Close Up: Exposure Book Three Read online

  “Sophie,” I said. “You might have ties to some powerful figures here in the states. But I don’t think that I need to remind you of who my father is. How powerful his syndicate is. It is one of the most powerful in the world. You mess with CJ anymore, and…”

  “And what? Your father doesn’t know CJ, and you know as well as I do that he won’t protect her.”

  “He will if I marry her.”

  Sophie started to laugh about that. “And how, pray tell, is that going to happen? CJ will never trust you because you allegedly fathered a child with me. And your father will never give his blessing for a marriage between you and CJ because CJ isn’t Russian Orthodox. I am, of course. I don’t practice it, and I haven’t for a long time, but I was baptized in that church and I’ve taken communion.”

  She sat back and crossed her arms in front of her. “Check-mate.”

  “My father told me that he wanted me to marry someone who is Russian Orthodox when I was 18. It’s entirely possible that he has dropped this requirement. It’s not like he and I have been exactly close since I’ve moved here.”

  “What, you think that’s something that’s negotiable?”

  “With him, yes. He’s not exactly a pillar of the church, and he knows that I’m not, either. It would be an absolute sham requirement for his blessing, and he knows it.”

  “Does he know it? You’re making some assumptions that probably aren’t warranted.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with Sophie. I knew that. She told me the truth, which is what I needed to hear. How it was going to impact my relationship with CJ, I didn’t know. Sophie was right on one thing, though. If I admitted to CJ that I didn’t really sleep with Sophie at all, she probably wouldn’t believe me. And, if I told her exactly why I lied to her about that, then I would be breaching my agreement with Sophie, which could put her in further danger.

  “Well, I think that we’re done here,” I said. I was anxious to get the ball rolling. Somehow convince CJ to marry me, even though there was a “baby” on the way with Sophie. It seemed an impossible task, but I had to at least try.

  Sophie cocked her beautiful head and regarded me from behind her martini glass. “We’ll never be done, Asher. In the end, you’re going to end up with me.”

  “Sophie, you’re insane. I don’t know how many different ways I can tell you that I’m not interested in you. And I never will be. Get that through your head. Now, whether or not CJ and I can get past this mess is something that remains to be seen. I’m not going to give up on her, though, that much I can tell you. But if something happens to her and me, and we don’t stay together, then it doesn’t mean that you and I will be together. Because that will never, ever happen.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said. “Asher, I get you. I know you. I know everything about you. What you’ve done, where you’ve been. I accept that part of you. She never will. She can’t, because she wasn’t there. It’s all something esoteric to her and abstract. She doesn’t know how many people you’ve killed.”

  I looked around the restaurant, and then started speaking Russian to her. I hoped that there was nobody around who would understand the language, and I doubted that there was. Indeed, the bar was quiet, as it was pre-rush.

  “I only killed men in self-defense,” I said to her in Russian. “You know that.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” she said in English. “You keep telling yourself that. Because that’s bullshit and you know that’s bullshit.”

  My heart was racing. I hated to think about that part of my life. The year that I was a soldier, which meant that I needed to defend my father’s business. If men were caught spying on the organization, then it was automatically a death sentence for them. It was a part of my job description, the same as a soldier in a war. That’s really the only reason why I would have done such things.

  Still speaking Russian, I said “you know the reasons why I killed those men. It was either them or me, too, because if I would have allowed them to live, then I would have been killed myself. You know this.”

  “I don’t know this, Asher,” she said, still speaking English. “All that I know is that it’s something that’s in your past and is a part of you. It’s why you went to prison, which, I’m sure, she doesn’t know. She obviously has no idea what that rose means on your chest.”

  No, she didn’t know that a rose meant that I came of age in prison. I knew this, although I was surprised that she didn’t try to research it. It would have been easy enough to find this out.

  “What are you trying to say to me?” I asked her in English.

  “It’s just that I’m sure that you sugar-coated what you did for your father’s organization. Let me guess…you told her that you just stole money from large banks. Am I correct about this? You made yourself out to be some kind of Robin Hood who never got down in the muck with the men you surrounded yourself with, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “That’s none of your business what I told her.”

  “I thought so.” Then she smiled. “So, Asher, she doesn’t know the real dirty things about your past. She has no idea that you murdered people, and she has no clue that you spent time in prison. I’ll bet that she doesn’t even know the real reason why you were allowed to come to America. Does she?”

  Things were getting too close. I felt a sense of suffocation, and I remembered, anew, why I never let a woman get close to me. I always had a feeling that, once my past came to life, I would lose the woman anyhow, so why bother?

  CJ changed all of that, and I had no idea exactly why. All that I knew was that I finally allowed myself to take a chance on love. As complicated as my past was, I felt that it was time to integrate her into my present.

