“My thoughts exactly,” Freya said. “Not sure if you’re bugged, but a tracker is almost a certainty. You need to ditch the car. I’ve arranged for you to pick up a clean one at the bus terminal just outside the main Valletta gate.”

The bus terminal was smart. The Kuliks would waste time checking cameras to see what bus they’d taken of the dozens that passed through every hour. To Rand, Kira said, “We’re catching a bus. Head to the Valletta terminal.”

“What do you think they’re after at this point?”

The question was directed at both Freya and Rand, but only Freya could answer without being overheard. “You, Kira. Luka wants his daughter back. Reuben probably wants you to disappear again, but this time never to return.”

She thought of the little boy who watched his mother and sister disappear and was stuck in a rowboat for hours, crying. That had to have changed him. Her heart ached for the brother who’d died right along with her that day.

Both their lives were forever distorted, through no fault of their own.

She spoke the words that had been nagging at her from the moment she understood that Luka Kulik was her father. “Fr—” She cut herself off, realizing she shouldn’t say Freya’s name aloud. She switched from Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica. “Frak. I’m three years older than Luka Kulik’s dead daughter.”

Freya let out a short laugh. “You aren’t the first person to call me that.” Then her voice sobered. “And that’s what threw me off too. Why I never considered the possibility. Luka Kulik’s wife’s married name was Alesya Ivanova Kulika. The daughter’s name wasn’t listed in the references I was able to find—she—you went missing and were presumed dead before internet usage was even possible for most people, and there weren’t any news reports of missing persons at the time. All I could find was Reuben Lukovich Kulik’s account that his mother and sister went into the water and never surfaced. They were too far out to have survived an underwater swim without scuba. They were presumed dead and likely it was determined their bodies had washed out to sea.”

Kira searched her memory for that moment in her life that changed everything. She thought she remembered water, panic, but then…nothing.

When she was a child, she’d been afraid to swim. Her father—Conrad—had forced her to learn, taking her screaming and crying self to the public pool and forcing her to get into the water and let go of the wall. Over time, her fear was conquered. Every time they had a swim lesson, she was given Neapolitan ice cream. Her favorite as a child because she could never choose just one flavor.

She swiped at a tear as Freya continued. “It wasn’t until today, when I searched on the name Kira Lukovna Kulika that I found you.”

It was damned convenient that Russian patronymic nomenclature embedded the father’s name in the child’s name. Still, Kira felt the blood drain from her face at hearing her real name for the very first time.

Weren’t there superstitions about saying the names of the dead? What if it was your own?

“I’m sorry,” Freya whispered. “I didn’t look into the dead wife and daughter because there seemed to be no question they were deceased. I fucked up. And yes, you don’t match the missing girl because it appears your parents added three years to your age, probably to hide you from Kulik, should he search for Alesya and Kira. Between your mother’s name being changed to Anna Hanson, your obscured age, and the fact that Conrad Hanson managed to conceal his wife and daughter from his Maltese contacts for thirty-plus years, you stayed hidden. Luka Kulik had no idea you were alive and well in the United States. He probably never even looked for you.”

“But then my face was all over international news last December.”

“And you look so much like your mother…”

It was easy to fill in the blanks from there.

Rand placed a hand on her knee as she sobbed silently, unable to say out loud the emotions that swirled through her. It would take at least thirty minutes—probably longer—to get to their new car where she could speak freely. For now, all she could do was listen as her oldest friend—the only person who’d known her when she’d been an awkward, insecure twelve-year-old—told her that the reason she’d been so terrible at socializing with her peers was because when Freya had been twelve, outgoing, and popular, Kira had been all of nine, with matching maturity, and thrust into the same social group.

“I suppose it’s my fault, really. I begged Mom and Dad to send me to school. Mom didn’t want me to go. She’d been homeschooling me and doing a damn good job, considering I was far ahead of my biological age in my studies. At least in the curriculum, I could keep up.”

“You were brilliant, Kira. We all knew it. And you were shy and sweet.” She paused, then added, “I know it doesn’t feel like this right now, considering what you went through in school, but I believe your parents were trying to protect you.”

