30. Rose
ROSE
I stay by Beatie's side for an entire day.
Not once does she wake up.
Her straggly brown hair spreads across her pillow, neater now after I spent an hour gently combing out all of the tangles.
Her gaunt face doesn't shift, not even when I take her hand or kiss her cheek.
She looks exactly like herself and yet she also looks like someone drew her from memory.
Everything about her is still there and yet she looks… wrong.
Thin. Haggard. Blotches dot her skin and the needle marks in her skin pull my heart in all directions.
"How did this happen?" I whisper through tears as the weak sunlight trickles through the curtain over the window. "How did we get to this?"
Calvin stands near the door, but he doesn't have an answer for me.
He stayed with me while the doctors tended to Beatie, he lingered when Kon came to see me and the doctors told me Beatie was doped up on heroin, and he stayed with me when something called Kon away.
I refused to leave Beatie's side.
"How?" I lift my tear-filled eyes to Calvin. "Everything I've done, everything I've been doing has been to save her. She's my baby sister. Is this…" I sit up suddenly as a gasp catches in my throat. "Is this my fault? I took too long and they… they did this…"
"No," Calvin states firmly. "Rose, this is not your fault."
"Isn't it?"
"Not at all. You can't think like that."
Anger weaves through my grief and I tighten my hold on Beatie's hand. "Then how am I supposed to think, Calvin? Beatie isn't safe! She's not fine! Everything I did was to save her and look at her! How can you stand there and tell me this isn't my fault?!"
"Because you are just as much a victim as she is," Calvin replies quietly.
"I can't… fathom what has happened to her because we don't know yet.
But we will. And I know it's causing you so much pain right now, but she's here.
She is with you now and Kon has the best medical team money can buy. She will get through this. She will."
I finally blink and the tears roll down my cheeks. "But what about my mom? Where is she?"
Calvin doesn't have an answer for that and silence falls, so I turn back to my sister.
Seeing her is equal parts relieving and painful.
It all churns together into a cloud in my chest and I pray she wakes up to tell me that everything is fine.
But she doesn't.
She remains asleep, and Calvin eventually persuades me to leave her side to get something to eat.
He uses the baby to convince me so I follow him through the manor to the kitchen.
Kon's there.
He leans against one of the counters with a cup of coffee in hand but judging by the lack of steam, he hasn't drank it and he made it some time ago.
Seeing him floods my chest with warmth, but there's tightness across his face that makes me hesitate.
"Rose." His eyes lock onto me immediately. "How is Beatie?"
I can't think. I can't begin to concoct a lie to explain how the hell this has happened because when Beatie wakes up, the truth might spill right from her lips.
"She's still asleep," I murmur as I approach him.
"She hasn't moved. She hasn't woken up. She hasn't done anything.
" Reaching him, I touch his arm and Kon lifts his hand to my cheek.
The moment his palm caresses the side of my face, all my strength nearly fades.
I want to sink into his arms and just exist there for a little while, but to my surprise, he moves away from me and toward the opposite counter, where several vegetables are in various forms of being chopped.
He sets his cup down and picks up his knife. "I am sorry, Rose."
"It's not your fault," I whisper, wiping the tiredness away from my eyes. "I don't… I don't understand what's happening."
"Neither do I." Kon's shoulders lift slightly. "Ethan has been trying to contact your mother and father. He sent people to their home but there was no one there. No one can find your brother either."
Mathew.
That motherfucker.
Just the thought of him is enough to make bile creep up my throat and I swallow rapidly to force it down.
Calvin moves around me to the coffee machine and starts brewing a fresh pot, all the while the steady chop of Kon's knife through the onions and mushrooms clicks in the air.
"I don't…" My breath hitches and my hands come together. "I don't know where they would be."
Kon nods once. "Do you perhaps know why your brother, Mathew, would be blackmailing one of my generals?"
I stop dead in my tracks, my heart frozen in my chest for a split second, and it only kicks back up when a cup slips from Calvin's grip and clatters onto the counter.
Luckily, it doesn't smash.
"What?" My voice doesn't sound like my own.
Kon doesn't move. He doesn't look at me either.
He keeps chopping. "Before he died, General Zangier confessed some sickening facts about himself, and those facts were being used against him to force him to siphon information about me to others.
To Mathew, actually. So I ask again, do you know why your brother would blackmail one of my generals? "
Mathew… was blackmailing General Zangier? But why? What would he have to gain out of something like that? If he was desperate for information on Kon and had a direct line of communication from the general, why the hell did he even send me here?
