Caroline
The next two days pass in a strange kind of peace.
We eat, we sleep, we sit with Wolf, who gets a little less groggy each time we visit.
By the second afternoon, he's lifting his head when he hears Afon's boots in the hall, and his tail goes thump-thump-thump against the padded floor of his medical room.
The vet tech, a quiet young woman named Olga, says that's a very good sign.
Tails are the windows to a dog's soul, or something like that.
Afon spends his mornings in a room I'm not allowed into, holed up with Lukas and his son, Kir. I met Kir briefly once with Cass and Matvei, but he intimidates me a little bit, especially when he's in business mode, like he is now. I get it: After all, they're planning a war.
I decide it's best if I don't ask about. Some things really aren't my business—which is a sentence I never thought I'd think, given my well-documented inability to leave a single stone unturned.
But there is one other stone left.
I feel it the whole time. It's there all the time, whether I'm whiling away the mornings in Lukas's vast library or doing yoga on the veranda, whether I'm lying in Afon's arms at night or sitting for hours on the floor with Wolf's head in my lap.
It's there, under everything. The promise that was made to me.
When this is over, there are things you'll want to know about your father.
I'd thought, up on the mountain, that I'd grown patient. It wasn't an easy thing to become, but I found a way to let Afon parcel out the truth in his own time, in his own order.
But I'm realizing now that I was only patient because I had no choice. The snow made the choice for me. The cold and the men in the trees did, too.
Now, there's no snow, and there are several thick stone walls between me and the cold and the men with the guns. So that patience, that hard-won It'll come on its own time? That shit is looong gone.
So on the third night, after dinner, after the dishes are wheeled away and Afon comes out of the shower with his hair wet and his hip freshly taped, I'm sitting on the edge of the enormous bed with my hands folded in my lap, and I drop the hammer.
"It's time."
He stops. He knows exactly what I mean. To his credit, he doesn't pretend otherwise.
"We're still—"
"You promised," I interrupt, before he can launch what I'm sure will be a very reasonable and logical chain of thought that will nonetheless make me want to eject him into orbit.
"You said, once I knew everything, I could choose what to do next with my eyes wide open.
Well, look around, Afon. I'm safe now. I'm warm.
I'm fed. I'm clean. There's no blizzard, there's no Reznik, there's no bullet in your side.
The conditions are perfect, and there are no more reasons on the Reason Tree. So tell me."
He stands there a long moment, dripping a little onto the carpet. Then he sits down beside me. He doesn't touch me, which is how I know it's bad.
"You're sure?"
"I came up that mountain for this," I reply. "Whatever it is, I'm ready."
He nods. His thumb finds the bronze ring and turns it, once, slow.
"You know about Yelena," he begins. "What I didn't tell you is what came after. What I did about it."
I wait for him to continue.
"I told you I looked. Quietly, for years.
That's true. But there was a stretch, early on, the first year, where I wasn't quiet at all.
I was out of my damn mind, Caroline. She'd been gone a few months and I couldn't sleep or eat, and I was certain—certain—someone had run her off that road.
I started asking questions in places you don't ask questions.
Pulling on threads that didn't want pulling.
" He exhales. "And I got in trouble. Men I'd never met started taking an interest in me.
Lukas couldn't shield me from the consequences I was incurring, because what I was doing wasn't Bratva business. "
I don't understand yet how this leads where I know it has to lead. But my stomach is already cold.
"I needed help," Afon says. "Lukas had made it clear that I'd brought this on myself, chasing ghosts against his orders, and he wasn't going to spend the family's resources cleaning up my grief. I was on my own. So I needed someone outside."
He looks at me, and I see it coming like a car with no brakes flying down the highway straight for me. That half-second of total clarity where everything slows down and there's nothing you can do.
"My father," I understand.
Afon nods. "Bill," he explains, "was the cleanest man I'd ever met.
Brilliant lawyer. Upper East Side. Pro bono cases, charity boards, a brilliant wife and a precocious little girl.
I knew him a little, through Lukas—Bill did legitimate work for some of Lukas's legitimate businesses.
Strictly above board. He didn't know what the rest of it was.
He didn't want to know. Can't say I blame him, really. "
I can't breathe quite right, but I make myself keep listening anyway.
"I went to him," Afon continues, "because I was desperate and out of good options.
I told him I was in trouble—but I didn't exactly explain how and why, or that some of it was well-deserved.
It was better, I figured, if Bill thought he was helping an innocent man.
" He swallows hard, his throat clicking audibly.
"And he did help me. Everything I needed and more, he gave me, and by the time he was done, I was free. "
I feel sick for some reason I can't explain. But I can't stop from insisting, "That doesn't sound so bad. He helped a friend. He thought you were innocent. That's not a crime, right?"
