The Mistress(5)

Born into unimaginable deprivation, Vladimir saw his father die of alcoholism when he was three, and his mother Marina from tuberculosis and malnutrition when he was fourteen. His sister died of pneumonia at seven. There was no money for medical care for any of them. Cast into the streets when his mother died, he lived by his wits, and vowed not to be poor when he grew up, whatever it took. He had become the runner and courier for some of the shadier characters in Moscow by the time he was fifteen, and something of a mascot. By seventeen and eighteen, he was a trusted underling who carried out sometimes questionable tasks for them but performed them bravely and efficiently. He was fearless and smart, and one of his employers had seen his potential and become his mentor. Vladimir had taken everything he had taught him to heart and added his own intelligence and knowledge to it. By twenty-one, he had made more money than he had ever hoped to, and he had a white-hot fire in his belly to go further and earn more. By twenty-five, he was a rich man by most standards, and had seized every opportunity that the new freedoms offered, and by thirty, he had made several million, and had made full use of his connections. Nineteen years later, nothing could stop him and he would do anything he had to, to anyone, never to be poor again. Many considered him ruthless, but Vladimir knew what it took to survive in a complicated world.

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Natasha had the same terror of returning to poverty. Daughter of an unknown father and a prostitute who had abandoned her in a state orphanage at two, she had never been adopted and remained in the orphanage until she was sixteen. After that came three years of working in factories and living in unheated dormitories, with no prospects. She refused the advances of men wanting to pay to have sex with her. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, who records showed had died of alcoholism shortly after she abandoned Natasha.

Vladimir had seen Natasha trudging through the snow in a thin coat when she was eighteen, and had been struck by her beauty. He offered her a ride in his car in the freezing cold and snow, and was stunned when she refused. He had haunted her for months at her state-run dormitory, sent her gifts of warm clothes and food, all of which she’d declined. And then finally, nearly a year after he’d first seen her, sick with a fever, she agreed to go home with him, where he had nursed her himself, while she nearly died of pneumonia. Something about her had reminded him of his mother. He saved her, rescued her from the factory and her abysmal life, although she was hesitant at first.

They never talked about either of their histories, but her worst fear was to be that poor again one day, to have nothing and no one until she died just from being poor. She never ignored the fact that Vladimir had been her savior, and in her opinion continued to be every day. She still had nightmares about the orphanage, the factory, the dormitories, the women she had seen die in her old life. She never said it to anyone, but she would rather have died herself than go back.

In many ways, they were a good match. They had come from similar backgrounds, and had achieved success differently, but they had a deep respect for each other and, although they would never have admitted it, a deep need for each other too.

The past was never far from either of them. The poverty he had grown up with was the fear that had pursued Vladimir all his life, and by now he had outrun it. But he never stopped looking over his shoulder to make sure the specter of it wasn’t there. No matter how many billions he had made, it was never quite enough, and he was willing to do anything he had to, to keep the demon of poverty from seizing him again. Natasha’s escape had been easier, fortuitous, and more peaceful, but in seven years she had never forgotten where she came from, just how bad it had been, and who had saved her. And no matter how far they had come, or how safe they were, they both knew that their old terrors would always be a part of them. The ghosts that haunted them were still vivid.

Natasha fell asleep waiting for him that night, as she often did. He woke her when he came to bed, and made love to her again. He was the savior who had rescued her from her own private hell, and dangerous as he might be to others, she knew she was safe with him.





Chapter 2


Maylis Luca was still an attractive woman at sixty-three. Her hair, which had gone prematurely white at twenty-five, was a snow-white mane she wore loose down her back in the daytime, or in a braid, or a bun at night, when she worked at the restaurant. She had cornflower-blue eyes, and the gently rounded figure that had made her appealing as an artist’s model when she came to St. Paul de Vence from Brittany for a summer at twenty, and stayed. She had fallen in with a group of artists who delighted her and had welcomed her warmly, much to her conservative family’s horror. She had abandoned her studies at the university, and stayed in St. Paul de Vence for the winter, and the first moment she laid eyes on him, she had fallen madly in love with Lorenzo Luca.

A year later, at twenty-one, after modeling for several of the artists the previous winter, she became Lorenzo’s mistress. He was sixty at the time, and he called her his little spring flower. From then on, she modeled only for him, and many of his best works were of her. He had no money then, and Maylis’s family was devastated by the path she’d chosen, and mourned the life and opportunities she’d given up. They considered her lost on the road to perdition, as she starved happily with Lorenzo, living on bread and cheese and apples and wine in a small room over his studio with him, spending time with his friends, and watching Lorenzo for hours while he worked, or posing for him. She never regretted a moment of it, and had no illusions about marrying him. He had been honest with her from the first, and told her he had married a girl in Italy in his early twenties. He hadn’t seen her in nearly forty years by then, and they’d had no children. They had been together for less than a year, but he was still married to her, and considered it too complicated and costly to get divorced.