As Nick watched, Diana stilled. She hadn’t been expecting this.
He’d played this in his head a thousand times, always wondering how it would go down, how she would react in the end. Well, he was about to find out.
Despite all the planning, he didn’t know where to start, so he sat silent, waiting to hear what she already knew.
Her voice wasn’t tentative. “My father worked for Black and Associates. He worked years for them not knowing that it was a front for Kurev operations. When he found out, he tried to make it right. We think,” she gestured between herself and Will, “that he leaked something to the feds or . . . who knows? But Kolya found out and ordered the hit.”
The errors in her story were few, but they were major.
Nick turned to Will. “So you think that because you’re an accountant? Are you a real accountant?”
Will nodded back at him. The two of them had never really talked, but Nick had a deep well of appreciation for the other man and was grateful that Diana had found him. He didn’t say so yet and just waited for Will’s answer.
“I worked for Black and Associates, too. They killed my wife and daughter.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” No wonder the two of them had hooked up. The news made Nick question if Will’s wife had done what Diana’s mother had.
Somehow he hadn’t connected Will truly to the Kurevs. Nick had been so shocked to find out Diana and Will were the Christmas Killers and the Kurevs’ Grudge Ninja that he hadn’t put the other two and two together. It didn’t occur to him what tragedy must have happened to drive Will to that level of violence against the Kurev family.
Mostly Nick was grateful that Diana’s husband understood her, and he hoped Will could continue to do that.
Putting down the french fry he’d been playing with, he took a deep breath and started making corrections. “Your father worked for Black and Associates for thirteen years. He had a different job, with another company, for a short while before that, but just before your sister was born, he took the job there.”
She put her hand out, frowning, touching his arm. Nick felt the contact more than he should have; still he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d be willing to touch him when he was through. Her frown was concern enough. “How do you know all this?”
“I researched you. I told you, I came looking for you.”
Diana nodded at him, but her hand pulled back. He understood. It was certainly odd to have someone tell you more about your family than you yourself knew. The whole situation was strange, but he plowed ahead. He had to, or he didn’t know what he’d do. “Your father was a rising star. Long hours, lavish parties, big pay raises. The records I got my hands on indicate that he was promoted because he knew what he was doing—”
“That can’t be right. My father was a good man.” Diana interrupted.
“You know better.” Nick delivered it as softly—as sympathetically—as he could. “People aren’t always what they seem.” He held up his hand when she started to protest again. “And people can be good in one capacity and bad in another. You know this. You live it every day.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line, but she didn’t speak again. She simply sat, as though waiting for the next insult, the next hit. Nick looked to Will but saw nothing other than the face of a man wondering how to protect his wife when he didn’t know what was coming. Nick obliged them.
“Your father and mother knew Kolya personally. There are records of parties where they were all in attendance.” He waited a beat.
“That doesn’t mean they knew each other.”
“There’s actually a lot of evidence to the contrary, a lot to support that they knew each other well.” He sighed. Diana would not want to hear any of this. But it was better that he got to tell her. If she figured it out on her own, it would be a harsh slap. There was still a strong possibility she might never forgive him. He took a deep breath and delivered the first blow as gently as he could. “Your mother had an affair with Kolya.”
It was Will who responded to that one. Diana’s mouth moved without sound; she stared at him but couldn’t seem to form words.
“How would you even know that?” He demanded.
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” There was evidence he could produce right now, but it was better if they held all the pieces first. So as much as they waited for Nick, he waited for them. “Your father found out about it years later. I don’t know if the affair was ongoing or how long it lasted. I only have evidence that it happened. I don’t even know exactly how he figured it out, but I have an idea. Anyway, when your father found out his wife and his boss were . . . involved, he sabotaged the company. I’d love to believe it was noble, but it looks like good old-fashioned revenge.”
He stopped there, letting her absorb the painful information about both of her parents. Her face had hardened, and he could tell she was trying not to let it get to her. Her hard voice was a clear statement that she didn’t believe him. “What’s your evidence?”
“You.”
