At thirteen he had left the orphanage and had done what he had to to survive on the streets. At seventeen he had been given a chance—shelter, access to a computer, to a different path. Discarding his birth name, he had followed that path with a vision—and that vision included revenge.
As rumours had escalated that Levander had been raised in Detsky Dom, of course the House of Kolovsky had rapidly developed a social conscience, raising great sums for orphanages and street children.
Zakahr had been doing it since his first pay cheque.
And so he had made contact—attending a charity ball Nina had organised as guest speaker, telling the glamorous audience the true hell of his upbringing and his life on the streets. Nina had been sipping on champagne as she had unwittingly met her son.
‘It’s not just a gown.’
Lavinia dragged him from his thoughts. She was still in full flood, Zakahr realised. She’d probably been talking for five minutes and he hadn’t heard a word!
‘It’s the experience, it’s working out the exact colour scheme, it’s watching how she walks, her figure, her personality—that’s why she has to come to us. For the next few days the Princess will be the sole focus of our designers. Every detail has to be sorted out while she’s here. The team will be in regular contact afterwards, of course—and then a week before the wedding our team will fly to her and take care of everything. Hair, make-up—the works. All the Princess will have to do is smile on the day.’
‘And how many weddings?’ Zakahr asked. ‘How often do we have to do this?’
‘Once, sometimes twice a month,’ Lavinia said, and then, when she saw his face tighten, it was Lavinia who couldn’t resist. ‘And what with it coming in to spring in Europe we’re exceptionally busy now. You’ll be doing this a lot.’
‘Great,’ he muttered. Talking weddings was so not Zakahr.
They sat in silence, and the car was so lovely and warm, and she was just so, so tired, that Lavinia leant back in the sumptuous leather. She wasn’t at her desk now, so she did what she would have done had it been any of her old bosses there, and closed her eyes.
Even if she wasn’t quite what Zakahr was used to, he begrudgingly admired her complete lack of pretence. Rather more privately, after another sleepless night, he felt like doing the same, but instead he took the opportunity for closer inspection.
She really was astonishingly pretty—or was attractive the word? Zakahr couldn’t decide. Her jacket was hanging up, her arms lay long and loose by her sides, she had wriggled out of her stilettos, and sat with her knees together and her slender calves splayed like a young colt. Though there was so much on his mind, Zakahr wanted a moment’s distraction—and she was rather intriguing. He actually wanted to know more about her.
‘How long have you worked for Kolovsky?’
‘A couple of years,’ Lavinia said with her eyes still closed. ‘I did a bit of modelling for them, but I had an extra olive in my salad one day and Nina said I would be better suited in the office.’ She opened one eye. ‘I’m aesthetically pleasing, apparently, but I’m just not thin enough to model the gowns.’
She was tiny! Well, average height. But her waist could be spanned by his hand, her legs were long and slender, her clavicles two jagged lines. Zakahr, who trusted his personal shopper to sort out his own immaculate wardrobe, realised he knew very little about the industry he had taken on.
‘What did you do before that?’ Zakahr asked her once more closed eyes.
‘Modelling—though nothing as tasteful as Kolovsky. It wasn’t my proudest period.’
Zakahr didn’t say anything.
Lavinia just shrugged. ‘It paid the rent.’
It had more than paid the rent.
Hauled out of school by her raging mother one afternoon, the sixteen-year-old Lavinia had become the breadwinner. She had wanted to finish school, had been bright enough to go university—and though she hadn’t known what she wanted to be at the time, she had known what she didn’t want!
Lavinia had also been bright enough to quickly realise that her mother had no need to know just how many tips she was making.
For two years she had squirrelled away cash in her bedroom.
At eighteen she had opened a bank account and started studying part-time.
At twenty-two, six months after starting work at the House of Kolovsky, and with the requisite employment history, she had marched into her bank, taken her money and bought her very small home.
A home she now wanted to share with Rachael.
Just the thought of her sister alone, with a stranger getting her ready for kindergarten this morning, had Lavinia jolting awake. Her eyes opened in brief panic and she looked straight into the dark pools of Zakahr’s gaze—a dark, assessing gaze that did not cause awkwardness. He didn’t pretend he hadn’t been watching her sleep, he did not use words, and somehow his solid presence brought comfort.
‘Rest,’ Zakahr said finally.
Only now she couldn’t. Now she was terribly aware of him, felt a need to fill the silence. But he was staring out of the window, his expression unreadable, and Lavinia was filled with a sudden urge to tell him she knew who he was, to drop the pretence and find out the truth.
The drive took a good thirty minutes, and was one Zakahr had made a few times in the past months as he had slowly infiltrated Kolovsky. Each time he’d left Australia his heart had blackened a touch further at realising just how lavishly his family had lived all these years while leaving him to fend for himself.
‘It’s just coming up…’
Zakahr frowned as Lavinia interrupted his dark thoughts.
‘Where Aleksi’s accident happened…’
There wasn’t much to show for it—the tree that had crumpled his car simply wore a large pale scar—but it did move Zakahr.
A troubled Aleksi had been trying to halt Zakahr in leaving after his speech at the charity ball, unsure as to his own motives, not even realising that the businessman he was dealing with was actually his brother. Something had propelled him to race to the airport in the middle of the night with near fatal consequences. Though little moved Zakahr, Aleksi’s plight had. At seven years old Aleksi had uncovered the fact that he had not just one but two brothers in Russia, and he had confronted his father with the truth. Ivan had beaten him badly enough to ensure that it was forgotten. Only the truth had slowly been revealed.
Out of all of them, Aleksi was the only Kolovsky he had any time for.
‘Have you known him long?’ Lavinia fished, but Zakahr didn’t answer. ‘I was surprised Iosef wasn’t his best man…’ Lavinia tried harder ‘ … given they’re twins.’
He was, Lavinia decided, the most impossible man—completely at ease with silence, with not explaining himself. He didn’t even attempt an evasive answer—he just refused any sort of response.
‘Five
