Chapter 15
15
TOMASZ
T he printouts float to the parqueted floor of the hotel suite. The sunlight flickers through the breezing veils across the expansive balcony opening. With the doors pushed back, the sea air fills the room, making the brine of her tears even more potent.
“It changes nothing.” Blowing out a long, shaky breath, she looks up at me. “It doesn’t make you my saviour.”
“But do you believe me now?”
Red didn’t believe me before when I told her no one was coming for her. Even when I carried her back to the boat and brought her back to the hotel with me, she refused to admit that she’s a lost soul now. The tenacity I admire is grating on me the longer she takes to accept that I’m all she has.
She belongs to me now. My mercy is the only thing that will save her. I thought that the encounter this morning would be enough to push her over the edge, but it turns out she’s good at holding on. She’s the sort of soldier that would never leave a fallen comrade behind. There isn’t much that I appreciate in a person above loyalty, and she has it in abundance.
“It’s a party,” she chortles vapidly. “Do you know how many of those things I’ve attended when I didn’t want to? Or how many photos I’ve smiled for because it’s what we do?”
Oddly, I can’t imagine anyone forcing Red to do anything she didn’t want to. She’s too strong-minded and fiery for it. Even when she’s breaking, the girl finds a way of pulling herself through. It’s why we’re here, looking at the photos of the people she keeps hoping will come for her moving on with their lives. Parties, meetings, and dinners.
“No one’s coming for you. Whether you believe it, it’s the truth. I told you, you’re a ghost now.”
Reddened eyes flick down to the floor, to the photo of the guy she was kissing in the article online. Disappointment mars her usually stoic expression. When I crouch to pick it up so I can hold it up to her face, she steps on it.
As strong and defiant as she is, the girl has a heart, and the sight of her boyfriend so close to her sister must hurt. Their smiles must tear her apart. Even if she hides it well, her emotions have a life of their own. They’re like bolts of electricity that spark from her to me. Every zap makes it harder to keep my distance.
Tugging the image free, I stand and stare down at it. “Do you love him?” The question takes me by surprise.
When I put the printout back on the table, she steps closer. Placing her trembling hand on top of it, she drags in a breath.
With a tear slipping down her cheek, she shrugs with a whisper, “I’ve always been a ghost.”
Somehow, that seems completely and ridiculously impossible. Even knowing what I’ve put together of her life before me, it doesn’t ring true.
“Like I said…” Pausing, she swallows audibly before finishing, “It changes nothing.”
Without another word, she turns and walks back to her bedroom, leaving me in the wake of her silently suffocated sobs. It takes more control than I’ve ever had to exercise not to go after her and make her either scream and shout her woe or shut it up for good. I hate the way I can feel her sorrow and her sting of betrayal.
“Asshole,” I bark down at the photo on the table.
Grabbing it, I pull out my cigarettes and lighter as I head out to the balcony. Lighting up my smoke, I go back to studying the image. The longer I stare at it, the angrier I become. I’m ready to throw down for a girl I don’t like. Who I have no feelings for. And that is a big problem considering the only people I have ever been willing to go out on a limb for are my family or Niko and Emin—who are practically family. Not her though. Red has a way of making me break all my rules.
Holding up the photo, I press the lit end of my cigarette to the asshole’s face, enjoying the sight of it turning to ash.
“Tomasz,” Anton calls from behind me, breaking me out of my murderous thoughts.
They’re totally unreasonable, and I’m more than aware that I shouldn’t be thinking them, but beyond my frustration at her hurt, there’s an inexplicable anger inside me over her departing comment.
I’ve always been a ghost.
I wish that were true—that she was as invisible to me as she thinks she is to the world.
Scrunching the paper in my hand, I take another drag of my cigarette as I turn to face Anton. I pause when I see the maid beside him. He knows me well enough to explain himself without my asking.
“She’s in that room,” he tells the maid, pointing to Red’s bedroom. When the woman has disappeared out of sight, he tells me, “The girl needs someone to keep her together. We can’t have her out in the open the way she is.”
“Out in the open?”
“What you did this morning was risky. We don’t know that the English aren’t clued in to the traitor’s moves. Having the girl out in public like this…”
“And the maid fixes the problem, how?” I snap at him.
Anton is right—this morning was risky. But if my father was so worried about the risk, he should never have gone near her. I shouldn’t have gone near her.
“The headscarf won’t work for long. The girl needs a real disguise, and I don’t know about you, but these feminine things aren’t my forte. Elif’s a woman—she worked at the club in Moscow…she’s used to dealing with these… issues .”
“Fine,” I grunt back at him, flicking the cigarette butt into the firepit along with the screwed-up paper before I head back inside.
When I’m almost to my bedroom door, I turn to look at him. “Make sure she’s ready for dinner.”
“Tonight?”
“Is that a problem?”
“After the shitshow this morning? We should be watching our backs from every angle.”
“Did you get rid of the bodies?”
