His to Take (Wicked Lovers #9)(51)
Author: Shayla Black

“Thanks.” Bailey gathered her courage. During her sleepless hours last night, one fact had occurred to her, and she was dying to question Callie. “I actually wanted to ask you more about the Aslanovs. I don’t remember anything. I apparently understand Russian and their faces all looked familiar, but . . . the memories just aren’t there.”

“You were young. And if you were in the house when they died, as everyone suspects, it was traumatic. Others might wish you could remember, but I know why you can’t. It’s asking a lot of a little girl.”

Bailey nodded, relieved again by Callie’s compassion. “What were they like, my biological family? Did you know them?”

Regret crossed her kind, oval face. “I never met Viktor’s wife and children. I really only saw him a handful of times, the last being when I was about ten. I remember his thick accent. I remember . . .” She smiled. “His bushy mustache and beard. He joked with my sister and me once that he was in training to be the next Santa Claus when his hair went white. Everyone said he was brilliant, even my dad—and he wasn’t a man prone to throwing that word around lightly.”

The man Callie described just didn’t sound anything like the scientist who performed such unethical experiments as to alter human genetics. “I don’t know what kind of man he was.”

Callie shrugged. “I don’t think he tried to discover all those genetic anomalies, at least according to the notes my father left behind, which he based on your father’s research before he burned it. I think he really did set out to try to find the genes that caused cancer and stop them from eating away at people. I don’t think he meant to exploit anyone or anything. He needed money, and with three small children . . .”

In order to feed her and her siblings, her father had elected to do something unethical and sell his accidental discoveries to homegrown terrorists.

“Do you know if he understood the kind of people he was dealing with?”

“I don’t know if he did at first. Eventually, he figured it out. According to my father’s notes, he was terrified of them. At one point, he pleaded with my father to lend him some money.” Callie shrugged. “I’ve often wondered if Dad regretted refusing him when he heard about your family’s deaths. Or when they broke into my house and killed mine.”

“You have to believe he did. Just like I have to believe that mine wished he’d made different decisions. But we’ll never know for sure.”

“We won’t, but I’ve consoled myself with the idea that things happen for a reason. I couldn’t figure out at the time what possible purpose their murder could serve. But maybe it was part of fate’s larger scheme to keep DNA-changing information from the hands of people who would abuse it. And I know that if my life had turned out differently that I would never have met Thorpe and Sean.”

True. Bailey chewed on her lip. What different path had losing her biological family served in her life? She’d grown up in Houston, not rural Indiana. She had been raised an only child, and it saddened her to think that she could have otherwise had siblings. Maybe her biological parents would have raised her to appreciate her Russian heritage. Would she have had dance in her life? All good questions with no answers. One thing she knew for sure: If the rest of the Aslanovs had lived, she would never have met Joaquin.

Why did that idea disturb her?

“Thanks. I appreciate you sharing what you know.”

“My pleasure. Why don’t you eat your breakfast and change. I’ll give you some privacy.”

Bailey really didn’t want Callie to go, but with a wedding in a few days, she couldn’t expect a busy bride to hang out with her. But she still had one question she wished she didn’t. “Have you seen Joaquin?”

“Yes, just before I came in. He was heading behind closed doors with Thorpe and Sean for what looked to be a heavy conversation.”

She wanted to ask how he looked or if he seemed upset, then she realized how junior high that sounded. The truth was, she’d panicked when he’d touched her because she had liked it too much and she hadn’t had the guts to admit it. She had let him blurt out apologies and leave, thinking the worst. But what else could she have said to him? Please, Guy I Barely Know, spank me hard?

“Thanks.”

Callie nodded. “I’ll check in with you later.”

As soon as the woman left, Bailey meandered into the bathroom to change her clothes and brush her hair. She kind of wished that Joaquin had brought her flat iron along when he’d taken her from her house, but alas, he probably hadn’t given her beauty regimen a single thought. Trying to work with her natural waves wasn’t something she did happily or often, and she made a mental note to ask Callie about some sort of hot implement in the future.