"That's not the end of it, Caroline." His voice is so gentle it's unbearable.
"Because somewhere in those months, he figured it out.
He wasn't a stupid man. He started pulling threads of his own, and the threads led places.
He found out who I really was, what I really did.
" He shakes his head slowly. "And by then, it was too late.
He'd already gotten his hands too dirty. There's no coming back from that."
The sickness doubles and triples. It's like a stomachache in my head, a migraine in the pit of my belly. My dad was a good man, wasn't he? Wasn't he? Right?!
"I tried to stop it, but it was too late," Afon says. "And besides, that's not how it goes. The rabbit hole to the criminal underworld only runs in one direction. So once your dad took that first step… Well, he just kept sliding deeper and deeper."
"My mother," I whisper. "The screaming. The working late."
"Yes."
"You did that?"
"I started it," he agrees without flinching.
"If it weren't for me, if I'd just left him alone, I think your dad would have been a good citizen with a clear conscience.
" Afon's head drops into his hands. "I pulled him in, Caroline.
So everything that came after, everything that happened to your family, to you…
It started with me, standing on his doorstep, asking for help I didn't deserve. "
I'm shaking my head, over and over, like that could change the past. "But you didn't— you didn't kill them. My mom and dad… It was Reznik, right? Or the Vainakh—you said the Vainakh Syndicate and Dad's partner, Raymond Snyder—"
"That's just the natural consequence of getting involved in the world I introduced him to," says Afon. "Does it matter in the end who pulled the trigger? I don't think so. I just know that I dragged him in. What happened is my fault. All of it."
I'm on my feet suddenly, though I don't remember standing. I know why this feeling is so familiar—because this is how I felt when I cracked my head on that rock in Afon's clearing, days ago, weeks ago, lifetimes ago.
Sick.
Dizzy.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
"You ruined my family's life," I whisper. "For what? For revenge? Revenge that you didn't even get?"
He reaches out for me. "Caroline, you have to understand—"
But I step out of reach. "I don't want you to touch me," I croak. "Not with… not with those hands."
It's funny to look back and remember how much I loved his hands when I first saw them. They're big and strong, scarred and tattooed, capable and beautiful.
And now, hideous. So fucking hideous.
Because those hands shoved my mom and dad into their graves.
Those hands heaped the cemetery dirt on top.
Those hands etched names into the tombstones. Afon took my parents from me. And he thought, if he just strung out the story long enough, that I'd forgive him for what he did.
I keep backing up, as far away as I can get.
He doesn't chase me like I thought he would. He just sits there on the edge of that ridiculous bed, big and still, taking it. Not flinching, not even once. Letting me hit him with it because he thinks he deserves it.
I think, for the first time, I agree.
He does deserve it.
"You should have told me a long time ago," I say. My eyes are burning. "Before I—before we—"
I can't finish it.
Before I chose you.
Before I started to dream.
"I have to—" I press the heel of my hand to my mouth. Tonight's coq au vin dinner sits heavy and sick in my stomach. "I need air. I need to not be in this room with you anymore."
I turn and start to flee. I almost make it to the door before he speaks again.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," he says.
"There's nothing to forgive, because there's no making it right.
I knew that we'd end up here from the moment you walked out of those trees.
I've known it every single day since, and I let you in anyway, because I'm a selfish bastard.
" He draws in a shuddering breath. "But you asked for the truth.
Eyes open. And I'd rather you walk out of here hating me with the truth than stay here loving a man who never existed. "
I stand in the doorway with my hand on the frame, my back to him, but I can't make myself turn around, because if I turn around and see his face, I don't know what I'll do. Will I scream? Break the lamp?
Or worse: will I cross the room and bury myself in his chest the way I did the night the fear caught up with me?
I can't, I can't do any of those things, because every one of them feels like a betrayal of the two people who used to make me crepes the morning after the screaming.
I came up that mountain for the whole story. I told Afon I was a big girl. I told him I could take it.
I was wrong.
"I can't believe I picked you," I say hoarsely. "Eyes open. What a fucking joke."
"That's the thing about eyes open, Caroline. You can only ever see what's in front of you. But the past is always one step behind."
I slip out and pull the door closed behind me. I run down one hallway, then the next, and the next, taking turns at random, until I find a small alcove out of the way, with no signs of life in any direction.
Once I'm alone, I slide down the wall until I find a miserable, uncomfortable seat on the cold marble floor of this stranger's palace. With my knees to my chest, I let the ugly tears come. They feel like drops oozing from a rotten wound.
But that's okay. There's no one to see me. The halls are empty. Even Wolf is asleep two corridors away, dreaming whatever dogs dream.
It's just the truth I asked for and the future I hoped for, and the wide, wide chasm between them.