When did she ever refuse a gift from him?
Vera’s lips lifted slightly at the edges, barely holding back her smile. “Now there’s more than one?”
“I bet you were a kid that would have snooped under the tree, hmm?”
Vera playfully stuck out her tongue at that. At least her mood was better than it had been a few moments ago. Vaslav would take that as a win.
Besides, he was sure he could find something for them to do together while she waited for the present he’d had in the works since before they married. Hell, he had to do something with the stacks of money and gold bars in the safe under his den, didn’t he?
New wheels seemed like a fine idea. He’d even teach her how to drive.
*
“For transparency’s sake,” the woman with a skin-tight cream-colored pencil skirt and matching blouse said from her wide-armed leather chair in the center of the room, “I feel like I should fill you in on a few things that have happened since your mother arrived here.”
Doctor Nanessa Bovich had greeted Vaslav and Vera into her private office with kindness, and a request that they call her by her first name. Unless they were around staff, or patients. Partly policy, she’d explained, for professionalism and ethics within the facility. However, it was clear to Vaslav that the woman—who, at her mid-forties seemed to have given up on taming the grey streaks lining her messy curls that she piled high into a large bun—simply flicked the switch for her personality depending on which person was in the room. No doubt, because being Doctor Bovich every hour of every day was a taxing task in a place like this.
What things did she hear?
Or see?
He couldn’t imagine spending eighty-hour weeks, or more, wrapped up in perfect professionalism and also keep his head straight on top of it. The fact that the woman still managed to slip in a personality that was her own amidst the clinical psychiatrist she had to be spoke to the woman’s love for her profession, likely.
Dainty fingers, bare of jewelry or even nail polish, waved at the two sitting across from her on the couch. The gesture marked them, and her, clearly.
“We shouldn’t even be doing this,” she told them, nodding once while her sharp gaze widened a bit more for dramatic effect like it would impart to Vaslav and Vera just how significant that was. He didn’t give a shit—when he paid in the range of a respectable home’s worth monthly for private care, and Roseville was willing to sign off on it because they couldn’t refuse a man with his significance and power, yes, he might abuse that.
They were stupid if they thought he wouldn’t.
“And I don’t mean just this private chat in my office,” Nanessa added quickly before Vaslav could open his mouth to tell the woman all the reasons why she needed to move on from this conversation. “But we’ll get to that in a minute—Mr. Pashkov, I won’t play these games with you. Your mother is far more than enough.”
Vera stiffened beside him.
Vaslav, however, cracked a smile. “Already, huh?”
The way the doctor’s thin lips tightened into an even thinner slit told Vaslav all he needed to know regarding how the woman felt about his mother.
“I understand that you have some influence with a few directors on the board, and a certain politician—”
“The president didn’t even have to make a call,” he returned just as fast.
The initial fight the doctor displayed deflated like her shoulders, as she broke their gaze with a defeated shake of her head. “This is not her first time in Roseville, sir.”
Finally, Vera spoke up.
“How many times has she been committed at this facility?”
“Ten since the age of nine. It’s an extensive file, Mrs. Pashkov.”
“If I can call you Nanessa, I’d like to be given the same respect.”
“I could have mentioned that,” Vaslav noted quietly to his wife.
Vera glanced up at him where she sat at his side on the leather loveseat that matched the doctor’s current chair. Between them, an ornately woven rug took the brunt of her tapping foot’s beat. “Yeah, you could have.”
There was a reason that Vaslav had been able to easily—and quickly—get his mother handled in a way that she wouldn’t fight too much. It was a system that had followed her since childhood. Not even long sleeves could hide the jagged layers upon layers of scar tissue that had started to creep down the centers of his mother’s palms.
Every time, the same way.
The thing was, that tended to be a mode of suicide that worked well when done properly. Natalia always did, of course, but she also craved attention. She would die happily in it, in fact. So every attempt to die had come with the selfish cost of a witness to bear the brunt of her pain.
Was it twisted?
Sick?
Was she?
He needn’t answer the obvious.
“What matters,” Nannessa said strongly, breaking Vera and Vaslav’s silent staring contest and his spiraling train of thoughts, “and that I’d like to get back to, was what I initially said. We shouldn’t do this.”
“It’s already been done,” Vaslav replied, unbothered and calm. “Here we are.”
“I meant, a visit with your mother. Listen, you make my work weeks any harder than they already are, and I’ll ship your mother’s file to someone in the west wing. Bart said he wouldn’t mind, and frankly, he said personally that neither would you. I don’t want to do that though. So keep it in mind for the next couple of minutes, okay?”
The fact that she used the head director’s first name, the highest member of a faculty panel that ran and handled the proceeds and profits of Roseville, meant they were close enough personally and professionally to do so. It led him to believe she was telling the truth, and her assumption about how he’d feel to have his mother sent to a twenty-four hour locked down ward wouldn’t hurt his feelings a bit, either.
“I don’t mind dealing with Natalia, if she thinks she’s getting something over on you she’s happy. That’s like playing with babies for me,” Nanessa said, almost smirking. “But she had another episode on Monday—snatched a safety knife from a cook’s helper in the kitchen.”
“Why would she ever be in the kitchen?” Vaslav questioned.
“I don’t think that happened there,” the woman hedged.
Ah.
Natalia’s games never ended. Not even in the madhouse.
“What man was she conning?” Vaslav asked.
Nanessa sighed, shifting her legs one over the other modestly, but it still gave the uncomfortable truth away, and she smacked her tongue off her teeth. “He was new ... and young.”
“And fired, I hope,” Vera muttered.
Oh, good. She had been following along. Vaslav hated when people couldn’t fill in the blanks to a simple damned conversation.
“And fired,” the doctor agreed. “Anyway, since she’s been here, Vaslav, she’s clung to the cry of her injustice. To anyone who wants to listen, by the way. It’s your fault; you’ve locked her up; her son is a monster.”
All the while, Vaslav understood, making time to manipulate a young employee into getting her something dangerous so she could do what she wanted with it. Even in her sixties, Natalia didn’t miss a single beat.