Chapter Nineteen
In which sometimes, it's easier to be kind in the dark.
Alexsey…
I dream of fire, and screaming.
It's the cargo ship we hijacked, but the walls bulge and disappear. The skinny, hollow-eyed women turn into blossoming roses. The screaming, that's from the captain after I opened his face with-
The screams are real.
My eyes open and I'm instantly off the bed, Glock in hand and racing down the hall.
Did someone break in? No, my loft has three different alarm systems. It's Liria, screaming muffled slightly by her closed door but clear.
High, panicked, wordless like there's no way to express the horror of whatever's happening to her.
Kicking the door open, I sweep the room, arm straight, the gun held steady. No one. Just my wife. Sitting up and screaming, eyes open.
"Hey, wake up now, wake up." I put the gun down on her bedside table, approaching her cautiously.
She's shuddering, bone-deep and staring at something that's still swimming with her in the river of her nightmare.
"Look at me. It's Alexsey, you're safe. Wake up.
" Pulling a blanket loose, I wrap it around her, and then my arms around the soft wool and I rock her slowly.
"You're in your room, you're safe. It's just you and me, no one's going to hurt you. "
Oh, except you, you heartless prick?
That's a sharp, angry voice I haven't heard for a while, something that loosely resembles a conscience.
"Wha- who-" Liria's awake, I think, hiccupping and shuddering.
"No one can hurt you," I repeat, rocking her. "You're safe."
"Oh. I'm here," she says sadly, and it sends a spike of something uncomfortable to my gut.
"Do you know where you are?" I ask.
"Yeah…" There are still tears coursing down her face and I put a hand on her cheek, turning her to face me.
When I brought her home from the party tonight, Liria was silent the entire way, hands limp in her lap, staring out the window. When we arrived home, she didn't say a word, just went up to her room.
"I think your wife is exhausted," Mother had said before we left the party. She eyed Liria keenly. "She looks pale. You've done your due diligence, haven't you?"
"Yes," I shrugged. "She did fine."
"Well, then you're off the hook." Mother smiled up at me before giving me a kiss on the cheek. "I miss the days when I didn't have to get a stepladder to kiss you goodnight."
"Genetics. A terrible thing." I hugged her, one-armed and headed over to Liria, who was huddled in a corner with Ava and Violet.
She was nodding and smiling, gripping a champagne flute like a weapon, and when I pulled her away from my sisters-in-law, she came without a fuss.
"Did something happen at the party?" I ask, looking down at her wet, sad eyes.
Liria stiffened in my arms, looking away. "It wasn't about that. Sorry I woke you."
I don't let go of her.
"What was the nightmare about?" My voice is gentle. I think. It's been a while since I've spoken that way.
"It's not important." Her little body is so tight, head down, refusing to look at me. "I'm fine. I'll just go back to sleep."
I get off the bed. A bottle of water is on the table next to the window, she sits there a lot with a book.
There's three, piled up in a tidy stack.
One's a "romance," the kind Ava and Violet call Lady Porn.
Another about music theory. The third is about old New York architecture.
Liria keeps everything spotless, even here in her room.
If I think about it, there are very few signs of her being here in my home at all.
No glass left by the sink with a lipstick mark, or a book abandoned on the couch.
Another spike punches my gut.
She looks disappointed when I get back on the bed with her and pull her up to sit by me, leaning against the padded headboard. "Take a drink, your throat must be sore as hell."
"Thank you," she mumbles, taking the bottle. I'm almost sorry that I let go of her to get the water, there is no excuse now to be holding her. The feel of her shuddering body is hard to let go of. She'd be safer if I wrapped my arms around her again.
You fucking sap.
Now that my conscience has woken up from its long nap, it's certainly chatty.
"Tell me about your nightmare. Talking about them makes it easier for them to go away.
" We're sitting close enough that I can feel her warmth, my shoulders are broad, so mine is lightly touching hers.
