Chapter 36
MILA
The door is open.
I walk in.
The dining room. The chandelier above the table throwing dirty light across the walls. The shipping maps weighted at the corners. The satellite phone face-down. Two of Marco’s men at the corners of the room, still as furniture.
Nico near the head of the table. Alexei in the chair, restrained, alive, silk robe over a white shirt and pants. He hears me cross the threshold and looks up and his mouth goes loose for a breath and his eyes find mine before his jaw sets again.
He did not think I would be standing.
I do not look at Nico.
I walk across the room the way Papa taught me when I was small, spine straight, shoulders set, the cross in my closed left fist and the chain at my throat under the dark shirt, and I stop close enough to be heard and far enough to be mine.
Alexei’s face is older than I remember. Gray at the temples. The mouth slack at the corners. He is smaller than he was when I was a girl sitting at his table. Good. Let him be small.
The cleanest, calmest Russian I have ever spoken. Papa’s register. I have been waiting years to use it.
“Eto za Yelenu.” This is for Yelena.
Alexei’s face does not change.
“Za Mamu.” For Mama.
His mouth opens.
“Milochka—”
“Ne nazyvay menya tak. Ona menya tak nazyvala. Ty ne imeesh’ prava.” Do not call me that. She called me that. You do not have the right.
His mouth closes.
“Za Papu.” For Papa.
His eyes shift. One fraction. Then flat again.
“Za kazhduyu devushku, kotoruyu ty prodal.” For every girl you sold.
I do not look away. I let him see every year of what he made.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he speaks in English. The language of the room he thinks he owns.
“I sold you for reasons.” The same register as my childhood dinner table, the one that never raised itself.
“I sold you to break your mother. To remove an heir who would one day stand exactly where you are standing. To show her what the price of dreaming looked like.” He tilts his head.
The restraints pull at his wrists and he does not look at them.
“I needed her to understand that nothing she loved was beyond my reach. You were the proof of that.” A pause.
“Your father understood. That’s why he died so quietly. ”
All of it. Every word.
I do not move. I do not speak. The silence between us has weight and I hold it and I do not look away until his eyes drop first.
His jaw tightens then his eyes drop.
I speak. English. His language. In this room, in this moment, mine.
“Papa built what you took. I am taking it back.” I hold his eyes. “And the man who stands beside me will help me do it.”
His gaze goes to Nico. To the hand at my back. His mouth tightens.
He opens his mouth.
Nico is already moving.
He crosses to Alexei the way a man crosses a room he has been in before. No hurry. No hesitation. He leans down to Alexei’s level, one hand on the arm of the chair, his face close enough that Alexei can feel his breath.
“Burn in hell.”
He straightens and his hand goes to the back of Alexei’s knee, through the silk robe, one cut precise and deliberate, the blade in and out before Alexei has finished processing the words.
Not fast. Nico makes sure it is not fast. He steps back and watches Alexei’s face while Alexei works out what has been done to him.
I see it in his face. The recognition. The calculation running. Then his jaw goes tight and his eyes go to the door and his hands pull once against the restraints.
He looks at one of Marco’s men.
“Light it.”
He does not look at Alexei again.
We walk out past Marco’s men and past Renzo at the door and into the corridor, the heat from the library hitting my left side before I clear the doorway.
The snap and roar of it on our left, the fire finding the old wood fast. Then the parlor on our right, the pre-war wallpaper taking the flame the way old things do, all at once.
The smoke in the corridor is low and thickening.
I taste it at the back of my throat, ash and old wood and something underneath that I do not name.
Then, from behind us, through the dining room door, through the walls of the corridor, his laugh reaches us first. Low. Deliberate. The laugh of a man choosing how to spend what he has left.
Then his voice, still steady, the smoke not yet in it.
“Mila.”
We do not stop.
“Ty stala takim zhe, kak ya.” You became just like me. “Tvoy otets byl by razzocharovan.” Your father would be disappointed.
Neither of us changes pace.
“Ya sdelal tebya.” I made you.
The smoke takes his voice. Then the fire takes everything else.
The smell reaches us before we get to the front door. Old wood first. Then burning cloth. Then something underneath it I do not name even to myself.
Nico’s hand is at the small of my back. Neither of us changes pace. We do not look back.
The front door opens onto the porch and the oak alley beyond it.
The oaks close over us. The gravel under our boots. The Spanish moss. The smoke following us down the alley now, threading through the branches, the orange light from the house reaching the tree line behind us.
We walk.
The boat is at the dock. Renzo’s team boards first. Nico turns and puts his hand out and I take it and step down. The deck solid under my boots. The Mississippi moving beneath us. The driver puts the boat in gear and the current catches us and we are going downstream.
Going home.
I stand at the rail. Nico beside me, his hand at the small of my back.
The plantation comes apart behind us. The fire has reached the second floor now, the smoke a column against the dawn, gray at the top, orange at the base where the wood is loudest. The sound of it carries across the water longer than I expect.
Then the bend of the river takes it and there is only the smoke and then there is only the sky.
Neither of us speaks.
The warmth of him reaches the side of my body. My pulse kicks. He shifts his hand, fingers spreading slightly at my back, and his breath goes out slowly through his nose. The air between us shifts.
Neither of us moves toward it. Neither of us moves away.
The river carries us.
The cross has been in my closed left fist since dawn. I open my hand for the first time.
The wooden cross has left an impression in my palm. The bevel at the top. The cross-piece. The small letters carved into the back. I press my thumb against them. I close my hand again.
She is in my palm. I keep her there.
Nico has watched me look at my hand. He does not speak. He does not reach for the cross. He keeps his hand at the small of my back and lets me have it.
Marco’s men on the bow are quiet.
The sky is gold at the horizon, gray at the top, pink at the line where they meet. I breathe. The cross in my hand. The chain at my throat. Nico’s hand at my back.
I said what I came to say.
Yelena heard it.
I know she did.
That is enough.