HER RUSSIAN SURRENDER (8 page)

She held her hand out to him. “Pavel, it’s okay, it’s just the pizza I ordered. From the same place as two days ago. You said you liked it, remember?”

But Pavel shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s one of the bad guys.”

More knocking. “Tony’s delivery! I got the pizza you ordered right here, ma’am.”

“Hold on,” Sam called back. She wished the pizza guy had been considerate enough to ring the doorbell instead of knocking. The sound had probably been enough to send Pavel into a post-traumatic episode.

“You think the pizza guy hurt your dad?”

Pavel shook his head, his voice frantic as he answered. “He’s not a pizza guy. He’s a Russian. He’s one of them.”

Sam hesitated, not sure how to handle this situation. There was a lot of stuff to parse out with Pavel and she wanted to help him through this, show him how to manage his emotions when he’d been triggered. But she also needed to answer the door and hide him away in the guest bedroom before his uncle showed up.

Now the guy on the other side of the door was pounding. “Are you coming out to pay for this pizza or what?”

“I’ve got to pay for the pizza,” Sam explained to Pavel in a low, calming voice. “I know this situation makes you feel scared and anxious, but it will be all right.”

Pavel leaned forward and grabbed her forearm with both of his hands, tears springing to his eyes. “No, it won’t. Mama, please don’t answer that door. Please!”

She knew Pavel was having a post-traumatic episode. And she knew she’d really regret this when it came time to figure out how to get a hungry little boy to stay in his room while she talked to his uncle. But in the end, she gave in.

“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” she told Pavel. Then she called out to the guy on the other side of the door, “I’m sorry. We won’t be needing that pizza any longer. Just charge the credit card I gave you and, I guess, donate it to the next homeless person you see.”

“Are you serious, lady?” the voice on the other side of the door asked.

“Yes, completely serious,” Sam answered, feeling both guilty and silly as Pavel clung to her forearm, his thin fingers digging in like a tiny bear trap.

“How about my tip?” the delivery guy asked.

“I’m really sorry, but I won’t be able to tip you right now. I can’t come to the door,” Sam said. “But if you leave me your name, I’ll stop by Tony’s later and make sure you get a generous tip for your trouble.”

Silence. A long silence, while Sam waited for the guy on the other side of the door to give up and go away.

But there were no receding footsteps. Instead, there came more loud pounding on the door, so heavy it shook the whole frame.

“Open the door. Open the door and pay for this pizza. NOW!” The easygoing pizza guy was gone, his voice deeper and carrying the trace of a faint accent. “Open this door now, bitch!”

Sam went still as her instincts came online. Thanks to her training at the shelter, she knew when to confront an angry man at the door and when that man was high-risk enough for her to immediately involve the police. She knew exactly where she and Pavel stood with this guy.

“Pavel,” she whispered, tugging at the little boy’s arm now instead of vice versa. “Let’s go. We need to—”

A gloved hand smashed through the thin side window to the right of the door, and went straight for the deadbolt. It was one of three locks on the door, but in this case, it was the only one that she’d locked.

Sam’s heart went cold with fear. Yeah, there was no way the man on the other side of the door was the local delivery guy.

“Back Up, here girl!” she called while pulling Pavel from underneath the table.

Back Up trotted over and Sam managed to get the little boy out, just as the door came crashing open.

“C’mon!” she yelled, picking up Pavel and running into her bedroom with Back Up on their heels. She slammed the door behind all of them, looking around for a phone. She needed help, but her phone…

She cursed, the memory of it bouncing off the bed to places unknown when she’d thrown it in frustration coming back to her.

Did she have time to look for it? No, she decided. Better to put as many doors between them and the bad guy as she could. With frantic breaths, she ran into the bathroom with Pavel in her arms. Slammed that door behind her and placed him in the tub.

Pavel was crying now. “He’s going to kill us!”

“No, I won’t let him hurt you!” Sam said, her eyes scanning the bathroom for something she could use to defend them against the maniac at the door.

There was a metal towel rack was bolted solidly to the wall but no amount of her frantic tugging pulled it off. Sam soon gave up, her eyes once again scanning until they landed on the small window right above the tub. It was too small for her to fit through.