"I-I don't…" My eyes dart from Kon to Calvin and back again. "I don't know. I can't… surely he was lying?"
"I thought so too," Kon replies. "But Ethan did some digging into his accounts and his messages, including saved voicemails.
He was sending money to your brother and information, Rose.
Information that I suspect made its way into the hands of the Italians.
I want to know why." Kon finally looks up and there's a quiet pain in his eyes.
"Why was your brother blackmailing my general?
Why is your underage sister working in one of my clubs? Why, Rose?"
I'm exhausted. Stress has my heart flying a mile a minute and I suddenly feel adrift in the middle of nowhere with nothing to save me from drowning. I have to lie.
Until I know where my mom is, I have to lie, but my thoughts tumble together and nothing comes.
"Rose." Calvin's soft voice cuts across my chaotic thoughts. "You have to tell him the truth."
Kon stiffens immediately. "The truth?" He glances at Calvin and anger flickers in his eyes. "What truth?"
I gape at Calvin, struggling to breathe, never mind speak.
He can't seriously think that telling him the truth will help me here?
Not when Kon has just spent time apologizing to me and doing everything he can to ensure Beatie gets cared for.
The truth will rip all of that away.
"The whole truth," Calvin continues softly.
"No," I croak, and Kon flinches as if my word physically struck him. Pain surges through my body and settles in my chest so I lift a hand and press it to my breastbone.
I have no choice.
Deep down, I know this.
I lied and schemed and let all of this happen because I was protecting my family.
But Beatie is upstairs, high on heroin, and clearly she's been suffering for a long time.
I've saved no one.
"I… Konstantin… I'm so sorry."
Kon's rigid like a board and the force of the chopping knife doubles, but he doesn't speak.
He stares down as if he's focusing all his confusion and rage on the vegetables in an attempt to stay true to his word.
No reaction without explanation.
"Mathew… isn't my brother. He's my captor." The words hang heavily in the air as Kon's knife pauses briefly, then he resumes as if giving me space to speak.
Fuck.
What choice do I have?
"A little over a year ago, my father's gambling debts took everything from us.
We lost our homes, our money… everything.
And the people my father owed money to were the Vasiliev brothers.
They took me and my sister and my mother and they…
they tortured us in order to get my father to pay.
Well… they tortured me because I was doing everything I could to protect my mother and my sister.
They beat me, they raped me, they starved me…
it was all a game to them. And in the end, my father couldn't pay.
I don't know how much he tried, but he couldn't get money from anywhere, so they were going to sell us. "
Calvin takes a half-step toward me, but I can't tell if it's because he wants to comfort me, or if he's anticipating needing to be between Kon and I.
"They were going to sell me until you, Konstantin.
They heard about your search for a wife and it seemed alarmingly perfect that you were looking for a bride from a smaller family because that fit us perfectly.
I never understood how he was able to set up a meeting between you and my f-father but if he was blackmailing that general, then I suppose that was how he did it. "
Kon's chopping pauses once more, then resumes.
Now that I've started, the words don't stop. It's like the dam has burst and the words come faster and faster.
"You were a problem for them. They hated you because you were dominating the market and you have more power than they could ever dream of.
They were desperate to take you down because they were sure it would catapult them to the top but they knew they couldn't beat you with force.
So they… used me. I was to be their plan. "
Kon suddenly sets down the knife, lifts the chopping board and walks across the kitchen to the stove where he scoops the chopped vegetables up and places them into the pot.
His silence is terrifying and I curl my hands together, my nails digging into my knuckles.
"They wanted me to marry you and g-get pregnant. Then they would use that baby to control you and get what they wanted. I was to do that and in return, they wouldn't harm my family. In the e-end it was going to be a trade. A baby for m-my family."
Despite the stinging up my throat and the weight behind my eyes, I don't cry. Letting a tear escape feels impossible, and I want to see Kon coming when he surely lashes out.
"I w-wasn't meant to fall in love," I whisper. "I wasn't meant to do anything but get pregnant. B-But now Beatie is upstairs and I don't even know if she's alive, and I don't know where my mom or my dad is and everything is just…"
Calvin's grim face tightens as he looks toward Kon, who remains focused on the pot and the vegetables he's loading into it.
Silence remains.
He doesn't look at me. He doesn't speak. He doesn't even make a noise. He just works, and somehow that breaks my heart more than anger would.
"Kon?" I gasp out as every part of me begins to tremble. "Kon… say something. Please."