  But Sophie was exactly right. I didn’t tell CJ the pertinent details of my past. I did sugar-coat my involvement with the mafia, exactly as Sophie was accusing me of doing. I couldn’t avoid that fact, as much as I really wanted to.

  Would CJ accept me if she found out? Could I protect her? Would my father agree to protect her?

  I suddenly realized that the fact that CJ thought that I was having a baby with another woman was the least of my worries.

  Then Sophie brought out the obvious trump card. “And Asher, you have to remember one thing. Your father loves me. He would approve of the two of us together. He will never, and I mean never, approve of CJ. He doesn’t know her, she’s American, and he won’t trust her. I think that you know this. And I think that you know that, in the end, you and I will be together, because your father will never approve of anybody else. That means that CJ, or any other woman that you want to be with, will never enjoy the protection that you have.”

  Her meaning was clear. I might as well just give up on any other woman except her because, otherwise, that woman’s life might be in danger just for associating with me.

  I hated her more in that moment than I had ever hated anybody.

  I despised her because I was afraid that what she was saying was true.

  Chapter Six

  CJ

  When I got home, I was exhausted. Seeing my family had exhausted me, and finding out all that I found out about my past exhausted me. And finding out that Asher was having a baby with another woman really was the last straw. I felt like I could lay down and fall asleep for one hundred years, just like Sleeping Beauty.

  Scarlett still wasn’t back, so I crawled into bed, and, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was zonked out.

  When I finally came to, it was around noon the next day. What day was it? It must have been Sunday. I didn’t know. Days were running together, and I felt like I couldn’t slow them down.

  If it was Sunday, then the next day was Monday, which meant that maybe I could go back to my work. I knew that Scarlett had called them for me while I was in the hospital, and had explained what had happened. I, myself, had called them, and they had told me to come back when I was ready.

  I didn’t necessarily know if I was ready, per se, but I di
d know that I needed something to take my mind off of what was going on with Asher, my family and Nathaniel. Going back to work sounded like the perfect distraction. Perhaps, in going about my daily business, my memory would just suddenly come back to me. Or perhaps I would see some kind of trigger that would help me regain what I had lost in my brain.

  Maybe I could even get the assignment that I was apparently working on before the abduction, which was a photo essay on the homeless population around the Port Authority. I couldn’t remember doing that, of course, but it sounded like something that I would really enjoy.

  I vowed to just show up at the offices of the Village Voice and see if they could put me right back on assignment.

  Just then, Scarlett finally returned home. “CJ,” she said, “I’m surprised that you’re here. I thought you would be with Asher on a beautiful Sunday such as this.”

  I went over to her and gave her a hug, and, to my surprise, I just started crying. “Oh, Scarlett, I’m so confused about my life right now. I need you to talk me off the ledge.”

  She was immediately concerned. “You know, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. But that’s actually fine. I mean, not fine, of course, but I had some flashes of memory when Asher told me what had happened. I remembered seeing Nathaniel somehow, and he communicated with me. He told me that he was happy, he forgave me, and he was waiting for me. He even told me that he could have all the cookies he wants,” I said with a smile. “So, I’ve come to terms with all of that.”

  Scarlett looked visibly relieved. “Oh, thank God. I was dreading telling you about that. I thought that you would have to start from square one again.”

  I then told Scarlett about the email from Emily and meeting her for a drink. Scarlett explained to me that I was in the mental hospital for six weeks after Sophie told me something at Asher’s house that made me finally seek help for my issues.

  We talked all that day about how I was during the period of time after Nathaniel’s death. About how I couldn’t leave the house, and how I had attempted suicide when it first happened. She filled in the gap on exactly how I met Asher, too, explaining that I had passed out on the sidewalk and ended up in Asher’s apartment.

  “Wow,” I finally said after Scarlett told me all of that. “I was really a basket case, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes,” she said sadly. “You were.” Then she put her arm around me. “But you’re better, and you not only beat your depression and phobia, but you’ve also beat being abducted. You’re strong, CJ, and you can get through this. With mine and Asher’s help.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, Asher might not be in the picture anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” Scarlett looked alarmed when I said that.

  “Well, Asher apparently impregnated his ex-girlfriend, Sophie, shortly after he and I broke up.” I shook my head. “It was the final straw, really. I got angry with Asher for holding back on me about Nathaniel and about the abduction, so when he told me about Sophie I just sort of lost it. I told him that I couldn’t trust him.” I chuckled lightly. “I left him in DC, and went straight to my mom’s house. I was talking with my sister on the porch when a Tesla rolled up. A Tesla! I knew right away who was driving it.”

  “Yes, I suppose that Asher would drive a car like a Tesla. It’s electric and high performance, so that totally makes sense. Why does that surprise you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was surprising because we have just ridden around in limos the whole time I’ve known him. I didn’t even know that he had a personal car.”

