now mine.”
”Why?” Victor says. ”What did we ever do to you?”
Vitali starts laughing.
Father... Martin doesn't.
”You're expecting me to deliver, what is it, a monologue, yes? I suppose I should tie you up over a shark tank and reveal my entire dastardly plan to take revenge on your family for some slight. No. You were an easy target. This is business. Sentimentality is for idiots.”
”You,” Victor barks, looking at Vitali. ”He sent you to prison.”
”I make mistake. I do time. I get out. That is how game is played. Sorry boy. You were right not to trust me. Whoever said not to make friends inside, give good advice.”
”Let's go,” Martin says, standing.
Vitali steps behind us, covering our backs with his gun. Martin keeps his distance, and leads us upstairs, to Victor's father's office. It still smells the same inside, the air stale from remaining closed up so long. I catch a whiff of a bitter, sulfurous smell and wrinkle my nose.
”That's gas,” Victor says, softly.
Vitali's men are carrying jerry cans through the house, slopping it everywhere. They throw it on the walls, soak it into the carpet, pour it down the bannisters. The smell is overpowering.