She jerked back, maybe starting to make the connections.
“You had a surgery about six months before the hit—that was less than a month before your father let all hell loose on the Kurev organization. Your blood type is AB, your mother is AB and your father is O.” They’d covered genetics basics in the requisite work to become a detective. Diana had aced the class. She couldn’t deny the facts.
He watched as she calculated out that her parents would produce children who were blood type A or B, but never AB or O. She frowned.
Nick hit again. “Kolya is type A.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She was in denial. Of course she was.
But Will wasn’t. Luckily, she didn’t look to her husband, or she would have seen what Nick saw: Will, deep in concentration, checking out his wife’s features. Nick pulled out pictures. He thought a mirror would be rude, but he placed a clear picture of Kolya’s face next to one of Diana. “You have his eyes. His coloring. The straight nose.”
“Those are all from my mother.”
“You don’t look like your father.” He didn’t rub it in, just tried to gently push her to accept what was in front of her. He added a picture of Roman Kurev. The youngest would easily be accepted as Diana’s brother if the two were ever seen on the street together. He didn’t add Kaspar’s lighter look or Ivan’s. Though Ivan looked almost as much like her as Roman did, Nick had already thought that one through and figured it was better not to feed the connection there. She had killed her own brother in a chance meeting.
“So I share some common features with two men who are related.”
“Diana, I was searching out Kolya’s illegitimate offspring. You know this. I’ve found twelve others. I found you. It’s the only reason you’re here in Georgia now; it’s why I went to Los Angeles in the first place.” He stopped for a moment while she blinked.
When confronted with more than a passing set of evidence, she had to stop and consider it. She was holding up well, but then again, from the sound of it, Diana had never done anything other than hold up well.
He tried one more thing. “I took a hair of yours. I’m sorry.” He really was. “I stole genetic material from you. But I wanted to be sure before I said anything.”
“You tested me against Kolya?” She blinked, seeming to grasp that not only had he tested her but also that he wouldn’t be telling her this if the results hadn’t confirmed everything.
“I tested you against Ivan.”
“So you haven’t been sitting on this for three years?” The first real emotion came out. He’d expected it but still hadn’t been prepared for the feelings her vehemence stirred up.
“I’ve been sitting on most of it for almost six years. I knew about Cynthia Beller a long time ago but finding Diana Kincaid was a bitch.” He smiled. “By then you were at UCLA, in criminal justice. It was perfect really. I thought I’d tell you sometime when it came up. I wasn’t going to let you move away and lose track and never tell you. We were working together more, and how do I tell you what I know and how I know it? It was a hard sell.”
“Still is.” She frowned at him. Then she started grasping at straws. “What if Ivan isn’t Kolya’s son?”
Forcing his shoulders to relax, Nick decided to let her throw what she could; he could deflect every shot, because the proof was on his side. In the end she wouldn’t be able to deny facts. “I suppose it’s possible. But the tests show that you and Ivan share a parent. What else could it be? Ivan and Wendy are too close in age to have it be your mother. Your father cuckolded Kolya and sired the boss’s middle son? He wasn’t working at the organization then; there’s no evidence to support that.”
“But there’s none against it.”
“Yes, there is.”
Both Will and Diana looked at him. Gray eyes, cold and reasoning, brown eyes, hot and disturbed.
“I tested you against both Ivan and . . . me.”
Will’s brain was working fast, faster than Diana’s, but she had emotion clogging the process.
Nick’s information was right, of that Will had no doubt. It was there in the shape of her eyes, the curve of her lips, her unending strength. These were not the traits of Claymore Beller; they were Kolya Kurev, alive in Diana.
What Will struggled with was himself.
How had he looked at her, lived with her, loved her these years and not have seen this?
Kolya’s face had been burned into all Will’s nightmares and all his waking thoughts long before he’d met Diana. How had he seen her that first time and not realized she was so connected to the man Will most wanted to hurt?
He was glad he had only found this out now. Not then.