But maybe Pavel could.

She bent down to talk to the little boy crouched in her empty bathtub.

“Pavel, I’m going to push you through the window. Go around the cottage, and run as fast as you can to Ruth’s House.” She gave him six numbers, the date of her mother’s death, then said, “That’s the code to get in. Climb out the window and don’t look back, no matter what. Just get to the shelter’s back door, okay? Then call 9-1-1.” Sam put her hands on both sides of the boy’s frightened face. “Okay?”

Pavel nodded, solemn as a tomb. “Okay, I’ll go, but I don’t want you to get hurt like Papa.”

She wished she could tell him she wouldn’t, wished she could reassure him, but it wasn’t true and there wasn’t enough time. She settled on not letting her terror show as she bent down further and helped Pavel climb up on her shoulders and out the window.

His feet disappeared just as the bathroom door rattled with the force of someone banging his shoulder against it. The sound of someone trying to get in.

Back Up once again went to the door the bad guy was trying to bash through, sniffing at the crack beneath it with more curiosity than anything else. Sam loved her bullie, but this was one of the times it might have come in handy not to have a total sweetheart of a dog.

“Go away!” Sam yelled. “I have a rabid pit bull in here and she will tear you from limb to limb if you don’t go away now!”

Back Up looked over her shoulder at Sam and snuffed like, “Who me? I’d do no such thing! In fact, dogs of my breed are way more likely to be kidnapped because we’re so ridiculously friendly and trusting!”

Seriously, she’d seen teacup poodles show more menace than Back Up was displaying now. But maybe the guy on the other side of the door believed her because the rattling came to an abrupt stop.

With her heart in her throat, Sam waited. But no sound came. Minutes passed that felt like hours. And soon the fearful anticipation was replaced with dread. What if he hadn’t been scared… what if he’d left? Left because he’d gotten what they’d come for?

Sam’s heart seized with those thoughts and without thinking, she opened the bathroom door. She had to be sure, she just had to be…

The bedroom was now empty. Its door standing open, knocked off one hinge in ominous testament to the fact that someone had aggressively barged inside. Before leaving.

No,
Sam thought to herself.
No! No! No
!

She ran through the broken door, down the narrow hallway, and into the living room, her shoes crunching over the broken glass as she rushed outside onto the wide expanse of lawn that sat between her and the shelter.

Only to stop short.

Pavel was standing in front of the back entrance to Ruth’s House… having what looked like a solemn conversation with Nikolai Rustanov. At least she thought it was Nikolai Rustanov. He was turned to the side and had swapped his tuxedo for a black pea coat and skull cap. In fact, he was dressed all in black as if he’d set out to match the large black Escalade parked, not in one of the special parking spots for Ruth’s House, but on the lawn itself with the passenger door hanging open, as if he’d skidded to a stop and leapt out.

But even turned sideways, she knew it was him, if only by the sharp planes of his face, like a gargoyle come to life.

She stood there, mouth unhinged, trying to figure out what was going on before she approached the unexpected scene. Back Up, though, wasn’t nearly as wary. She barked happily and ran over to Pavel, nearly knocking the poor boy down in her eagerness to lick him after a whole five, possibly ten, minutes apart.

Nikolai watched the scene with narrow eyes, his body tense as if he were trying to figure out if Back Up was a danger to Pavel. He must have decided she wasn’t, because his head swiveled towards Sam as she also came running across the lawn toward them.

The only evidence that he recognized her was a slight widening of his hooded eyes, before his face went to another setting, one that rearranged the harsh planes of his face into an expression of angry accusation.

“This,” he said, his voice dangerous and low. “This is what you call taking care of my nephew?”

10

S
am didn’t know how to feel about Nikolai Rustanov staring down at her. Confusion, relief, and defensiveness were all putting in bids to be her main emotion. But in the end it came down to Pavel.

She fell to her knees in front of him, hugging the little boy to her.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“I’m fine, Mama. The bad guy didn’t get me because Uncle Nik came and chased him away.” His eyes filled up with delight as he informed her, “Mount Nik is my uncle! I can’t believe it.”

“Me either,” Sam said, trying to keep her shit together. Was it true? Were they really both still here, alive and totally unharmed? She hugged Pavel to her again. She couldn’t believe how close she’d come to losing him tonight. “How lucky your uncle came here to meet you.”

