Chapter Seventeen
It looked like an old, wooden schoolhouse, something quaint you might find on a tour of Vermont. Skinny, golden brown boards stood vertically, with only a few small windows in a horizontal line resting beneath a pitched, red-shingled roof. The church was unremarkable, not like the grand cathedral in Rome where I met Allen Cross, and nothing like I could picture catching the modern eye of Randolph Urban or any of my parents. This building was charming and rustic, but with one prime advantage—it was isolated.
There were no homes around it, no cars parked nearby. Aside from the drunk clowns at the bottom of the hill, I didn’t see any people. I exited my armored vehicle.
“I’ll be waiting right here,” my driver repeated, leaving the car idling as he parked only feet from the entrance.
I approached the wooden door with wrought iron fittings, no glass to offer even the slightest peek inside, and instantly my phone vibrated.
I yanked it from my pocket. It read:
Whoever wrote it clearly knew I had arrived. I glanced absently around me, seeing nothing but birds but knowing someone could see me. An uneasy twinge crept up my spine. There was nothing I could do. I agreed to come here, and I agreed to follow the rules. My driver might be armed, but he had to wait outside. I had to do as I was instructed. So I tugged the black iron handle to the church doors and stepped inside.
It was nothing like I expected.
Despite its modest, cabin-in-the-woods exterior, the inside of the church was as ornate as any I’d ever seen (and I’d seen a lot). It was separated into two parts—the immediate entry where I stood featured a modest rustic motif. But beyond a set of glass-paneled doors was a lavish chapel with white marble floors, colorful frescoes, and a gaudy, gold chandelier. There were several ornate statues, and vibrant arrangements of spring flowers that matched the stained glass windows.
It was like a one-room wooden schoolhouse with a Harvard complex.
A buzzing phone rang out, the sound not emerging from my pocket. I swung my head to the right, toward the back pew where I was instructed to look. I darted over, sliding my fingers underneath the bench until I felt a hard object. I pried it free from blue painter’s tape, which made me smirk—as if whomever was ruining my life still cared enough about the gentle preservation of historic sites to use nondamaging tape.
The text read:
I stared at the phone in my hand. It was the only way Charlotte had to track me, but it was also likely how my anonymous messenger tracked me as well. Without another thought, I did what I had to do. I dumped it into the collection bin and exited the church, my heart slamming against my ribs.
The white Fiat was idling right where it was supposed to be, with a middle-aged driver in a wool hat staring straight ahead. He never looked my way, not when I approached the vehicle, not when I opened the door, and not when I sat inside.
“Where are we going? Who are you?” I asked, my voice breathless though I’d only taken a few steps.
He didn’t answer, instead he hit the gas and the car skidded away.
We only drove for about fifteen minutes, back in the direction I’d come. There was only one main road traveling in and out of the small town—if you consider a one-lane country road a key thoroughfare. It was easy to recognize we were passing the same trees, farmhouses, and hopping bunnies, which meant we were headed in the same direction as Krakow. Maybe we’d pass Charlotte and Julian en route? Maybe I could get their attention?
I stared at each passing car, willing Julian’s vehicle to be the next around the curve, only before I knew it, the Fiat slowed. It turned into a driveway.
A black iron gate with stone pedestals surrounded a massive property on a hill. I wasn’t sure how I’d missed it earlier. Maybe I was too busy looking at the farms in the other direction, but this house looked nothing like its neighbors. It belonged in Beverly Hills. A dramatic pillared entrance dominated the front, giving a regal new-money vibe, but its red-shingled roof was as traditional as the rest of the homes in Poland.
If I had any doubt who was sending me the text messages, it ended now.
Only one person would live in a monstrosity like this while surrounded by modest country folk.
Randolph Urban.
The gate slowly opened, but the driver didn’t move. Instead, he swung his head my way, looking at me for the first time since I entered his vehicle.
“Goodbye,” he said in English, with a thick Polish accent.
“You’re not going in?” I had tentatively hoped I wasn’t alone. Even this stranger by my side was better than no one when it came to approaching that door.
