Close Up: Exposure Book Three (13 page)

I still knew that his past was despicable. There was no other word for it. But he took that experience and turned it into something beautiful. Because of him and his company, our earth was that much closer to being less dependent upon oil. It was going to take a long, long time, but, sometime in the future, events like that oil spill would be a thing of the past. And Asher’s company would be a large part of that revolution. Plus, Asher indicated that his company was working on ways to clean up oil spills in a more efficient way. That was another wonderful thing that his company might do for society.

I had to get past it. I
wanted
to get past it. And I was going to get past it.

I called Asher and he picked up on the first ring. “CJ, I was just thinking about you.”

“I’m coming home, Asher, and I’m coming home for real.”

“I don’t understand. You want to go home?”

“No. You’re my home. Wherever you are is home. I’m leaving on the next train, and I’m ready to meet your father. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to make sure that you and I are together for the rest of our lives.”

Asher started to laugh, and he said “oh, thank God. Thank God. I’m staying at the Waldorf Hilton. I’ll meet you at the train station.”

At that, I packed up my things, hailed a cab and left for the train station.

I was finally going home.

And I couldn’t be happier.

W
hen I arrived back
in London, and Asher met me at the train station, he had open arms and roses. He wrapped his strong arms around me, and I just sobbed. I had so many emotions that were held behind a dam, and they all just came through during that moment. “Oh, Asher, I’m sorry I doubted you. I know how much you love me, and how much I love you now. I remembered, Asher. At least my subconscious does. I had dreams last night, Asher, and everything just became so much more clear for me. I don’t want to ever doubt you again.”

“I won’t ever give you a reason to doubt me again. Everything is behind us now, and we can concentrate on our future.”

He had tears in his eyes when I said that. “Thank God,” he whispered into my ear. His deep voice made me tremble, and I wrapped my arms around him even tighter.

Asher had rented a car there, an electric Aston Martin. “This is a prototype,” he said, as we got behind the wheel. “I know a private dealer here, and he’s letting me borrow this car for a fee.”

“A fee?” I said. I could just imagine how much that fee was, but I let it go. I loved that Asher at least tried to walk the walk with his cars, even if he did spend a lot of time in New York riding around in gas-hogging limousines.

“Yes, a fee,” he said, “although it’s not as much as you might think. The guy who has lent me this car is an old friend of mine.”

“A friend,” I said. “He’s….family?”

“No,” he said. “He’s not with the mafia. I do have friends who aren’t in the mafia, you know. Quite a few, in fact.”

“I know that. I think that I even remembered meeting one of them at that party where Sophie threw me under the bus.”

He gave me a look. “You really are remembering things, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I think that the memories were always locked up in my brain somewhere, and I don’t know what happened, but they were unlocked all at once while I slept last night. It’s so weird, but it’s coming back to me. I need to see my doctor when I get back to the states to see if my brain is healing enough for all my memories to come back.” I paused and squeezed his hand. “At any rate, I did remember how I felt about you, which was very strongly. I felt strongly for you right from the start, and that all came back to me.”

“I’m so happy about that, you just cannot imagine.”

“I know.” Then I took a deep breath. “So, I’m more nervous than ever in meeting your father. It seems like the stakes couldn’t be higher. If he doesn’t approve of me, which seems like a likely scenario, what is Plan B?”

Asher shook his head. “The only Plan B would be if you were carrying my child. That would mean a lot to my father. He has always wanted a grandchild, and, at his heart, he’s pretty old-fashioned in that way. He believes that a child should have a mother and father at home, so he wouldn’t stand in our way if we decided to get married because of that.”

I took a deep breath. I needed to ask him about something else, something that was weighing heavily on my mind. “Asher, I have to ask you. What happens with our child? Will he or she get sucked into your father’s world? Will they be safe from all of that? That really concerns me, because look at what happened with you and your sister. You guys both got trapped into doing horrible things for your father’s group. Is he going to press our children into that too?”

“No. Believe it or not, he doesn’t really want his family to get caught up in all of that. The only reason why I worked for him was because I wanted to. I didn’t have a choice, I felt, and that’s why I did it. My sister, too. She didn’t have much choice, either, when she got caught up in it. I will say, though, that once you’re in, you’re in. He doesn’t want family members getting involved in the first place. So, he’ll leave our children alone. Which isn’t to say that he won’t want to be a grandfather.”

