CAROL MARINELLI - The Last Kolovsky Playboy

Even the gulls taunted him with the name.

A brother whose existence he had denied.

A brother he had chosen to forget.

There was no end to his shame, and his leg wouldn’t let him outrun it.

Sprint over, he was spent, and glad to be exhausted. Maybe now he could get some rest.

The nurse had his pills waiting when he returned to the lavish chalet, but he refused them. He drank instead a cocktail of vitamins and fresh juice and headed for his bedroom.

‘I’m going to rest.’

‘Would you like me to come in?’ She smiled. ‘To check on you?’

He growled out a refusal of her kind offer—could he not just recover? Could he not have some peace?

He lay on the silk sheets, the fan cooling his warm skin, yet his blood felt frozen.

The pain did not scare him—it was the damage to his mind. He had passed every test, had convinced the doctors that he was fine—could at times almost convince himself that he was—but there was a blur of memories, conversations that he could not recall, images that he could not summon, knowledge that lay buried.

The phone buzzed.

He went to turn it off.

Tired, he needed to rest.

And then he saw her name.

Kate.

Aleksi hesitated before answering. Kate was one of the reasons he was in the West Indies recovering—he had grown accustomed to her by his bedside, looked forward rather too much to her visits in the hospital and started to rely on her just a little too heavily. And Aleksi had long since chosen to rely on no-one.

‘What?’ His voice was curt.

‘You said to tell you if…’

Her voice came to him over the phone from halfway around the world. He could hear that she was nervous and he didn’t blame her. Nina would go berserk if she found out that Kate was calling. Aleksi was not to be disturbed with mundane work matters—except Aleksi had told Kate that he wanted to be disturbed.

‘Tell me what, Kate?’ Aleksi said. He could picture her round, kind face, and was quite sure that she was blushing. Kate blushed a lot—she was a large girl, surrounded by whip-thin models. The House of Kolovsky was a bitchy place to work at the best of times, and at the worst of times it was a snake pit—right now it was the worst of times. ‘Remember, no matter what my mother says, your loyalty is to me—you are my PA.’

She had been his PA for over a year now. He had cajoled her into taking the position when yet another PA of his had been so stupid as to confuse sex with love. Safe in the knowledge that he would never cross the line with an overweight single mum, he had contacted her. Georgie was now nearly five years old and at school, and Kate was even bigger than before—no, there was absolutely no question of his fancying her.

‘Your brother Levander…’ Kate stammered. ‘You know he and Millie were looking to adopt an orphan…?’

‘And?’

‘They went to Russia last week; they met him—their new son…’

Aleksi closed his eyes; he had feared this day would come sooner than was convenient. Levander had run the House of Kolovsky head branch in Australia. He had been sensible, and on their father’s death a couple of years ago he had got out. Now he worked in London, taking over Aleksi’s old role, while Aleksi had taken over the running of Kolovsky—effectively a swap. Levander had only returned to Australia while Aleksi recuperated.

‘I’ve heard Nina talking; she is going to run it…’

‘Run what?’

‘House of Kolovsky.’ Kate gulped. ‘She has these ideas…’

‘Levander would never—’ Aleksi started, but then again Levander now would. Since he had met Millie, since they had had Sashar, his priorities had shifted. Money had never been Levander’s god. Raised in Detsky Dom, an orphanage in Russia, he had no real allegiance to the Kolovskys—Nina wasn’t his mother, and with Ivan dead Aleksi knew that Levander’s priorities were with his own family now—his new family, one that wanted to save a child from the hell Levander had endured.

‘She has told Levander not to tell you,’ Kate explained. ‘That no one is to disturb you with this—that you need this time to heal.’

‘The board will not pass it.’

‘Nina has new plans, ideas that will generate a lot of money…’

She had stopped stammering now. Despite her shyness at times, Kate was an articulate, intelligent woman, which was why he had bent over backwards to get her on staff. She was different from all the others. Her only interest at work was work —which she did very capably, so she could earn the money to single-handedly raise her daughter.

‘She will convince the board, and she has ideas that they like.’

‘Ideas?’ Aleksi snorted.

‘She makes them sound attractive,’ Kate said. ‘I sat in on a meeting last week. She put forward a proposal from Zakahr Belenki…’

Despite the warmth of the room Aleksi felt his blood chill. ‘What sort of proposal?’

‘One that will benefit both Kolovsky and Belenki’s charity,’ Kate said. ‘They are talking of a new range—bridal dresses in the Krasavitsa outlets with a percentage of profit…’

Aleksi didn’t hear much more. He was aware of his racing heart, as if he were pounding his battered body through the ocean this very minute, except he was lying perfectly still on the bed. The Krasavitsa offshoot of the Kolovsky business was his baby—his idea, his domain. But it wasn’t just that Nina was considering tampering with his baby that had Aleksi’s heart hammering like this.

What was the problem with Belenki?

His mind, though Aleksi had denied it both to his family and to the doctors, was damaged.

Thoughts, images, and memories were a mere stretch from his grasp. He could remember the charity ball just before his accident—Belenki had flown in from Europe and had been the guest speaker, that much he remembered. And he remembered the fear he had felt at the time too. Iosef had had harsh words with him—for his poor behaviour at the ball, for talking through the speeches, which, yes, he had. Zakahr Belenki had been talking about his life in Detsky Dom, how he had chosen to live instead on the streets, about what he had done to survive there.

It had been easier to have another drink that night than to hear Zakahr’s message. Levander had never really spoken of his years there, and part of Aleksi didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear how his half-brother had suffered so.

‘Has Belenki been back to Australia?’

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘But he has been talking daily with Nina. They are coming up with new ideas all the time.’

Why, Aleksi begged himself, did that name strike fear inside him?

He tried to pull up the man’s image—yet, like so much else in his mind, it was a blur…as if it had been pixilated…like the many other shadowy areas in his mind that he must allow no one else to know about.

‘Nina will run the House of Kolovsky into the ground—she cannot run it,’ he declared.

‘Who else is there?’

‘Me,’ Aleksi ground out. ‘I will be back at my desk on Monday.’

‘Aleksi!’ Kate’s voice was exasperated. ‘I didn’t ring for that; I just rang because you made me promise to keep you informed. It’s way too soon for you to return. Look…’

She lowered her voice and he could just picture her leaning forward, picture her finger toying with a curl of her hair as she tried to come up with a solution, and despite the direness of the situation the image made him smile. The sound of her voice soothed him, and it moved him too, in the way it sometimes did—never more so than now.

‘I can ring you every day…’

He stared down at the sudden, unexpected passionate reaction of his body and did not answer.