“My mother was having an affair with Conrad. She was trying to protect herself.” Her tone was bitter.

“That may be so, but Luka is a dangerous man and very, very powerful. There’s a reason Reuben has a good shot at a minister position in the next government, and it’s not because Luka is kind and generous and respected by his peers. He is feared by them. When the president wants someone gone, but doesn’t want the taint, he whispers to Luka, and it’s taken care of.

“On paper, Luka has just enough distance from the current president to not have his assets seized in the recent round of sanctions against Russian oligarchs, but only just. And Reuben is shortening that distance, not widening it.”

“If my parents were protecting me, why leave her son behind?”

“I can only speculate there, but in all probability, he was too old to forget his father. And no way would Luka lose his only son without draining the Mediterranean to try to find him.”

Kira placed a hand over her mouth to silence her sobs. Her brother had been sacrificed, left with a cold, dangerous man, only to become one himself.

She thought of her mother’s lifelong sadness and the empty cradle in the portrait that hid in the basement. Her mother had loved her son, but still, she’d abandoned him in an act of selfishness while saving her daughter.

“I’ve—I’ve got to go.” She hit the End button and set the phone on the center console, curled into a ball, and silently sobbed while Rand stroked her back with one hand and steered the car down the Maltese highway with the other.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

There was nothing Rand wanted more than to pull over and hold Kira, but the longer they were in this car, the more dangerous their situation would become. So he drove. And drove. One hand on Kira, one hand on the wheel, until the streets grew busier as they neared Valletta, and he needed both hands to weave through a sea of erratic drivers.

Losing just that small physical contact was disappointing, but she was no longer crying. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead as she took slow, deep breaths.

This was how she centered herself. He’d seen it before. He wondered if it was something she learned in childhood, when her world changed in an instant, and she later was thrust into social situations she wasn’t ready for.

His grip tightened on the steering wheel as he thought about what she’d told him yesterday about Apollo. He’d been twenty to her seventeen, except now they both knew she’d only been fourteen. It wasn’t Apollo’s fault, and it wasn’t hers. They’d both believed she was old enough to make that choice, but she wasn’t.

No wonder it had left such lasting scars.

Part of him wanted to strangle Conrad Hanson, but he knew the man must have been equally horrified when he saw Kira’s grief for Apollo and realized what had happened.

There was no one to blame but Conrad and Anna, who hadn’t envisioned what Kira would go through when they made the decision to hide her true age when she was only four years old.

His very first meeting with Kira, he’d been surprised by her age, but still, she looked young for thirty-six. He’d thought she was in her late twenties.

But she was close to his age. He’d turned thirty-six in March. Kira’s birthday was supposed to be in August, but it was likely even the month of her birth had been changed. Whenever it was, would she turn thirty-six or thirty-seven?

Freya would probably have that information by now, but they wouldn’t call her until they were at the apartment. And Rand had other, more important calls to make first.

Finally, they reached the massive bus terminal. Rand found a parking spot on the nearby street and walked with purpose toward the main terminal with the lines of buses that pulled into numbered slots in front of a row of food vendors.

“Food?” he asked.

“I don’t think I could eat.”

“How about a gelato?” He squeezed her hand. “Strawberry?”

She paused, pulling him to a stop. She turned and rose on her toes and kissed him. Brief and soft. “I really like you, Randall Fallon.”

He wrapped an arm around her back and lifted her to kiss her longer and deeper. Then he set her down and said, “I think you’re amazing, Kira Hanson.”

He used her American name on purpose. That’s who she was, no matter what she’d learned today. But if she wanted to reject that name…well, at some point, he’d offer her another one.

A wave of cold air hit Kira’s face as she stepped into the apartment. Relief washed through her. Grateful for the air-conditioning and privacy, she wanted to curl in a ball and cry or, better yet, sit in front of a fan and make noises as the blades whirled, the spinning vane distorting the sounds as the fan blew air in her face. It was what she’d done as a child when she was hot and out of sorts.

Weird that she’d remember that coping mechanism now. But then, given what she’d just learned, maybe not. She was going to need every coping mechanism she’d ever developed.