My heart started to sink again. I wasn’t even thinking about this angle – that a despicable man was going to be the grandfather to our children. Even if the children aren’t pressed into service, which would be my biggest fear, they still would have somebody like Asher’s father in their lives.

I got quiet, and Asher took my hand. “It’s going to be okay, CJ. I know that it’s going to be difficult for you to have my father in our lives, but, if it makes it any easier for you, I can tell you that he has meddled very little in my business or my life after I got to America. I don’t see him changing, really. He’s very occupied with his business, and he doesn’t have time to micromanage me.”

“I know. I just am scared, that’s all. It’s a lot to take in, to process. I wish that things were different, but, then again, if your father wasn’t who he was, then…”

“I’d be a nobody and would be working in a slaughterhouse right now. Not that I’m judging men who have to do that sort of thing, but…”

I nodded my head. “All that good that you’ve done for the world wouldn’t have happened.” I took another deep breath. “So, I guess I have to have faith, huh? I have to hope and pray that you’re right, and your father won’t try to meddle in our children’s lives and, God forbid, get them involved in the underworld.”

I shook my head, trying hard to keep my resolve. I did love this guy, but it all seemed so damned complicated. “Asher, we need to re-think this whole thing. I don’t think that my getting pregnant is the best idea right now. In fact, I’m starting to think that my getting pregnant might not be a good idea, ever. I need to be convinced that your father really will leave our family alone. I want to be with you, don’t get me wrong. But to bring a child into this mess….” I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s the best idea in the whole world.”

Of course, that all depended on one thing – that I wasn’t pregnant already. I had, thus far, not taken a pregnancy test, so that was unclear. I silently cursed myself for being sucked into all of that, and cursed Asher for trying to get me pregnant without asking me first. But I did know why he did it that way. He wanted an insurance policy, and I could understand that. His father might not ever approve of me otherwise.

Asher looked stricken. “CJ, I know what you’re saying. I get your misgivings. But you have to understand one thing – the odds are very much against this whole thing working out unless there is a child involved.”

“You’re holding back on me again,” I said. “Out with it.”

He sighed. “I Face-timed him yesterday after I got into Heathrow. Things didn’t go well during our conversation.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that he pretty much put a kibosh on even meeting you. Don’t get me wrong, I had spoken with him before about this meeting, and he seemed to be open to it. But yesterday, he had already changed his mind.”

“Crap. Let me guess….”

He nodded his head. “Yes. Sophie apparently called him to tell him that she’s having my child.”

Sophie again. Would that woman ever fade into the background? It reminded me that Asher’s father wasn’t the only person who was going to stand in the way of our happiness. Sophie was also going to be a part of that, too. She, too, was going to stand in the way of Asher and I getting what we wanted from each other.

I felt tears coming to my eyes. No matter how hard I tried, things just weren’t working out. Things might never work out.

I very quietly said “Asher, I love you. But it just seems like there is too much against this. Sophie seems to perpetually stand in our way.”

“Don’t give up on this,” he said. “Please don’t give up on this. Don’t give up on us.”

“I came back here, Asher, 100% committed to seeing this through. But what can I do? There’s yet another roadblock, and I feel powerless. She wins.”

“No she doesn’t. She doesn’t win unless you let her win. I’ll take care of my father on my end. Things are going to work out. You’ll see.”

I sighed and looked out the window.
I really wish that I could believe you Asher. I really do.

As much as I really wanted to believe him, though, I couldn’t.

I just couldn’t.

I
was sitting
next to CJ, and my heart was breaking. Because Sophie had me by the balls, just like she said.
Check mate, Asher,
she had said. I hated her, and I hated myself for ever letting things get this far. I was turning regrets around in my mind, over and over, wanting to go back in time and do things differently.

If I had to do it all again, I never would have broken up with CJ. I would have gotten her over to London to meet my father right away. That way she never would have been abducted, and Sophie never would have been able to blackmail the way that she was. And Sophie wouldn’t have an alternative father for her child, and that would have meant that she would have been in danger. That would have been a bonus, I thought wryly.

