Chapter 10
OLIVIA
The knock at my door makes me jump so hard the journal goes flying.
“Shit.” I grab it and shove it under one of the throw pillows on the window seat before I remember the door is locked. “Go away, Stefan! I have nothing to say to you.”
“What about Stefan’s grandmother?” Elena’s voice drifts through the door, frail and sweet. “Will you open the door for an old woman?”
Is she faking that weak voice? Because when I open the door, she looks sharp and nimble as ever.
“Elena, I’m exhausted.”
“I can see that. You look awful.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She pushes past me into the room. “I understand you’re angry with my grandson. I have no doubt he deserves it. But would you paint me with the same brush?”
Of course, she heads straight for the window seat. I try not to focus on the guilty cushion hiding the journal. I close the door and follow her.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“I thought we were friends, Olivia.”
“We are.”
“Good. Because I hope you know I’m on your side.”
She sits down and I see an edge of the journal peeking out from behind her. Don’t I have the greatest fucking luck?
“That’s nice of you to say.” I try to ignore the journal inches from Elena’s back. “Even if it isn’t true.”
“It is true. Especially now that you’re carrying my great-grandchild.”
I bite my lip and pull my legs up onto the seat, wrapping my arms around them. “Are you here to guilt me into talking to Stefan? Because that’s not going to happen. I may be pregnant, but I don’t owe him anything.”
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped talking to me like I’m the enemy. I didn’t conspire with my grandson against you. I would never condone his behavior toward you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you know about his behavior toward me?”
“More than you think.” Elena lays her hand against the windowpane. I wonder if she can feel the journal digging into her back. For now, she seems oblivious. Surely she’d recognize it if she saw it—it belonged to her son. “Everyone thinks that, just because I’m old, I can’t hear.”
I smile. “I’d never make that mistake.”
“One of the many reasons I like you.” Elena winks at me. “But there is one thing I’ve heard that I don’t want to believe. Is it true? Is Natalia alive?”
I nod once.
Elena lets out a painful exhale, her eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds. “My God.”
“How does that make you feel?” I ask, feeling like the world’s worst therapist phoning it in.
“Like we’re on shaky ground again.” Elena’s misty blue eyes find mine. “How did she seem to you?”
I have no clue what she’s actually asking. “She treated me well. She actually seemed pretty nice.”
Elena doesn’t react with the same fury Stefan did.
She just nods, looking away. “She was always talented that way. She could make the hardest people like her. Make the biggest cynics trust her. Make even the most confirmed bachelor love her. I should know: She made both my sons fall in love with her.”
It isn’t until Elena says it that I remember Stefan’s father wasn’t her only child. “Your youngest son died in the same fire that everyone thought killed Natalia, too.”
Elena raises an eyebrow. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
“I suppose I was wondering...” What I’m really wondering is how the hell do you ask a woman if she knows her grandson murdered her son?
“You were wondering if I’m aware that Stefan murdered Vasily. Is that about right?”
I wince and nod. “I’m sorry, Elena. I don’t mean to be indelicate. I know this must be sensitive—”
“He had it coming.”
I nearly choke. “Excuse me?”
“Pardon me for being so crude.” She presses her back against the cushion and the journal disappears. “But I believe in speaking the truth. Even if it’s ugly.”
“You don’t hold it against Stefan?”
“I saw what he went through with that woman.” There’s no mistaking how she feels about Natalia. “And I knew my son. Vasily always wanted what he couldn’t have. Particularly if his brother had it.” She catches my expression. “That must sound very cruel to you.”
“I wasn’t there. I don’t understand the dynamics in your family.”
“I don’t want you to think I didn’t care about Vasily.
I did. I tried to be there for both my sons equally.
But it didn’t matter how many times I spoke to him, advised him, tried to caution his worst impulses—he always let his bitterness and jealousy win.
You may ask why I forgave Stefan for killing Vasily.
That’s because, after Vasily and Natalia killed Matvey, Vasily stopped being my son. ”
I’m on the verge of telling Elena that Natalia denies killing anyone, but I hold my tongue. Her story has no place here.
Not for Stefan.
And certainly not for Elena.
They talk about generational trauma. I wonder what kind of trauma my child will inherit from a family history this bleak, this tragic. Will my child grow up thinking that murdering family members in the name of revenge is acceptable? Should I accept it, too, the way Elena has?
“You’re scared.” Elena’s cool voice interrupts my spiral. “For yourself and your child.”
“This is a very different world from the one I live in.” I press my hands together. “I don’t know if I can handle it.”
“Don’t worry, my dear. You’ll learn to. For your child.” Elena pats my hand. “You have no choice.”
Is that advice, I wonder? Or a threat?
“Can I ask about Matvey? What was he like?”
Elena’s smile is laced with sadness. “He was a lot like Stefan when he was younger. But he changed as he got older.”
I almost want to tell her about the journal. About the fact that Matvey recognized the same thing about himself. But for now, I keep this secret. In a weird way, it feels like I’m keeping Matvey’s confidence.
“I think he got tired of Bratva life toward the end.” Elena traces the lines in the wood.
“He preferred to be by himself. He was always a writer, but as he got older, he wrote constantly. I think it helped him see things clearly. His journals were his therapists. Especially toward the end, when he was diagnosed with the tumor.”
“Tumor?” I gape at her.
Elena nods. “A few of his vors felt that his change in temperament had to do with the tumor. His reclusiveness, his mood swings. Who knows? Maybe they were right. The reason he went to the doctor at all was because he started having migraines so bad he would black out. They did a brain scan and that’s when they found it. ”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not many people were told. Matvey didn’t want that. He didn’t even tell Stefan until just before the surgery.”
“So he had it removed?”
“He had the best team of neurosurgeons money could buy. Two lead surgeons and six assisting surgeons. The surgery took sixteen hours.”
I push myself to the edge of my seat. “And they got it all?”
“They said they did. But they also said that with a tumor that size, recurrence was possible. Matvey had to get monthly scans and stay on a rigorous course of pills his entire life to prevent more tumors.”
Forgetting momentarily that I’m not supposed to know anything about Matvey, I murmur to myself, “He would have hated that.”
“You’re right. He did.” Rather than look suspicious, Elena looks amused by my presumption. “He never liked feeling weak. And Natalia certainly rubbed it in every chance she got.”
“She was around then? When he went through his brain surgery?”
“Oh, certainly. On the outside, she was the perfect wife. Always at his bedside, constantly fussing over his food and his meds, asking all the right questions. Even I couldn’t fault her. I actually had hope that maybe his tumor had forced her to step up, actually be his partner.”
I tense and pull one of the throw cushions to my chest. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
“She saw it only as a way to emasculate him. And for some reason, Matvey put up with it. Maybe because he felt like he had no other choice. Or, who knows? Perhaps because he was grateful she was there at all. I can’t tell you.”
“Is there a possibility that maybe she was doing her best to take care of him?”
Elena’s sharp blue eyes find mine. “I told you his surgery took sixteen hours. Do you know where she was for ten of them? With Vasily. Holed up in a hotel room two blocks away from the hospital.”
I hug the cushion tighter. “I’m sorry, Elena. It can’t have been easy for you, watching your child suffer like that.”
“It wasn’t easy.” She looks down at her wrinkled hands. “You raise your children with so much care and so much hope. Only to watch them struggle and fall and make mistakes and become people you barely recognize. At least Matvey evolved. He grew. He learned from his mistakes.”
Part of me wants to ask exactly what mistakes he made, but it feels cruel to force Elena to tell me.
All I can do is sit there with her and share the sad silence. And hope that one day, it might heal her.