Chapter 2 - The Mafia Boss Spent Twelve Years Mourning a Woman Who Might Never Have Been in Her Grave—Then Aliyah Found the Medical Detail That Proved His Own Brother Had Helped Bury the TruthVictor didn't sleep that night.
Neither did Aliyah.
He tried to send her home.
She refused.
Then he tried to place two guards outside her apartment.
She refused that too.
They compromised on one unmarked security car across the street.
“Your definition of compromise is disturbing,” Aliyah told him.
Victor stood inside her tiny kitchen.
“I wanted four men.”
“You wanted six.”
“Four outside. Two inside.”
“Exactly.”
Malik entered wearing pajama pants.
He stopped.
Looked at Victor.
Looked at Aliyah.
Then at Victor again.
“Why is there a Russian-looking billionaire in our kitchen?”
Aliyah closed her eyes.
“Malik.”
“What?”
Victor extended his hand.
“Victor Malenkov.”
Malik stared at it.
Then shook.
“You're the Mafia guy.”
Aliyah nearly choked.
Victor's expression didn't change.
“Allegedly.”
Malik looked impressed.
“Cool.”
“Not cool,” Aliyah snapped.
Victor almost smiled.
Malik pointed toward the refrigerator.
“You want leftover pizza?”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes.”
Aliyah stared.
“You refuse pizza but accept coffee?”
“I have standards.”
“You drink pub vodka.”
“Good pub vodka.”
Malik disappeared laughing.
For twelve years, people had treated Victor like a weapon that might discharge.
Aliyah's brother offered him reheated pizza.
Victor didn't know what to do with that.
Aliyah did.
She smiled.
“Welcome to normal life.”
“I dislike it.”
“Liar.”
By morning, Victor's people had located Nikolai.
Not physically.
Financially.
He had withdrawn $200,000.
Used a false passport.
Reserved a charter flight to Montreal.
But never boarded.
“He wants us looking north,” Victor said.
They sat inside a secure office at Malenkov Shipping.
Aliyah should have been in pharmacology lecture.
Instead, she was examining copies of Elena's medical records.
Victor had offered to have his driver take her to school.
Aliyah had looked at him until he stopped speaking.
“You're not qualified to interpret those,” Victor said.
“I know enough to identify inconsistencies.”
“I have physicians.”
“Who work for you.”
“Yes.”
“That is exactly why I want to look first.”
Victor leaned back.
“You distrust everyone.”
“I met you three days ago.”
“Fair.”
Aliyah compared two charts.
Elena had broken her jaw in a horseback-riding accident at seventeen.
Surgery.
Two titanium screws.
The body identified after the explosion had severe facial trauma.
Dental records had supposedly confirmed identity.
Aliyah read the autopsy summary.
Then stopped.
“Victor.”
He looked up.
“Did Elena have a metal implant in her jaw?”
“Yes.”
“Titanium?”
“I think so.”
Aliyah pushed the paper toward him.
“It's not here.”
Victor stared.
“The autopsy lists dental restorations but no mandibular hardware.”
“Could the explosion destroy it?”
“Titanium?”
Aliyah shook her head.
“Not likely.”
Victor's face lost color.
They requested the original autopsy.
Missing.
Original dental X-rays?
Missing.
Medical examiner?
Dead seven years earlier.
The dentist who signed the identification?
Retired to Florida.
Victor sent people.
Aliyah objected to the phrase “sent people.”
Victor changed it to “requested a conversation.”
The dentist confessed within hours.
He had been paid.
By Nikolai Malenkov.
Victor broke a glass when he heard.
Aliyah watched blood bead across his palm.
“Sit.”
He looked at her.
“Now.”
Victor sat.
She opened a first-aid kit.
“This feels familiar.”
“You're bleeding on expensive furniture.”
“It belongs to me.”
“That doesn't make blood hygienic.”
She cleaned the cut.
Victor watched her hands.
“You're not afraid to touch me.”
Aliyah glanced up.
“Should I be?”
“Most people are.”
“Most people aren't nursing students who have cleaned infected wounds at seven in the morning.”
Victor smiled faintly.
She wrapped his hand.
“Why didn't you touch anyone after Elena?”
Victor's smile disappeared.
“I did.”
Aliyah waited.
“Immediately after her death, people touched me constantly.”
He stared toward the window.
“Hands on my shoulder. Hugs. Condolences.”
His jaw tightened.
“Every touch felt like someone congratulating me for surviving.”
Aliyah said nothing.