“Goodbye,” he repeated, as if this might be the only word he knew in the language.
I closed my eyes and exhaled, opening the car door like a dead girl walking.
When I stepped out, I realized it was warmer than before. The sun had heated up, and any trace of snow had dissolved. The sky was pure blue with only a few puffy, white clouds, nothing like the rainy, gray Easter of yesterday. Maybe that was a good sign? Maybe the sun was shining on me?
The Fiat peeled into reverse, swerving out of the driveway and back onto the street. It was in a hurry to leave.
I stared at the house, its windows tinted, its scale ostentatious in the sparse countryside. My pulse raced, sweat soaking my shirt despite the crisp Polish air.
I was really doing this. Alone. Again.
A static screech ripped out of a speaker beside me, rattling me as I spun toward the noise. A small cough sounded, someone clearing his voice, but it was not the voice of my father—at least not the father who raised me.
“Well, are you coming in?” he asked as if he’d been impatiently awaiting my arrival.
Randolph Urban.
There was no turning back now.
I marched up the driveway, the iron gate mechanically closing the moment I stepped through. I stared back at it—it wouldn’t be hard to climb, but still, I was boxed in. I was on his turf. No one knew where I was.
The front door swung open, and there he stood. His white hair shot up in puffs, his button-down shirt was rolled to the elbows, and a large grin covered his face, like he had enjoyed a wonderful night’s sleep. He was holding a pot of tea.
“Chamomile?” he asked as I approached the wood doors (larger than the church doors I had just exited). “Or I could make coffee? I have something on the stove, so please, come in.”
He ushered me inside. “The place is a little bare. I don’t get to spend much time here.”
I stepped into an entry larger than any apartment I had lived in with my family. The floors were a gleaming light wood and the walls a sunny yellow. Light beamed from floor-to-ceiling windows, with only sheer white curtains to soften the glare. The ceilings were high enough to hold two stories, and all the walls showcased modern works of art consistent with Urban’s tastes.
“Won’t the authorities look for you here?” I asked, wondering how any property of his could go undetected.
“No worries. This house has no ties to me, not officially at least.” He guided me toward the kitchen, where an omelet sizzled in a pan, green peppers showing through. A row of cooked sausages sat on a paper-towel-lined plate on the counter, next to freshly cut fruit.
“Do you like cheese in your omelet?” he asked, lifting a spatula. “I have cheddar, is that all right?”
“No, thanks, I’m not hungry,” I replied, but my stomach growled loud enough for him to hear.
“Nonsense. Tomatoes?” He lifted a small bowl hand-painted in the classic blue and white Polish motif. Without waiting, he swept a handful of diced tomatoes into the pan.
I was standing in front of Randolph Urban…my father…and he was cooking me lunch.
“Please, sit.” He gestured to a black and white checkered stool at the granite counter. He wanted me to watch him cook, like a little girl might watch her parent every day, year after year, in a normal life. Only I wasn’t his little girl and this wasn’t normal.
I didn’t sit.
“We’re alone, and I’m unarmed.” He stopped moving his spatula, looking at me. “I just want to talk, and I imagine so do you. Now, sit. Eat.”
He reminded me of Regina’s mother, pressuring Marcus and me to choke down her food as she accused us of kidnapping her daughter. He sounded like a parent. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I moved. I sat. The smoke sizzling from his pan the only thing between us.
“Why am I here? What do you want?” I kept my voice firm. I was not going to let an omelet change anything.
“I already said, I’d like to talk.” He scooped a finished omelet onto a hand-painted floral plate and set it in front of me. “I appreciate you following my directions. I had to make sure you weren’t followed.”
“Just like Allen Cross,” I said, remembering Rome.
“How is Allen?” he asked, though I had a feeling he already knew.
“I haven’t spoken to him in a while.” I wasn’t sure how much to give away.
“Well, dead men don’t say much.” He handed me a silver fork. “Before it gets cold.” He nodded to the food.