  “Of course he does. He’s a billionaire. I’m surprised that he doesn’t have a fleet of Teslas. Anyhow, that’s off the subject. Tell me what happened when Asher showed up at your mom’s.”

  “He totally butted in and got into it with my mom. She started speaking Italian, not knowing that Asher apparently speaks fluent Italian himself.” I started to laugh. “You should have seen her face when he started to speak to her in Italian. She was caught, and she didn’t like that one bit.”

  “Don’t you hate that? You get around English speaking people who know another language, and they start going into that other language, and you know it’s because they’re trying to talk about you without you knowing about it. But good for Asher in calling your mom on her bullshit.”

  “Oh, he did, and I loved him for doing that. But when I started to really think about it, I realized that he had been intrusive without asking me first if that was okay. And he didn’t respect my boundaries. So, I guess that he and I are on a break right now.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah. I mean, we didn’t say that we were broken up, but we got into a fight, he kicked me out of his apartment and here I am. I don’t necessarily think that we’re broken up right now, but, at the same time, I don’t necessarily think that we’re together, either.”

  Scarlett looked thoughtful. “I’m so sorry, CJ, but I’m just now reacting to the fact that Asher got with Sophie after you and he had broken up. That just seems so weird and random to me, and something about it isn’t sitting right. I just don’t understand why he would do something like that with a woman that he clearly hated.”

  I shrugged. “Happens all the time. Two people hate each other, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t like having sex with each other. Sounds like Asher was like that with Sophie.” I felt sad when I said that. “At any rate, it’s not the end of the world. It seems that the whole thing happened after he and I had broken up, so there’s that. And if there wasn’t a child that was going to come out of that whole thing, I might have forgiven him. He was free to do what he wanted to, after all, because he had no loyalties to me at the time.”

  Scarlett shook her head. “No, CJ, if he slept with her, then that’s probably something that you shouldn’t forgive, even if you and he were broken up at the time. But that just doesn’t sound right to me. I just don’t think that he would do something like that.”

  I felt confused. “Why do you have doubts about it?”

  “I just think that he’s not the type who would do something like that. Also, you’ve told me, time and again, how much he hates that woman. Of course, you don’t remember how he felt about Sophie, but I do. I mean, he hired you to get her off his back. Why would he sleep with her after all of that?”

  “Well, we’ll just have to see.”

  Scarlett was looking at me funny. “CJ, why are you so calm about all of this?”

  I sighed. “Because I’m in shock, I guess. I don’t know. It’s just too much to process, between all the revelations and the fight with my family. I’m so exhausted just thinking about it. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to go back to work. At least, I hope I am. I’m just going to show up at the magazine and hope that they take me back right away. I really need something to take my mind off of all this nonsense.”

  “That’s a good idea. I just hope that you don’t end up back on the streets with those homeless people.”

  “Why not? That sounds like its right up my alley, really.”

  “I just worry, that’s all. That’s where you were abducted, after all.”

  “Lightning won’t strike twice, will it?”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, CJ. I really hope that…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Scarlett, I love you for worrying. I really do. But sometimes you’re just a bit of a mother hen. Let’s face it, photojournalism isn’t always supposed to be safe and sanitary. It’s not like being a paralegal.”

  “I guess that’s true,” she said with a laugh. “I do have a safe job. I just don’t want to lose you again. I really thought that you were gone for good.” She shuddered. “I don’t know what I would have done in that case.”

  I smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  She shook her head. “That’s what they say in movies right before.” And then she sliced her hand acros
s her neck.

  “That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then, I’m going to go to work and never come back. I don’t think that people say that in movies.”

  She laughed. “You’re probably right. I am being a mother hen.”

  I laughed too, but there was a part of me that was afraid that what she was saying was true.

  Chapter Seven

  I went to my job the next day.

  “CJ,” a woman said. “It’s so good to see you.”

  I smiled. “Hello, uh…”

  She looked at me quizzically. “Candace,” she said, cocking her head. “You don’t…”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, but I was in an accident and I’ve lost a lot of my memory.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m so sorry, I heard that. We weren’t expecting you back so soon. We were supposed to have a meeting about that. About how to approach you.”

  “About how to approach me?”

  “Yes. I guess that some of the people weren’t sure how badly you were injured. There was talk that you might have a lot of problems when you came back.”

  “Well, I’m not really having a lot of problems necessarily. Except for the memory thing, I’m absolutely fine.”

  “That’s good. Do you need me to show me to your office?”

  “I’d love that. I suppose I need to talk to the editor about what I’m going to be doing, huh?”

  “Yes, Sally is in.”

  I nodded my head and just kind of stood there, looking at Candace dumbly.

  “Oh, you need to know where her office is, don’t you?”