“One night my mother embraced me. I pushed her away.”
“Victor.”
“She fell.”
His voice became quiet.
“She wasn't hurt. But the look on her face…”
He swallowed.
“After that, I stopped letting people close.”
“For twelve years.”
“Yes.”
“That wasn't punishment for them.”
“I know.”
“It was punishment for you.”
Victor looked at her.
“You enjoy saying unpleasant things.”
“I’m going to be a nurse.”
“Is cruelty part of the curriculum?”
“Second semester.”
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
Aliyah stared.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No one has looked at me like that in years.”
“Like what?”
“As if laughing is evidence of mental instability.”
“With you, it might be.”
The moment faded when Victor's phone rang.
Nikolai had been found.
Not in Canada.
At Elena's foundation.
The building still operated under another name as a domestic-violence resource center.
Victor arrived with Aliyah and three security vehicles.
She objected.
He ignored her.
“You don't need me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
Victor looked at her.
“I don't know.”
That answer followed her inside.
Nikolai sat in the old foundation director's office.
He was fifty-two.
Younger than Victor by four years.
Same gray eyes.
Less controlled.
He raised both hands when Victor entered.
“I don't have a weapon.”
Victor did.
Aliyah saw the gun beneath his jacket.
“Where is Elena?”
Nikolai closed his eyes.
Victor crossed the room.
“Where is my wife?”
“I don't know.”
Victor grabbed him.
Aliyah had never seen rage become so quiet.
“You paid the dentist.”
“Yes.”
“You falsified the identification.”
“Yes.”
“I buried someone.”
“Yes.”
Victor's fist drew back.
Aliyah caught his wrist.
Both brothers stared at her.
Victor could have moved her easily.
He didn't.
“Let him talk.”
Nikolai looked at her.
“Who are you?”
“Someone with limited patience.”
Nikolai laughed bitterly.
“Elena would have liked you.”
Victor's expression twisted.
“Don't say her name.”
Nikolai looked at his brother.
“I saved her.”
Silence.
Victor released him.
“What?”
“The explosion was supposed to kill her.”
“Whose order?”
Nikolai hesitated.
Victor moved again.
“Our father.”
Victor stopped.
Aliyah stared.
Victor's father, Mikhail Malenkov, had died eight years earlier.
Nikolai continued.
“Elena discovered he was using her foundation.”
“For what?”
“Money laundering.”
Victor's face hardened.
“Impossible.”
“Not just money.”
Nikolai looked sick.
“He used safe houses belonging to the foundation to move people.”
Aliyah understood first.
“Women?”
Nikolai looked at her.
“Some.”
Her stomach turned.
“Trafficking?”
Victor whispered.
Nikolai nodded.
Victor stepped backward as if struck.
“My father prohibited trafficking.”
“In our territory, publicly.”
Nikolai's voice cracked.
“Privately, he partnered with men who didn't.”
Elena discovered it.
She copied records.
Planned to go to federal investigators.
Mikhail learned.
Ordered the bombing.
Nikolai discovered the plan hours beforehand.
He tried to warn Elena.
She refused to run without protecting a witness.
A woman named Rebecca Voss.
A bookkeeper who had helped Elena collect evidence.
“Rebecca was in the car,” Nikolai said.
Victor went still.
“The body.”
Nikolai nodded.
“Elena switched vehicles.”
“You buried Rebecca as Elena?”
“I had no choice.”
“You had twelve years!”
“I had Father's people watching me.”
“He died eight years ago!”
“And by then Elena was gone.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
Victor hit him.
Once.
Nikolai fell.
Aliyah didn't stop Victor that time.
Victor stood over his brother.
“You let me bury another woman under my wife's name.”
“I know.”
“You watched me stand beside that grave.”
“I know.”
“You watched me destroy myself.”
Nikolai wiped blood from his mouth.
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
Victor laughed.
There was no humor in it.
“Everyone keeps calling lies protection.”
Aliyah felt those words.
Nikolai reached into his coat slowly.
Victor's security men raised weapons.
“Easy.”
Nikolai removed an envelope.
“I found this two years after Father died.”
Victor took it.
Inside was a postcard.
No return address.
A photograph of mountains.
On the back:
Nikolai, don't look for me. Victor must believe I'm dead until Mikhail's network is gone. If he knows I'm alive, he'll come. If he comes, they'll kill him too. Tell him someday, if it becomes safe, that I never stopped loving him. — E
Victor sat down.
Aliyah had never seen a person collapse without falling.
