Chapter Thirty-Five
In some people need to die and Caroline is willing to make it happen.
Caroline…
"I thought you were dead," I repeat, instantly furious.
"Oh, you're not the only one," he says with a good humor that is deeply creepy. "And yet, here I am."
"Simply maintaining a pulse is hardly living, old man," I say. "Do you know who I am? I'm Liria's cousin, her best friend, you heartless piece of shit."
"I know who you are," he says, two fingers twitching as if he intended to wave his hand negligently, and this is the best he could do.
"Johann told me he was bringing his new bride here.
I knew that you would come by and pay your respects at some point.
Based on your behavior, it is clear that he must knock some sense and good manners into you. "
It feels like I'm hearing him talk from a distance. The beeping sound drifts away, as well as the rest of the room. There's only me and this animated corpse speaking to me. Only his eyes are recognizable, black and glittering with malice. I feel funny, I'm not scared, not even angry.
With someone this pathetic and withered, I should feel some pity, right?
He's still talking, but whatever he's saying is not registering.
I think of what Liria suffered. About the monsters he forced her to interact with.
The man who almost raped her as a teenager.
I think of all the terrible things he's done, all the men and women who are dead because of him.
His fucking withered mouth is still moving, like anything he says matters.
When I blink, I'm right next to his bed, my hands gripping one of the steel bed rails.
For the first time he looks uncertain. There's a remote next to him, probably for the TV but I see a red nurse's button too.
Dritan's stick-like fingers are creeping toward it and I pull it away from him, setting it on the table, out of reach.
"You know what, old man?" I say conversationally.
I don't recognize my voice, I feel like I'm standing outside myself, watching some new lethal combination of me form.
"You tried to sell Liria, your daughter, your only living child into a marriage where she would act as a target for everyone's hatred for you.
But she and Alexsey are wildly in love. They're incredibly happy and she has the family she always wanted. "
I lean a bit closer. "Your ex-wife Allegra is engaged to a wonderful man here in Boston who treats her like a goddess. Your money and your power have been absorbed into the Morozov Bratva and no one remembers your motherfucking name."
His eyes, black as beetles, continue to watch me as his little slash of a mouth opens and closes again.
"Johann was yapping about you last night. His mentor. The man who taught him everything he knows," I say.
Yeah. This is Angry as Fuck Caroline. She doesn't come out often, but when she does, I can only stand back and watch her go. "The last of your pathetic little legacy will be gone, once the Morozovs kill him."
I smile, reaching out and straightening his bedsheet.
His gaze darts down quickly before they raise to my face again.
"I've never killed anyone, you know? There are certainly people I've wanted to kill, including my husband once or twice.
" I laugh a little, remembering his smile as I kissed him goodbye yesterday.
"But I think I love him. No, I'm sure I do," I say thoughtfully.
"I love Nikandr. I'm also incredibly depressed that the first time I admit it is in front of a reanimated troll like you. "
My gaze wanders over his monitors and his machines until I find the one handling his oxygen.
There's a clear tube that runs over his shoulder and then fits into the nasal cannula under his nose looped and over his ears.
My dad had one. It didn't save him. My parents died, but this pile of human garbage got a long, full life.
"Some people would think that was unsporting to kill a man who's already spiraling into a death rattle," I say.
I reach for the tube, holding it up. There's a fair amount of it between the oxygen tank in his body, and I bend it over and pinch it shut.
His vitals monitor begins beeping, faster, agitated as his hands flutter like frightened birds.
"That's really all that's keeping you going, isn't it?
" I open the tube again and his blue lips regain their former gray hue as he takes a raspy inhale.
"Even though you know you're going to die," I say. "You're never ready for it are you? Especially not someone like you. You have to know you're going straight to hell. I mean, if there is an afterlife. I think there is. You will be waist deep in boiling tar for all of eternity."
I pinch the hose again, still feeling outside of myself.
I'm wondering who this hard-faced psycho is pinching off a man's oxygen supply.
His lips turned blue again and I unpinch the hose, letting the oxygen flow.
"That one was for Liria waking up screaming for years after she came back from your hellhole in Durres. For. Years."
"Stop," he hisses at me, like a reptile. "How dare you? Johann will cut you to pieces for this."
Leaning closer, I can see my face reflected in his black beetle eyes.
"She never told me all of it, I know she didn't. You beating your poor wife to death and making her watch it?
Killing people for fun? Did you know how kind your daughter is?
