9. Arsen
9
ARSEN
Her blonde hair cracks like a whip as she destroys anything and everything within her reach. She doesn’t discriminate as she breaks and ruins, the most beautiful natural disaster I’ve ever set eyes on.
I want to stop her, if only so she doesn’t hurt herself, but her eyes are roiling with the kind of storm I felt once a long time ago.
So I let her destroy.
Evelyn comes to see what the noise is, but I wordlessly usher her out of the room. She must tell the rest of the household to steer clear, too, because no one else comes in to check on us.
When the floor is strewn with debris and neither of us can take a step without crunching over glass or pottery or splintered wood, Laila twists around. Still searching. Still hungry.
She turns to the bed and rips into the pillows with a sob that wrenches out of her. Feathers flutter in the air, peaceful against the backdrop of her grief. She slashes through the white mess in front of her and stumbles backward. Her breath hitches as she steps on a shard of glass.
She glances down and then moves like she’s going for the mattress next, but I wrap my arms around her from behind.
“That’s enough,” I whisper.
“No!”
“Laila…” I press my lips to the back of her neck. “This isn’t going to help. Trust me.”
“Don’t!” She digs her nails into my arms. “You have no right to tell me how to deal with her death. You’re the reason she’s dead!”
I’m just another thing in this room she wants to destroy.
“You and your team of fancy fucking doctors—what did they do in the end? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s like everything else with you: all talk, no action. You’re just a hollow man with nothing to offer.”
And I thought she’d done her worst on the room. Apparently, that was just the warmup.
Everything in me wants to fight back. I’m not one for taking an attack lying down. But for the first time in my life, I bite my tongue.
“I know you’re hurting?—”
“I’m not ‘ hurting ,’” she rages, digging her nails in deeper until she draws blood. “I’m being honest. I was a fool not to see that you’re just like my father.”
I half-wish she’d stop talking and pull out a knife. That would be easier to deflect.
“Both of you are just selfish men who didn’t give a shit about their wives or children, who used their families for their own personal gain. Mom might have forgiven Charles, but I will never, ever forgive you, Arsen Adamov.”
I wrench her nails out of my skin and pin her arms to her chest. “I’ve heard you. You’ve said your piece. That’s enough now.”
“You don’t get to tell me when it’s enough,” she hisses. “You don’t own me. You don’t control me— argh !”
Her words cut off as I pick her up and carry her into the bathroom. She struggles, but her energy was spent destroying the room. There’s none left to fight me now.
I set her on the countertop, but I don’t let go, just in case she digs deep and finds a second wind.
But Laila only stares at me, her eyes dark and empty like she hasn’t slept in days. Her shoulders sag under the weight of the last twelve hours.
There are bloody footprints across the tile. Her arms are sliced, too—thin cuts zigzag up her forearms and purple bruises pool across her knuckles.
“You’re a mess.”
“You’re the one that made me this way.”
“I know.”
She narrows her eyes, wincing as I start to clean the cuts on her arms. “You’re agreeing with me? Is this some kind of trick?”
“I’ve always tried to be honest with you, Laila.”
“Breaking promises isn’t honesty, Arsen,” she snaps. “It’s the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to someone who thought they could count on you.”
“I did what I thought I had to do. I know you don’t understand that?—”
“You stole her from me.” Her voice breaks on the words, and she twists her face away so I don’t see her crumble.
“And I’m sorry for that.”
“If only ‘sorry’ fixed things.”
She doesn’t say anything or look at me. We spend the next half-hour in silence as I bandage her feet and tend to the cuts on her arms. But even when she’s all patched up, the damage is far from healed.
Some bleeding—the kind you can’t see—isn’t so easy to stop.
She’s so exhausted she can barely stand. I take her into the closest guest bedroom and settle her under the covers. To my surprise, she lets me.
I draw the curtains, dousing the room in darkness. But when I turn around, I can see her watching me. Her tired eyes are still open, flashing in the darkness.
“Rest now,” I say. “You’ll need your strength for later.”
It’s a testament to how tired she is that she closes her eyes without a fight. I stand there until her breathing turns heavy and even.
Only when I’m sure she’s well and truly sleeping do I slip out of the room and go downstairs.
Dominik and Gedeon are in the living room, arms on their knees, heads bent low over their laps. “She’s sleeping again,” I tell them as I enter.
They both snap their eyes to me. Dominik stays put, but Gedeon jumps up. “Evelyn told us something was going on upstairs.”
“Laila turned the room upside down. We’ll need a crew in there to clean up.”
“I’m on it,” Gedeon says, grateful to have something to do.
Dominik watches him go. “He’s not good with death,” he muses. “We were both really fond of Marie.”
That makes all of us. Marie was hard not to love.
I sink into the chair that Gedeon has just vacated. “Where’s Evelyn?”
“In the nursery with Kira and Polina. Nina has been a nice distraction for everyone.”
I haven’t had the chance to hold my daughter yet. My arms actually ache with longing. I could run up to the nursery right now and take her. No one would stop me.
But something does.
“This is not how I wanted things to go,” I murmur, not sure if I’m speaking to Dominik or myself.
“I know.”
“I thought that tape would help. But they just made everything worse.”
Dominik sighs. “Brother, she just lost her mother—the only constant she’s ever had. And after spending the last three months away from her, no less.”
“You’ve already made your feelings on that topic abundantly clear, Dominik.”
“I wasn’t criticizing.” He says it gently, and I might actually believe him. “I’m just telling you that she’s angry now and she needs an outlet for that anger. You happen to be it. But… it’ll pass.”
I lift my gaze. “You really believe that?”
“Why not?” He shrugs. “You’re her husband. And the father of her child. I think, once she’s had a chance to mourn Marie properly, she’ll come around.”
Whether Dom believes that or not, it means something to me that he says it anyway.
“For the record, I may not like how you did things, but I understand why you did what you did.” He rises to his feet and turns for the door. But before he goes, he places a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll work out, brother. I know it will.”
If only I had the same confidence.