That's the only point of contact. It's enough that I can smell her hair, and it's how I remembered her scent from that night, bright, and sweet.
"Why do you care?"
It tumbles out of her and she covers her mouth, like she can take it back.
"I know what it's like." Ah, shit. I didn't plan to say that either.
It's just enough honesty for her to look up at me, surprised. Her eyes are clearing, not that smoky gray from her nightmares, more silvery again. "It's not important," she says. "Just a recurring dream I've had since… Well, for a while."
"What happens in the nightmare?" I don't know why I'm still pushing her. I should get my ass up and back to my own room.
"Rivers of blood." She swallows convulsively, "So much, splashed on the walls like water, pooling on the floor. I didn't know anything about my father's world. I was five when we left Albania. I saw him a couple of times after that."
I'd read through a background check on Liria that my favorite hacker Kolya had dug up. She was telling the truth, except for the summer she'd spent at Dritan's estate when she was a teenager. "Did you spend time with your father's side of the family?" Will she be honest?
"When I was sixteen." She shudders again. "For the summer. My mom said to pretend it was…" Putting her hand over her mouth, I wonder if she's going to be sick.
"It was what?" I prod a little.
Laughing, more like a bitter little chuckle, Liria says, "She said, 'Pretend you're at summer camp.
' I don't blame her. It's not like he gave her a choice.
I'd never been around those kinds of people.
They loved killing. People. Animals. Whatever was handy.
I kept away from them. I learned to be invisible. "
Letting out a sigh, I slowly put my arm around her. The left one. I have an elastic bandage over my stump, she doesn't seem to notice, or maybe she doesn't care. "Something happened. Something you saw."
"Why the hell would you care?" She tries to scoot away from me, but the blanket burrito I'd created for her keeps her wrapped up.
"I can be a heartless prick," I admit it freely, though that jab from my conscience is reminding me that maybe she doesn't deserve it.
There was something about how people looked at her tonight at the party.
Like Marc. Pleasant, then with growing disgust when he realized she was Krasiniqi's daughter.
Other guests' smiles would fade, or they'd pull their hand away quickly after shaking hers.
No one would dare to be blatantly rude to her, of course. Now that she's a Morozov.
"Yes, you can be." She stops trying to scoot away from me, though.
"Picture this like the stomach flu," I say.
"I beg your pardon?"
"When you've got the flu. You're sick as hell, all churning in your stomach, but once you puke it up, you feel better, right?" She's staring at me with a furrowed brow.
"I guess?"
"These kinds of memories are just the same," I point out. "They're festering because you're trying to shove them down in your subconscious. Spit them out. The memories don't magically disappear, but they don't burn in the same way."
This is the most I think I've said to her since we signed away her freedom that night in the Morozov conference room.
"My father - and may he quickly rot in the hell he so richly deserves - was on his fourth wife by then.
Luan's mother." She says her brother's name like it's a mouthful of garbage.
"Luan hated me on sight. He was only eleven, but already a psychopath.
His mother, Luljeta, wasn't unkind to me.
She was really young, I think she got pregnant at eighteen.
" Taking another sip of water, she wipes the back of her hand against her wet lips.
"I think she just saw me as another inmate, you know? "
I nod, but she doesn't notice, focused on getting this over with.
"Father was obsessed with thinking she was cheating on him.
He was always screaming it at her. What a laugh," she says bitterly.
"She was a prisoner in the house, he never let her leave.
Luljeta was beautiful, but there wasn't a guard suicidal enough to get near her.
One night…" She looked down, peeling the label off the water bottle with shaking fingers.
Liria has long, graceful fingers. Elegant hands, meant for creating music.
Tightening my arm around her slightly, I feel her sink into my side, slowly. Just a little. "One night?" I prompt her.
"He'd been drinking, well, more than usual, he threw his glass at her at the dinner table.
It shattered on the table in front of her and she didn't move, just sat there.