“What do you take me for?” he bites back at me.
I like it when Anton gets annoyed. He used to get that same killer look in his eyes when he accompanied me to the college parties back in Boston. Aside from the fact that it makes his job harder, I think he’s awfully miserable, and anything that isn’t business takes him out of his comfort zone.
“Did you escort the fool back to the plane?”
“Tomasz!”
I don’t care how much I respect him or how many times he’s put his life on the line for mine. No one raises their voice at me. Avoiding a second bloodbath for the day, I take a step back, shoving my fists into the pockets of my slacks to conceal the fact that he’s caught me on edge.
“Call the restaurant and make a reservation. Outside.” Anton opens his mouth to argue, but I cut him off, adding, “Make sure your men have every angle covered. Every. Fucking. Angle.”
Shutting the bedroom door behind me, I pull my phone out and call to check on my mom. It’s been a few days since she finished her latest and final round of the intensive chemotherapy. The next two weeks will drag as we wait to see if it’s made any difference. I want to hope that it has, but the ominous feeling in my gut makes it impossible for me to do anything other than prepare for the worst.
“Luchik,” she sighs down the line, the sound of her voice making me smile.
“Mama.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Soon.”
“I want to kiss my son.” The breathless statement makes my chest tighten. Before I allow myself to get caught up in my emotions, I settle into the small couch overlooking the floor-to-ceiling ocean view as I tell her about my day. It’s what we do when I’m not at home. Something we’ve always done, even when I was in Boston with my uncle.
Mama is possibly the only woman I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ll ever love and whose company and conversation I look forward to.
“You don’t like her, huh?”
Her laugh has me snapping back at her, “Stop it! She’s a pain in my ass. Stubborn…reckless… God, she’s fucking impo?—”
“Impossibly pretty?”
“Stop.”
“Okay, but I expect you to tell me about your dat?—”
“It’s not a date. I don’t date.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she laughs, and the sound is so great that I can’t help but smile.
It’s all short-lived though. Soon the laughter becomes a cough that has her pausing to catch her breath.
“Mama…”
Clearing her throat, she takes a moment before continuing with our conversation. “You know, your uncle is planning to visit soon. He’s bringing the kids too. We could do a big family dinner and invite everyone… Emin… Niko…” With another deep breath, she adds, “You know anyone else you might like there…”
“Seriously? The girl is not part of the family. Red isn’t one of us.”
Ignoring me completely, she goes on, “It could be just like old times. You know, like the dinners we used to have before—” She hiccups her statement to an unfinished close.
Before she got sick. Knowing that it always puts a downer on the conversation, she doesn’t like to point out the obvious.
“You need to rest, Mom.” I blow out a breath and quickly inhale another as she exhales down the line.
Unlike all the times we talk face to face, so close that I can smell her sweet tea–tinged breath, the only scent filling my lungs right now is Red’s. It’s just another thing that pushes me closer to insanity.
Swallowing down the water that pools in my mouth, I tell Mom, “Parties and dinners can wait.”
“Tomasz…luchik…I’m going to die. Whether or not you accept it.”
“Can you not?—”
“Even if the treatment works—” Which it won’t , I can hear her silent thought. “—eventually I will die, and I would like to do it with dignity and knowing that I’ve made the most of the time I was given.”
“The girl isn’t part of the family,” I remind her again, changing the conversation. It’s bad enough that my gut agrees with her comment. I don’t need my head to get clouded with my feelings over the matter too. My absurd idea of taking Red to dinner tonight is going to require my full attention so that things get no more complicated. Besides… “I told you, she’s a pain in my ass, and I fucking hate her.”
I hate her so much that I can’t get her off my mind. The thought of anyone but me hurting her frustrates me. I want to be the vacuum of her universe. I’ll be the black hole that obliterates her for good.
* * *
“Excuse me?” I glance up at the maid as she takes a step back, away from the table. “What did you say?”
Taking a puff of the cigar the manager brought over after seeing me to the table Anton reserved, I blow the smoke towards the ocean vista. The sand is a couple of steps below us, with the ocean close enough that the breeze carries the spray to us.
The woman swallows audibly, looking over at Anton. She’s scared…as she should be.
“I didn’t give her a choice. So, if you have to go back upstairs and drag her down here, you will.”
A petrified expression widens her eyes. Pure horror makes her skin pale in the golden sunset. She’s equally as scared of Red as she is of me. The realisation makes me laugh, the sound making her jump back a few feet.
“I’ll handle this myself, shall I?” Standing, I start inside, heading straight to the service elevator that leads directly to the penthouse suite.
Anton follows behind me, the maid jogging to keep up beside him. She’s nervous the entire way up; her trembling breaths fill the confined space around us. Pulling back into a corner, she watches us enter the suite.
It takes all of two seconds in the space to realise that something is off, and even before I open the door to her room, I feel the emptiness that her absence has left in its wake. The air is thin and void.
Red is gone.