But Victor did.
Twelve years.
Every Thursday.
Every Saturday.
The same booth.
The same vodka.
The same handkerchief.
The same wedding ring.
He had remained loyal to a grave containing someone else.
Aliyah crouched beside him.
She didn't touch him immediately.
“Victor?”
His eyes were wet.
“She's alive.”
“Maybe.”
He looked at her sharply.
Aliyah held his gaze.
“Don't build another twelve years on something we haven't proven.”
Pain crossed his face.
“You think she's dead.”
“I think hope deserves evidence too.”
Victor stared at her.
Then nodded.
They searched.
Elena's postcard had been mailed from Vermont.
The postal mark led nowhere.
But the mountain photograph showed a distinctive church steeple.
Malik identified it through image-search software.
A town near Burlington.
Victor wanted to leave immediately.
Aliyah had an exam.
He stared at her.
“You're going to class?”
“Yes.”
“My wife may be alive.”
“And if I fail pharmacology because your family can't communicate like normal people, Professor Dawson will not accept that excuse.”
Victor blinked.
“Aliyah.”
“Four hours.”
“You expect me to wait four hours?”
“You waited twelve years.”
Victor looked offended.
She went to her exam.
She earned a ninety-two.
At four, Victor waited outside.
“Happy?”
“Moderately.”
They drove north.
The address they found belonged to a hospice center.
Victor stopped breathing when he saw the sign.
Aliyah touched his arm.
“Don't assume.”
Inside, they asked for Elena Malenkov.
No record.
Elena Markovic.
Nothing.
Elena Voss.
The receptionist looked up.
“She volunteered here years ago.”
Victor gripped the desk.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
A nurse overheard.
“Eleanor?”
Victor turned.
The nurse studied him.
“You're Victor.”
He went pale.
“You know me?”
“She kept a photograph.”
“Where is she?”
The nurse's face changed.
Aliyah knew that expression.
She'd seen it in hospitals.
Victor saw it too.
“No.”
The nurse stepped closer.
“She's alive.”
Victor's knees almost gave way.
“Where?”
“She moved to Maine three years ago.”
Victor closed his eyes.
Alive.
Elena was alive.
They found the address the following morning.
A small coastal town.
White house.
Garden.
Ocean beyond.
Victor stood outside the gate for nearly five minutes.
Aliyah remained beside the car.
“This part is yours.”
He looked at her.
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Please.”
It was the first time Victor Malenkov had said that word to her.
Aliyah went.
Victor knocked.
Footsteps approached.
The door opened.
A woman stood there.
Fifty.
Brown hair streaked with gray.
Thin scar across one cheek.
She looked at Victor.
The world stopped.
“Elena.”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Victor.”
He didn't move.
Neither did she.
Twelve years stood between them.
Then Elena crossed the threshold.
She touched his face.
Victor broke.
He pulled her into his arms.
Aliyah turned away.
She walked toward the ocean.
She told herself the pain in her chest was inappropriate.
Ridiculous.
She had known Victor for days.
Elena was his wife.
Alive.
This was the miracle he deserved.
Behind her, Victor cried into his wife's shoulder.
And Aliyah Brooks quietly understood that sometimes changing someone's life did not mean you were meant to remain in it.
She returned to Boston alone that night.
Victor didn't stop her.
Three days passed.
No call.
Seven.
Nothing.
Aliyah returned to classes.
The bookstore.
The Red Lion.
Life resumed.
Except Victor's booth remained empty.
On the ninth night, Aliyah was clearing glasses when a woman sat there.
Brown hair streaked with gray.
Scar on one cheek.
Aliyah froze.
Elena Malenkov smiled.
“Aliyah?”
“Yes?”
Elena looked at the empty chair opposite her.
“Would you sit with me?”
Aliyah slowly did.
Elena folded her hands.
“Victor told me everything.”
Aliyah swallowed.
“I'm glad you're safe.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
Elena studied her.
“You're a terrible liar.”
Aliyah stared.
Elena smiled sadly.
“So was I.”
“What do you want?”
“To tell you something Victor cannot.”
Aliyah's heart began pounding.
Elena removed her wedding ring.
Placed it on the table.
Aliyah stared.
“What are you doing?”
Elena's eyes filled.
“The man Victor spent twelve years mourning was my husband.”
She pushed the ring forward.
“But the woman he found in Maine isn't his wife anymore.”
Aliyah didn't breathe.
May you like
Elena whispered:
“And I think he's too loyal to admit that until I set him free.”