I was sent out, Luan, too. He didn't try to stay and defend her, just scuttled off like the troll he was.
I was so stupid, I was thinking I could distract him, maybe pretend there was an emergency or something.
So, I knocked on the door to the dining room and the screaming started.
It went on forever, it seemed like. Glass shattering, chairs knocked over.
I couldn't move. My hand was still pressed against the door.
"Then, he opened it and-" Liria gags, and I stroke her hair, waiting for her to breathe again.
"Luljeta was dead. I didn't know the human body could contain that much blood.
It was everywhere. He screamed at me, told me to go to my room.
His hand was up, I think he was going to hit me and I ran.
Took the stairs two at a time and hid in my room for almost a day. Bujar, he-" She shudders again.
"Who is Bujar?" I'm calm as I ask. I can tell by her tone, how she shook, that he's another bogeyman from that summer.
"He's one of the Krasniqi second or third cousins, he's a guard.
Father sent him to drag me downstairs to his office.
" She is avoiding my gaze. There's more to this Bujar fucker.
I'll be adding him to my kill list. "I saw my father and I thought he was going to murder me next.
He has a huge office, with all these incredibly heavy statues, covered in gold.
The rumor was he bludgeoned an enemy with one of them and wouldn't allow housekeeping to clean off the blood.
He was holding one when I came in, hefting it, checking the weight.
I was pathetic. Just standing there. Waiting for him to crush my skull with the statue.
"He asked me what I remembered from dinner the night before.
I said I remembered we had Tave Kosi and how much I liked the lamb in the dish.
I'm rambling about casseroles like an idiot and he's still holding that statue.
'Is that all you remember?' he asked me with a grin and I said…
I said yes. Like Luljeta never existed. Before I left that summer, he already had a new fiancée.
I didn't sleep for five days, thinking I'd wake up and he'd be standing there next to my bed, holding that statue. "
There are tears coursing down her cheeks, and I don't think she noticed, she doesn't try to wipe them away. "You were just sixteen." I use my shirt sleeve and wipe the tears off her face. "Did you ever tell your mother?"
"Absolutely not." She shakes her head vehemently. "It would have killed her. My cousins told me she cried all summer while I was gone."
"Krasniqi really needs to die," I say. "Sooner. Terminal cancer is too easy."
"Pancreatic cancer is supposed to be extremely painful," she says with a spiteful little smile and it makes me laugh.
"I'm sorry you endured that," I say. Somewhere during her story, she'd relaxed against me, her glossy black hair brushing my jaw. "You were a child. Witnessing a gruesome murder, thinking you were next. Iisus Khristos."
She jolts slightly, and I realize she was nodding off. "Sorry," she says. "I'm fine now. I didn't mean to keep you up."
"Close your eyes." Running my fingers through her hair, I'm glad she's letting me. If she hadn't woken up screaming and terrified, I doubt she would have let me touch her, much less tell that fucking horror story. "I'll sit with you until you fall asleep."
"You don't have to." It's a mumble, her head's already drooping against my shoulder.
"Shh…" My fingers slide through her hair slowly, over and over. "Go to sleep. No more bad dreams tonight." I don't have much experience with soothing someone. My relationships never lasted that long.
My wife seems to like it; her breathing evens out and she's asleep within minutes.
The sudden awakening of my conscience is unsettling.
I'm no better than our guests were tonight, coming to our party, drinking our expensive booze, and barely holding in their contempt and disgust for my wife. It was an easy jump for them, since she was the only Krasniqi available that they could target.
Who are you kidding? You're worse than they were.
Fucking conscience.
The realization is shaming. I've hated Liria, forcing her to act as a proxy for her dead brother, and her living corpse of a father. I refused to see that she's still the same woman I met in Boston, who coaxed heaven from piano keys and mourned the suffering of Vincent Van Gogh.
She deserves better. Better than a one-handed bastard like me.
***
Iisus Khristos - Russian for Jesus Christ