Did he really think I was going to eat over talk of dead bodies? I stared at my plate, wondering if there was arsenic mixed with the salt and pepper.
As if hearing my thoughts, Urban turned off the stove and placed his own omelet in front of where he stood. “Anastasia, you’re safe here. I give you my word.”
“Do you really think that means anything to me?”
He sighed, looking disappointed, but more in himself than in me. He took a big bite of his food, as if proving it wasn’t contaminated. “That’s why you’re here,” he said as he chewed. “We have a lot to clear up. I’d like to see no one else get hurt.”
“Great, then please stop killing people.”
“I’d say your parents are the ones leaving the body trail.” He swallowed.
“You kidnapped my sister.” The words spurted like they’d been resting on my tongue for months, waiting to pounce.
“Yes.” He placed his fork on the granite with a clink. “I did, and for that I apologize. Deeply.”
I didn’t expect a confession so easily. I didn’t expect one at all, actually, so I didn’t trust it.
“I regret what I put you and your sister through,” he continued. “My actions were rash.”
Oh, really? Okay, then! No hard feelings…
“You didn’t step on my foot, you took my sister from our home and let me fish through her blood.”
He placed his hands on the granite, his wrinkled fingers spread wide as he breathed deep. He was collecting his words. “I was working on incomplete information at the time. I knew your parents were alive. I had just learned they’d faked their deaths, and I wanted to find them. But you and your sister didn’t deserve to get hurt in the process.”
I shook my head. He didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to act like he made a mistake and it was all over now.
I leaned toward him, looking him square in the eyes to make sure there was no confusion. “You can not apologize for a kidnapping. There are no words to fix this. You knocked my sister unconscious and let strange men carry her around the world. You shoved her into the trunk of a car, chained her to a sink, and took pictures of her. She has PTSD. She thinks flight attendants are trying to kill her and they might very well be, because she receives an alarming number of death threats per day. You did this to us. You started this. You let me believe she was dead and let me fight an assassin to rescue her.”
“I would have reacted differently had I known you are my daughter. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”
“Nothing,” I stood up, angrily tossing my hands. “It means absolutely nothing. You were going to strap a suicide vest on my sister and send her into a soccer stadium. So you could kill my parents and God knows how many people! You can’t apologize for that!”
Urban grunted like I was a melodramatic teenager. “That plan with the bomb was a ruse, a way to misdirect the authorities, lead them in the wrong direction. It was never real. You have to know that.”
“My parents thought it was real.” I remembered what they said in Rio, that Urban was trying to kill them.
“No, they didn’t. They just told you that to make you hate me and it worked. Trust me, your parents didn’t believe that plan for a second.”
I chewed my lip, brow furrowed. Of course, I wanted to believe my sister was never in danger of being blown into confetti, but I also didn’t want to believe my parents lied to me, again, about my sister being a bomb. Was I really supposed to take Urban’s word for anything?
“Anastasia.” He clasped his hands and nodded to the stool, wanting me to sit once more.
I did. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe my brain was too exhausted to stand and think at the same time. Or maybe I wanted to hear what he had to say. I rested in the seat.
“I think it’s time for you to hear a long-overdue story. About your mother and me, about what we meant to each other and how you came to be. You need to know the truth.”
He was a man who built a career on disinformation and now he was promising me the truth. I knew it was a ludicrous proposition, but I couldn’t shake the look in his eyes, the intensity. I couldn’t remember the man who raised me ever looking at me this way. Or my own mother even. They barely showed a speck of kindness when we reunited in Rio—but Urban, the look he was showing me now was completely new.
It was…paternal. Protective. Concerned.
I gulped, my eyes shooting toward my omelet. It was easier to stare at eggs than his face. “Tell me everything.”
Urban handed me my fork again. “Of course. If you do me a favor and eat. You look thin. Please. Let me have lunch with my daughter.”
I told myself I was doing it only to hear what he had to say. I told myself there was nothing more to it.
But still, I picked up my fork. Then we ate. Together.