He would never have fully trusted her had he known her genetics were at fault. Now he had no other option and no other experience but to trust her completely. As much as she may be Kolya’s daughter, she was her own woman, and Will could bet his life on that. He had before and he would continue to.
The irony of the situation had never escaped him; he’d always credited Kolya for bringing her to him. It was clear that in Will’s darkest hour—personally served up by one Kolya Kurev—the darkness had also inadvertently given him Diana. Will had never put it together that the man had not only figuratively but also literally created her.
“Diana.” He nudged her with his arm. He considered reaching out and holding her—it was what he would have done with Sam—but Diana wasn’t Sam. She didn’t need to be coddled or held; she probably just needed a small push. “Diana.” He whispered again. “I think he’s right.”
That earned him a grateful look from Stelian.
Diana, on the other hand, didn’t really respond. She blinked. She breathed. But she didn’t converse, didn’t look around. Will knew that she was checking through her past, searching for loopholes, evidence, something. She wasn’t finding anything to use against Nick’s argument.
It took another minute, the three of them sitting there, the two men looking at Diana, Diana examining her history. Will didn’t blame her and from the looks of it neither did Stelian. Her whole childhood was being turned upside down.
The man she blamed for the hit on her family was still responsible but in an entirely different way than she’d thought. The father she’d loved and thought of as a hero had fully participated in bringing about the murders. So had her mother. Aside from the two girls, no one had been innocent.
Her voice, when she found it, was little more than a rough whisper. “Is that why they left Wendy and me alive? Was that order part of the hit?”
“I don’t know.” Stelian seemed as sad as Diana did. “But I’m glad they did.”
Diana’s eyes snapped up, the detective having gotten through when Will couldn’t. She only nodded.
“While you’re thinking about how to deal with all the news, I’m going to give you more to think about: Kaspar, Ivan, and Roman Kurev are your brothers.”
“Half brothers.” She interrupted. Will was proud of her.
“Yes, your half brothers. As strongly genetically related to you as your sister Wendy was.”
And score, Will thought. But he wondered what game it was that Stelian trying to win.
“There are twelve others I’ve found. Five are dead. Three are incarcerated—”
“Twelve others?” Will put his hand out, as though to hold Diana back. “Twelve other whats?”
“Illegitimate offspring of Kolya Kurev.”
“Holy shit.” Will voiced it without thinking. “And that’s—”
“That’s just the ones I could find.” They’d spoken over each other. “Yes, there are probably more. The man was a philanderer in the worst way. Many of these children were born to women who were married at the time.”
“Ouch.” The thought like Diana flitted in and out of his brain.
Stelian looked back at Diana, who’d sat patiently through their little interchange. Will wondered if it helped her at all to not be part of the conversation for a minute. The tension in his own chest could only be a fraction of what she was feeling, if she was able to feel anything at all.
“And the others wanted nothing to do with me, with the Kurevs. One’s a teacher, another is a cop out in Vegas; you’d like him. They’re your siblings, too, as much as the Kurev boys.” The man finally took a breath. “Yulia Churkin is your cousin, too, although she appears not to know it.”
This time he reached out and took her hand while Will watched, but Will didn’t protest. Anything that got Diana through this was good, but he did add in his own comment. “That explains what you told me about Shvernik using her as a fake hostage and the officers thinking it was you. She’s an actual relation of yours.”
Then he let Nick speak.
“And me. I’m your brother. You’re my sister.”
Finally, Diana took an interest in the conversation again. From her expression, Will could tell that she hadn’t put that piece into play yet.
He nudged her again. “Diana, you have a brother. You have family other than me, someone who knows what and who you really are, and who’s here for you.”
Will had felt her jealousy when he talked about seeing Todd in Indiana. Now she had a brother of her own, someone she was already linked to.
She blinked. “Of course, you came out to LA to find me. You were finding other Kurevs.”
“Yes. You’re the only one who came. The only connection that turned out well.” He sighed. Maybe he’d been waiting for a hug? A smile? A thank you? “I didn’t do the genetic testing until Ivan’s body came through. It was the first time that I had Kurev DNA to check myself against. I had always entertained the small possibility that my mother was just full of shit. But then I threw in a hair from you, too. Tested the three of us. We share a father.”
