The Devil Wears Kolovsky

Firing off e-mails, replying to e-mails, then resorting to repeating—not quite verbatim—Zakahr’s warning, she sent a final e-mail with the word ‘COMPULSORY’ in capitals, and a little red exclamation mark beside it—though she did wrangle from an unwilling Zakahr exclusion for Jasmine’s design team. Then she cleared the main function room of a group of sulky models and designers who were trying to prepare for a photoshoot for the sulkiest of them all—Rula, a stunning redhead who was to be the new Face of Kolovsky. Finally checking the PA system, Lavinia had done in an hour what it would take most a full day to achieve.

Not that Zakahr thanked her as she raced back to her office to collect her bag. He merely glanced up as he came in.

‘Everything’s in place.’ Lavinia spritzed her wrists with perfume. ‘I’ll be back before two.’

‘Back from where?’

‘Lunch!’ From his expression she might just as well have sworn. ‘I’m surely entitled to a lunch-break?’ In support of her argument, Catering wheeled in a sumptuous trolley of delights for Zakahr, but it did not appease him.

‘We will work through lunch,’ Zakahr said. ‘Come and eat with me.’

‘I really can’t,’ Lavinia said. ‘I’ve got an appointment. A doctor’s appointment.’ She ran a hand over her stomach and Zakahr pressed his lips together.

She knew every trick, he realized. Knew with just that fleeting gesture no man would pry into women’s business—and Lavinia was certainly that: a woman.

‘Sorry!’ Lavinia added.

She didn’t hang around for his reaction. Instead she darted out to the lift, just a little bit breathless at her lie—because if Zakahr knew where she was going on her lunch-break he’d do more than sack her. It was, she knew, the ultimate treachery. He’d go ballistic if he knew where she was heading.

But she couldn’t not go.

‘Hi, Nina.’

Nina didn’t look up—she was talking to herself in Russian—but Lavinia hugged her. Trying to keep the shock from her voice, she chatted away—except Lavinia was shocked. In a couple of days the other woman had surely aged a decade.

Nina had somehow got through her son’s wedding. On day leave from the plush psychiatric hospital, and sedated from strawberry-blonde head to immaculately shod feet, she had worn a smile and a fantastic Kolovsky dress, and with Lavinia’s help had managed to get through the service. But clearly the public effort had depleted her.

Her hair hung in rats’ tails, her nail polish was chipped, and there was no trace of make-up. The silk she usually wore was replaced by a hospital gown, and all Lavinia knew was that Nina—the real Nina—would absolutely hate to be seen like this.

‘I’m going to do your hair, Nina,’ Lavinia said, rummaging in her locker and finding some hair straighteners. ‘And then I’m going to do your nails.’

Nina made no response. She just sat talking in Russian as Lavinia smoothed out her hair. Only when Lavinia sat and worked on her nails did Nina speak in English—the questions, the statements, always in the same vein. ‘He hates me. Everyone hates me.’

‘I don’t hate you, Nina,’ Lavinia responded, as she always had since the day the news had hit.

A terrible day that was etched for ever in her mind.

Aleksi had returned from his accident to find Nina had taken over, and a terrible struggle for power had ensued. Nina had taken advice from Zakahr, who from afar had fed her ideas that would make huge profits but, as Aleksi had pointed out, would also cause Kolovsky’s demise.

Then Zakahr had swept in, and for Aleksi realisation had hit: the man toying with Nina was actually his brother.

Lavinia could still recall the moment Nina had found out that Zakahr was her son. She had held Nina as she’d collapsed to the floor while Aleksi had told her in no uncertain terms of what Riminic, the child she had abandoned, had endured in the orphanage, and then in graphic detail what the runaway teenager had gone through to survive on the streets.

‘They will never forgive me.’ Around and around Nina went.

‘Your family just need some time to process things,’ Lavinia said patiently. ‘Annika has been in to see you, and Aleksi has rung from his honeymoon. I know Levander has been in touch from the UK, and Iosef has been in to see you.’

‘They are all disgusted with me.’

Lavinia let out a breath and focussed on painting a middle nail. Sometimes she truly didn’t know what to say. ‘They need time,’ she said.

‘I had no choice,’ Nina pleaded, but Lavinia would not be manipulated. She was used to her mother’s ways, and in a lot of things Nina behaved the same.

‘There are always choices,’ Lavinia said. ‘Maybe you made the best decision you could at the time.’

‘I should have tried to find him,’ Nina said, and Lavinia, who never, ever cried, felt her eyes suddenly well up.

The nails she was trying to focus on blurred, and for a moment she couldn’t answer—because, yes, Nina should have tried to find him. And, yes, when they were so rich and powerful, surely, surely she should have tried to find her son. And it dawned on her, fully dawned, that the brooding, closed-off man she had met this morning was actually the baby Nina had abandoned.

‘Why didn’t you?’ Lavinia couldn’t stop herself from asking. ‘Why didn’t you even try?’

‘I saw how everyone hated me when Levander came to Australia—when they found out I knew his mother had died, and that Levander had been raised in Detsky Dom orphanage…’

Lavinia blew her hair upwards. Nina was getting more and more indiscreet, and the rumour that had quietly blown through Kolovsky—that Nina had known all along—was, to Lavinia’s horror, confirmed.

‘Levander wasn’t my blood, and still they hated me. I couldn’t face it if they knew there was more—that I had left my own son too.’

‘Well, you have to face it.’ Lavinia bit down on the sudden white-hot fury that shot through her. ‘You have to face it because the truth is here.’

‘Does he ask about me?’ Nina begged. ‘Does Riminic ask about me?’

‘Nina…’ Lavinia shook her head in exasperation. ‘He doesn’t have a clue that I know who he really is—to me he’s Zakahr Belenki, someone Kolovsky was doing business with, and he’s taken over now that Aleksi is working solely on the Krasavitsa fashion line and you are not well. That’s all he thinks I know.’

‘He is beautiful, yes?’ Nina said. ‘How could I not see he was my son? How did I look in his eyes and not recognise him?’

‘Maybe you were scared to,’ Lavinia offered. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. She was loath to leave her because at least Nina was talking now, but she had no choice. ‘I have to go, Nina.’

And then, in the midst of her devastation, as always Nina remembered.

‘How is your sister?’

Lavinia toyed with whether to tell her or not. She had always confided in Nina, but now it just didn’t seem the right time.

‘She’s doing okay.’

‘She likes kindergarten?’

‘She does,’ Lavinia said quietly, thinking of Rachael’s serious little face—a guarded face that rarely smiled. She was reminded of Zakahr.

‘You keep fighting for her.’

Nina stroked Lavinia’s cheek, and Lavinia truly didn’t get it. She had seen the worst of Nina—had heard her bitch and moan, had worked alongside her even as she tried to have Aleksi ousted. With all the shame of her past—the fact she hadn’t fought for her own son—there was so much to despise, and yet Nina could be so kind.

‘Give her my love.’

‘I will.’ Lavinia stood up. ‘I’d better get back.’

She really had better get back—hospital visits didn’t really squeeze into lunch-breaks, and she’d have to run through the car park to make it back to the office.