How pure? She's a concert pianist and a spectacular mother and I'm hoping her body has pushed all of your malignant DNA out. Somehow."
My voice has a strange, dream-like quality and I'm getting a little bit scared of myself.
Bending the hose in half again and lifting the pillow under his head, I slip the pinched hose underneath it.
The fragile weight of his head and the pillow are enough to keep it closed off.
The machines are beeping faster, more desperately now and I walk over to unplug everything.
I walk back over and fold my arms, watching his feeble struggle. "People tried to kill Liria, because of you. She was almost shot. Stabbed. Blown up. Nearly- nearly raped. Because of you." I can feel the hate coming from Dritan, his endless rage, even as his black gaze is fading.
"You're killing yourself. Not me."
I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to my parents. My brothers were already in caskets at the mortuary when I saw them for the last time.
This is a horrifyingly intimate moment. When he takes his last breath, I wait. For what, I don't know, some kind of malignant cloud of evil? It stays inside his human shell, his monster.
Walking out the bedroom door, I hear the first explosion and the mansion shudders. I'm not going into the secret passageway as the house is coming down. I run toward the stairway, praying that Nikandr is setting off these explosions. That he's going to get me out of here.
I stumble, almost falling before I grab hold of the banister.
Men are rushing back and forth but one man is standing by the stairway, speaking urgently into his security mic. It's Nikandr. It's my husband.
"Nikandr!" I shout. "Here, I'm here!" I race down the stairs, he steps closer but when I reach out my arms for him, he steps back. I don't understand. He's not smiling.
"I'm here," I repeat stupidly. "I'm safe. You're here for me. Right?" Fuck, that sounded so stupid.
"I didn't want you to be here," he says, and if I didn't know that he doesn't "do" emotions, I would think that Nikandr sounded sad.
"But… isn't that why you're here?" I ask. "Because Johann took me?"
"Did he?" he asks. He's still gripping his Glock, finger on the trigger, it's pointing down. There are soldiers moving around us, like we're rocks in the stream and I can hear gunfire ripping through the house.
We stare at each other until Roman walks over. "The house is secured," he says. "No Johann." He glances at me briefly. There's no warmth there, no hostility either, just… nothing.
"You weren't kidnapped," Nikandr says. "I saw the footage. You came to Boston on your own. You evaded Isaak and Rafail. You walked up to Johann at Faneuil Hall and left with him willingly."
"That part- that was not my choice!" I say shaking my head furiously, hair flying like I'm trying to drive all of the ugly words out of the air and clear it.
"I came here because Johann told me he had information that would hurt Liria.
He sent me just enough to know other crime families would still blame her, they would think she was colluding with that rat fuck Dritan, all the horrible things that have been happening, and that- that he would that would make it look like it was Liria behind it. "
The words are coming out faster and they're not really in order. "Something about a Krasniqi kind of attack, Johann said." He flinches slightly, every time I say Johann. "The rule is something the rule of – "
"Three." Nikandr says quietly. "The Rule of Three."
"When I came here, he laughed at me and said that there's nothing he would give me to protect Liria until I signed the annulment papers. He actually thought I would get our marriage annulled and marry him. He's fucking insane of course you probably know that though –"
"You came here to Boston of your own free will." He repeats it like he's trying to center himself back into the lanes of rational thought. "I'm not here to rescue you, Caroline."
"You don't understand!" I shout. The words are coming faster now trying to convince him, make him understand.
"He's upstairs." I point frantically up the stairs.
"Dritan Krasniqi. He was still alive. Johann's been keeping him here because he loves him.
He's Dritan's protegee. I…" I'm dizzy. Sucking in a deep breath, I say, "I killed him.
Krasniqi. For everything he did to Liria.
Well, he killed himself," I babble. "But mostly, it was me. "
He nods to two of his guards, I know them. Illary and Renat. We played cards together once at the penthouse when we were waiting for Nikandr to come home from a trip. I kicked both their asses in poker.
They each take an arm. "You need to come with us now, ma'am," Renat says quietly.
"Wait! Nikandr, I'm not with them."
He does the worst possible thing. His face settles into his old lines, cold, contemptuous.
He looks away from me, I'm trying to yank loose from the guards but they're pulling me harder.
They take me out, past Morozov men, some are frowning, and other guards stare at me with contempt, others look away.
"Look under the pillow on his bed!" I shout. "I made him kill himself!"
They drag me out the front door and put me into a van.