Diana nodded. Looked out into the parking lot. It seemed she’d almost shut down. One part of Will wanted to shake her to get her to see what this really meant. Another part of him understood and thought she was taking it really well. He might just kill himself if he found out he was Kolya’s kid. He didn’t want to upset whatever fine edge she was balanced on.
But this may be the last time they saw Stelian for a while. It was past time to leave. He didn’t think they were in trouble yet, but anyone tracking Stelian would be led to them, too. If Churkin was looking for one of them she’d think she’d hit the jackpot when she saw all three here together like sitting ducks. He touched Diana’s elbow and stood up. “We have to go.”
Turning, she made eye contact with him, a small smile twisted her lips. “You’re right. We’ve been here too long.”
It was as though none of what she’d been told made it through.
“Diana.” He leaned over and whispered. Another nudge.
She looked to Stelian. “Thank you.” She picked up the basket of food she’d stopped eating a good while ago. She turned to the trash can and stuffed her napkin and the remainder of the barbeque down into the barrel.
Will hazarded a look back at the other man. Stelian just looked confused and resigned. He’d wanted a sister. Will knew when Diana came around she would wish she’d been more together right now. He also knew they had developed another tie. Diana was the one with roots. Not him. And she’d just grown a doozy.
Trying one last time, he touched her hand. “Diana. He’s your brother. And we’re leaving. I have no idea when or if we’ll see him again.”
Her breath sucked in; he knew that action. The thoughts had come together. At last she turned back to Nick. She didn’t speak, just stepped over to where he stood, too and put her arms around him in a hug the other man didn’t see coming. She whispered something and then turned to Will and, passing him, headed to the car.
Reaching out, Will shook the other man’s hand—his brother-in-law’s hand. He didn’t know exactly where they stood on many things. But the man had taken Diana into consideration when delivering what could have been devastating news. For that, Will was thankful.
Then he was getting in the car, turning the key, and pulling out of the parking lot. He turned to Diana, “Missouri?”
She nodded.
Nick drove aimlessly. Everything he needed was in the trunk of his car. He’d left town, exactly what he’d been told not to do. The news about Diana was delivered and he was at loose ends.
It hadn’t gone exactly as he’d hoped—even given the fact that his hopes had altered over the past several years. But it had gone better than he’d been prepared for. Now that it was done, he knew he should head back, hook up with the FBI guys and act like he was at least trying to cooperate with the investigation.
For a moment he considered that when he got back there he’d see Reese.
Then he remembered and the cold edges seeped back into his heart. It felt as if he was being crushed; still for some reason he kept breathing. In the past weeks Reese had come to understand him, all of him, the real him—and then she’d been taken from him—by that psycho family that was somehow his own.
The Kurevs had turned out to be so far the opposite of what he’d hoped.
He’d been looking for allies. He found enemies.
He’d been looking for brothers. He found men who tracked his own sister into his own territory and had not given a courtesy notice that they were in his space. They had started moving their own business into his area in an attempt to push him out.
Nick had taken over from Bun and found an untenable set of circumstances. His big changes, his big bang, would have to wait. The best he could do was hold steady in his own land.
He smashed his fist into the steering wheel. Everything was fucked up.
That hug from Diana was probably the best that it could have been, but it fell far short of what he needed. He needed a sister. He needed Reese. Had she lived and rejected him, he still would have felt a thousand times better than he currently did.
Turning the wheel, he decided he had to head for home, but the fact was, he was envious of Diana and Will right now. They had each other; they had freedom; they had no ties but their own desire to set things right.
Nick had none of that. He had responsibilities the size of a city. He had a job to cover to keep his sorry ass out of jail. And, brothers or not, he was taking down the Kurevs. He’d had enough of this shit.
His freeway crossed another and the cloverleaf offered him a more direct route home. Turning into the sharp curve, he took it.
That was when he realized he was being followed.