The Mafia King of Philadelphia: From witness to his doted wife

”Tell me, dear.” He tilted his head and studied her face. ”Do you remember it now? The biometric trust fund?”

Sienna did not move. She kept her face still, but her mind sharpened like a knife on a stone. The word hung in the air between them. She had heard about the trust fund only a few hours ago, in a locked room, from her mother’s own mouth. The Don wanted it. Only Helena could open it. She thought of her own eyes in the mirror, and her pulse, and something cold touched the back of her neck. She pushed the thought away. Not now.

”Compared to that fund,” Kalisto went on, ”the whole Ivanou fortune is nothing. A little pocket money. You know this, of course.” He let out a gentle laugh. ”Well. You knew it. Now that your memories are coming back, I wonder.”

He took a small step closer.

”I want to know when you will sign it over to Konstantin. It would be for the family, you see. It would benefit everyone. And that money could help your daughter a great deal.” His eyes slid, just for a heartbeat, to Sienna’s face, and slid away. ”I am only saying.”

He said it lightly. He said it like a friend giving advice.

But he was watching Helena’s face with his whole body. His eyes moved from her mouth to her brow to the tiny muscle beside her eye, reading every line as if it were a page.

He would find nothing. Helena had been reading men like him for twenty years. ”Yes,” she said brightly. ”My memory is coming back.”

She lifted her glass and took a small sip.

”It has been a long process. The doctors say some of it may never return.” She sighed, soft and sad, and put a hand over her heart. ”Some days I wake up, and I cannot remember what year it is. Isn’t that terrible?”

”Terrible,” Kalisto agreed.

”But a trust fund?” She frowned and tilted her head, innocent as a child. ”No. I do not think so. I am sure you misheard.”

Behind her, Viktor’s hand moved an inch toward his side, then stopped.

”You see, if that were true,” Helena went on, in her gentle, puzzled voice, ”my husband would have made sure that I did remember it. Just as he has helped me remember everything else. The house. My rings. Even my own wedding day.” She smiled up at him, wide-eyed. ”He has been so patient. He would not leave out something so important. Would he?”

It was perfect. It was so perfect that for a moment Sienna almost believed it herself.

She had wrapped Kalisto’s question around the Don’s neck. If the fund was real, and if it mattered, why had the husband not told her? Why had he not guided her memory there, as he had everywhere else? The only way to answer was to accuse Konstantin of hiding it, and Kalisto could not do that in the middle of the Don’s own party.

The old man’s smile did not move. But a faint line deepened between his eyebrows. ”Of course,” he said softly. ”Of course. I must have misheard.”

”Well,” Helena said. She turned her head, looking past his shoulder toward the head of the table. ”I should go to my husband. It seems he is looking for me.”

Sienna looked. She could not see the Don anywhere near. But Helena spoke as if she had seen him wave, and no one could say she had not. ”Please excuse me, Kalisto. It was so lovely to talk.”

She reached out and took Sienna’s hand. She squeezed it, once, hard, and held on. Her fingers were ice cold. Her smile was warm and bright, and nobody watching would have seen the way her thumb pressed against Sienna’s knuckle. Stay. Be careful. I mean it.

Then she let go, and she walked away across the marble floor in her pale gown, with her head high and her steps unhurried. She did not look back. The crowd opened and closed around her like water.

Kalisto did not watch her go. He turned his head slowly and looked at Sienna.

It was a long look. The kind-old-friend face had slipped from his features, and what was under it was patient and cold. He studied her from the crown to the white hem of her gown, and then back up to her face. He was not looking at a woman. He was looking at the thing he had waited twenty years to see.

Sienna did not look away.

She kept her chin level and her eyes steady. She gave him the same blank, quiet stare she had learned in a hundred hard rooms. Behind her ribs, her heart was beating wildly and unevenly, and she held it down with all the strength she had left.

Look, then, she thought. See what you can see. His gaze moved to Viktor.

Viktor stood half a step in front of her, with his shoulders squared and his hands loose. His face was calm. His eyes were not. The two men looked at each other, and neither blinked, and the air between them seemed to tighten like a wire.

Then, slowly, Kalisto nodded.

It was a very small nod. It was not a greeting, it was a nod one gives when he has finished counting and has reached a total.

He turned.

His cane tapped on the marble as he walked away toward the long table. The crowd made room for him. The sound faded into the music and the voices, and a moment later the purple suit was gone among the dark ones.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Sienna let out a breath. She had not known she was holding it. Her fingers were trembling, so she folded her arms and hid her hands under her elbows.

”He knew,” she said very quietly. ”Yes,” said Viktor.

”About the fund.” She turned her head slightly. ”Helena said only the Don knew. Kalisto should not have had that word.”

”No.”

”Or he is working with the Don.” Viktor’s jaw tightened. His eyes moved slowly across the hall, over the guests and the guards and the flickering candles.

”The night could not get any more dangerous,” he said. The band began a new song. Somewhere a woman laughed. Across the room, Don Konstantin stood at the head of the table with Helena at his side, listening to a guest and smiling as if nothing in the world were wrong.

Sienna looked at the east door. A guard stood beside it, bored and straight.