But I was increasingly seeing no way out for CJ and me. My father had made it clear when I spoke with him – I was to marry Sophie and make her child legitimate. I wanted, so badly, to tell him the truth about all of it. To tell him that I haven’t slept with Sophie in many years, and that she was turning the screws because she needed somebody to accept paternity for her child. If Viktor Kazakov’s wife found out that Viktor fathered her child, that would be it for Sophie.

I would have told him the truth, except that I didn’t trust Sophie at all. My father loved Sophie. Sometimes I thought that he loved her more than he loved me. As such, if she told my father that I was the father of her child, and I told him differently, he most likely would have believed her over me. And that would have put CJ in danger.

I was going to have to take a risk here. There was no other way. Unfortunately, the penalty for this risk going south would be CJ’s life, not mine.

I had two options at my disposal. One was to tell the truth to Viktor’s wife, Oksana, and hope that Sophie would get rubbed out by Oksana’s father before Sophie could get to CJ. That, unfortunately, was way too risky and too much depended upon what Oksana was going to do once she found out. And Sophie was quick on her feet, too quick. It would take a matter of minutes to get another hit put on CJ’s head, a hit that she wouldn’t survive.

I couldn’t protect CJ if there was a hit put on her head. I had zero pull in the underworld. I had no power. My father had all the power, and my father would never intervene unless CJ was my wife. If there was a hit put on CJ, the most that I could do would be to try to negotiate with some of the more powerful members of the underworld in New York City or London and that would inevitably involve me getting more entrenched with these groups than I wanted to. Even that would be merely buying time. I could buy her way out of the problem for a little while, but even money goes so far. Again, though, it would be only buying time. And either of those options would involve me getting involved with the actions of the organizations, and I swore that I would never go back to that.

No, I couldn’t put her in danger like that. Not until I married her and she would be absolutely protected.

Which brought me to my other option. I could tell my father the truth about Sophie’s child, and hope that my father believed me. If he believed me, then that still didn’t mean that he would approve of my marriage to CJ. What it did mean was that he wouldn’t pressure me into marrying Sophie. It also would mean that he would at least consider approving my marriage to CJ. As it stood right at the moment, my father refused to even consider it. He was absolutely adamant that I was going to marry Sophie.

I felt like I was sinking in quicksand.

CJ wasn’t saying anything. I could just imagine what was going through her mind. I felt awful for bringing her here. My father initially told me that he wanted to meet her, which is why I made the decision to bring her. Of course, once Sophie got ahold of him, it all changed, and it was now looking like this trip was going to be for naught.

I took a deep breath. “CJ, let me work on my father.”

“How are you going to work on him, Asher? How? You really messed things up when you slept with that skank.” Then she said something under her breath.

“What was that you just said?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. You said something just now. Out with it.”

“I said that you’re a goddamned idiot. I was starting to get over this whole Sophie thing, and now, here it is, brought up into our face once again. Now what, Asher? What if I’m pregnant with your child? What then? You’re going to be married to Sophie, that’s what. You really didn’t think any of this through, did you, Asher? Did you?”

I finally just took a breath and decided to take at least one risk. I was going to tell CJ the truth about Sophie and me. I had to trust that her knowing the truth would never get back to Sophie. I had to go on from there, and then, once CJ at least knew the truth, she could possibly help me find a solution out of this mess.

I drove to a spot in the country where CJ and I could get out and take our clothes off. In this case, it was necessary, because I could never trust that Sophie didn’t plant one or both of us with some kind of listening device on our clothes. It was also necessary that we did this in a spot that wasn’t in the hotel room, for the same reason. I couldn’t be too careful.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“We’re going to a spot where nobody can see us. And then we’re going to get naked.”

She shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for that right now, Asher, sorry.”

I just looked at her. I didn’t want to say anything that might tip off Sophie if she was listening for some reason.

“Asher, I said….”

“I heard you.”

“So? You’re still going to drive out to the country and get naked with me?”

“Yes.”

She crossed her arms and said nothing for the rest of the trip.

W
e arrived
at a spot that was way out of the way of anything and anyone. Then I said to CJ “get out of the car.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I regretted telling her what I wanted to do. I should have just taken her out to the country, and then asked her to get naked. She was going to be a handful.

“CJ, I’m not going to ask again. Get out of the car.”

“Fuck off.”