She could feel Nikolai’s angry eyes watching her hug his nephew and knew he must be jumping to all sorts of conclusions about her fitness as even a temporary custodian. “Why don’t we all go inside Ruth’s House,” she suggested. “Call the police and maybe we can talk while we wait for them to get here.”

But Pavel pulled back, still stuck on the whole uncle reveal. “Papa said Mount Nik was his brother, but I thought he was lying. If my uncle was a famous hockey player with lots of money, why…”

He didn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence. But he didn’t have to. The haunted look in his eyes said more about what he had been through as the neglected son of a drug addict than words ever could. His eyes filled with tears and he buried his head in Sam’s shoulder, turning them both so his back was to his uncle. His uncle, who he didn’t want to see him cry.

Sam’s heart broke for the boy. She’d never seen him shed as much as a tear in all that had happened and she wrapped her arms around him tight, wanting to reassure with hugs that everything would be all right.

Back Up apparently felt the same way. But since she didn’t have a pair of arms she could wrap around the little boy, she settled for gently nudging his back with her wedge-shaped forehead.

“I did not know.” The words came hard and flat from above them. “Your father did not tell me.”

Pavel shook his head against Sam’s shoulder, refusing to look up at his uncle. “I prayed for him to be real. I prayed for him to be the truth. But Mount Nik never came for me.”

“Pavel…” Sam started.

“Now I am here,” Nikolai said, his tone impatient. “And do not call me Mount Nik. You are my nephew. Not fan. You may call me Uncle Nikolai or Uncle, but not silly nickname.”

Sam glared over Pavel’s shoulder at him. Was he seriously quibbling about what Pavel called him after all he’d been through?

As if to confirm her suspicions about his abject unfitness to parent a traumatized child, Nikolai said, “You will stop crying and come now to my home. Your proper home.”

Sam scrunched her face, not bothering to hide her irritation from Nikolai.

“He’s been through a lot tonight,” she informed the large hockey player. “He can cry if he wants to.”

“It is not Russian way to cry so many tears.” He frowned down at Pavel. “I see Fedya did not teach you to be man in all things. This is something I will correct.”

What. The. Hell.

“Are you kidding me with this man BS?” she hissed at Nikolai. “He’s been through more in four days than most kids go through in a lifetime! You might want to cut him a little slack.”

Something ticked in Nikolai’s jaw, but to his credit he abandoned the subject of his eight-year-old nephew’s masculinity… in favor of the subject of her guardianship.

“This should not have happened. You did not keep him safe.”

Pavel stiffened inside Sam’s embrace and pulled away from her so he could address his uncle. “Mama was only trying to protect me. You can’t be mad at her.”

A new tension entered the air and Nikolai’s eyes turned to her. “Why he is calling you mama?” he asked.

Okay, and now she was embarrassed on top of feeling defensive.

“Because… Well, I’m not exactly sure, but it’s one of the things I definitely plan to address as we progress with his healing. You see I’ve been counseling Pavel in the aftermath of this traumatic event and—”

Nikolai cut her off with a dismissive sound. “You Americans and your therapy.”

Sam came to her feet then, no longer able to keep herself from fully confronting this asshole. “So what? You want him to stay traumatized?” she asked him.

“I want him to be safe!” Nikolai roared, coming toward her with his finger pointed down at the ground. “Do you know what could have happened to both of you if I not come here?”

“It’s not her fault, Uncle!” Pavel insisted, coming forward to get in between Sam and Nikolai. “Don’t yell at her!”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Sam said to Pavel, her heart beating faster as all the alternative scenarios of how this night could have ended unfolded inside her head. Both her and Pavel dead. No one to take care of Back Up. He was right. If he hadn’t come here…

An icy wind blew through their haphazard triangle and Sam shivered.

“Your uncle’s just upset. As anyone would be if…” she trailed off, trying and failing to come up with some kind of silver lining for the situation. “But it’s okay now.”

Sam must not have been very convincing, though, because Back Up pushed her face into Sam’s legs, as she often did when she sensed Sam was troubled and might need a cuddle session with her favorite bullie.