At that, I unbuckled her seat belt and picked her up. She was light as a feather, even though she was beating my back with her fists. “Put me down, Asher, right this very second. I don’t want to have sex with you right now.”

I said nothing, but continued just to carry her out, further and further into the woods. She howled, screamed and cried the whole time, but I kept going.

I got to a spot, and ordered her to take off her clothes.

“No. What, are you just going to rape me, Asher? Is that what it’s come to? You disgust me.”

I shook my head, and pulled off her shirt, pants and underwear while she kicked and fought like a wildcat. “Stop, Asher, just stop. Get off of me.”

I wordlessly took off her shoes and socks, and then I rapidly took off my own clothes. It was difficult for me to undress, as I had to have at least one hand firmly on her wrist, and that was very hard for me to do, as she continued to desperately fight me. “Asher, I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this. I told you no, and…” And then she started to hysterically cry.

I eventually got all my clothes off, and I picked her up again and took her further into the woods. She kicked and fought the entire time, and I was happy that she was so small and I was able to overpower her so much. I had to get her about a mile away from the clothes, because I didn’t know of any device that would be able to detect conversations that were more than mile away. There were some very powerful devices that could detect conversation that was less than a mile, though.

I laborously carried her for about a half hour, with her fighting me the entire way. “Stop, Asher, put me down. Put me down this very second. Stop.”

Finally, I got to a point where I felt safe and put her down. She immediately started to scream in my ear. Her fists were clenched and her face was the color of a beet. Tears were rapidly streaming down her face, and she started to hit me over and over and over again.

I stood there and took it, and then, when she finally collapsed in a pile of leaves, her face in her hands, I sat down next to her. “Are you calmed down, CJ?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Asher. If I tell you that I’m not in the mood, then I’m not in the mood, goddammit.”

“CJ, I don’t want to have sex with you. I mean, I do, but not right now. I have something very important I need to tell you.”

She was breathing hard, but she gradually calmed down. “What? Why did you bring me clear out here, naked, to tell me something?”

“Because I don’t trust Sophie. I don’t trust her to not have put a microscopic listening device in our clothes. I need to tell you the truth about Sophie’s child, and she can’t ever know that you know the truth. If she finds out, then you’re literally going to be dead. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you until now. But you need to know.”

She looked at me quizzically, but she nodded her head wordlessly.

“Okay. Sophie was behind your abduction. You already know this. But what you don’t know is that she blackmailed me into agreeing to accept paternity for her child. She knew where you were, and I didn’t, and she told me that she would tell me where you were if I agreed to say that her unborn child is mine.”

“I don’t understand. Why was that important?”

“Two reasons. One, of course, is that she knew that if you thought I was having a baby with her that it would drive a huge wedge between us. Which it did, of course.”

CJ nodded her head. Her breathing was now normal, and her face was no longer flushed. “Okay. Mission accomplished there. What other reason did she have for you doing that?”

“The actual father is a man named Viktor Kazakov. He’s married to a woman named Oksana. Oksana’s father is a man by the name of Vasily Grinkov. Vasily is to the underworld in America what my father is to the underworld in Russia – extremely powerful. Oksana knows that Viktor and Sophie have been having an affair, and, thus far, she doesn’t seem to care. However, if Sophie has Viktor’s child…”

“What would happen to Sophie if Oksana knew the truth?”

“Vasily will have Sophie killed, plain and simple. It’s one thing to have an affair, it’s quite another to produce a child from that affair. So, I agreed to be Sophie’s alibi for her child. Sophie had me by the balls, so she told me that nobody is to ever know the truth about the child. And that would include you, of course. So, that’s why we’re out here in the woods. That was the only way that I could tell you the truth safely.”

She nodded her head. “Wow. Okay.” Then she smiled. “Thanks for finally telling me that, Asher.”

“I felt it was time. But CJ, you can never, ever and I mean ever, tell anybody that you know this. But what I need for you to do would be to help me brainstorm this with my father. He needs to know the truth, but that’s a huge risk, too. One false move and you not only won’t be protected by my father, but you’re going to be in extreme danger.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, then, let’s do this.” Then smiled shyly. “But Asher, we’re naked, so maybe we should take advantage of that.”

I smiled back. “I thought you would never ask.”