12. Mackenzie
Leavingthe other two standing in the corridor, I hurry to Kirill.
“Are you okay?”
I remember seeing him during the fight he’d had with one of the other men at the college—the dark-haired guy I think is called Louis Laurant. I hadn’t been able to watch him get hurt then, and Kirill had come out the winner.
Now he appears defeated.
“Mack.”
He draws me into his arms and holds me tight. I don’t think I’ve ever been hugged like this before, as though I’m a life raft that’s saving him from drowning. He buries his face in the spot where my shoulder meets my neck and presses his lips to my skin. It’s as though he’s folded himself into me, and such a big man has suddenly become smaller. I hold the back of his head, my fingers lacing through his soft blond hair. I want to absorb his pain, to take it from him and make it my own. Why do I feel this way, even after what they did? I hate myself a little for it.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he says. “You shouldn’t have felt you needed to run.”
I force myself to let him go and step back.
I harden my heart and glance between him and Dom. “It looks like you’ve both been punished for me.”
Kirill nods. “You’re right, we both deserved this. We fucked up, big time, Mack. I know it’s not as easy as just forgiving us, but that’s what we want.”
I care about them. Shit. Maybe even more than care. I’d rather be hurt myself than see any of them suffer, no matter how much they deserve it.
Dom and Tino join us, and together we retreat into Kirill’s room.
“You need some ice for your face,” I tell Kirill. “It’ll help with the swelling.”
He shakes his head and winces. “It’s fine. I’ve had worse. A lot worse.”
Dom presses his lips together, his nostrils flaring. “What did your father say? Did he accept your story about the watches?”
I frown. What watches?
“Yes, but he’ll only let it go if the watches have increased in value—if I’ve made him money. If I haven’t…”
“If you haven’t, what will he do?” Dom asks.
Kirill glances down at his left hand. “Then he’ll take a finger as payment.”
At first, I think I’ve misheard. “I’m sorry, what?”
Kirill repeats himself, and I shake my head, wondering what kind of hellish world I’ve found myself in.
“He’s going to cut off one of your fingers? One of his own son’s fingers?” I’m horrified.
“I doubt he will do it himself,” Kirill says. “He will get one of his goons to do it.”
“No! He can’t!”
Kirill seems to have accepted his fate. “Either that or I go back to Russia. I will lose a whole hand before I allow that to happen. I can’t?—”
Something dark crosses his features. It’s as though his mind has just taken him somewhere else.
He gives himself a shake. “It will be okay. I have to trust the watches will have made money. I know I have excellent taste. Then all will be well…except I no longer have them.”
“They’re just things. They don’t matter,” I say.
He gives me a sad smile. “It is hard to explain. Sometimes physical objects are important too.”
I lift my hand to my necklace and twist the pendant in my fingers. It does mean more to me than it just being a piece of metal. It’s something I cherish. I guess Kirill felt the same way about his watches.
I suddenly have the crazy idea that we should all leave, together, just get out of this crazy place and go and start a new life somewhere. I know it isn’t as easy as that, though. The guys have responsibilities to their families, and if Kirill’s father wants a finger in exchange for some stupid watches, he’d probably take Kirill’s head if he tried to escape him.
It occurs to me how much deeper these men’s lives run than I had ever given thought to before. I’d thought they were all about fucking and making my life a misery, but they’ve grown up in lives I can’t even imagine. I think of Dom cutting himself, and how angry and fucked up he is most of the time, and I realize he didn’t get that way from nothing. It’s a reaction to trauma.
Dom turns his attention to me.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he says. “We know what happened before you came to Verona Falls.”
My heart suddenly picks up pace. “What do you mean?”
“Your mom and Nataniele told us about the professor.”
They know? Fuck. They know what I did? Mom and Nataniele told them? How the fuck dare they do that? Each time I think they can’t possibly get any worse, can’t possibly let me down any more than they already have, they step things up a notch. My palms grow clammy. My feet seem to take root to the floor, but at the same time, the muscles in my thighs twitch as though they’re preparing to run.
Tino glances between us. “What are you talking about?”
Does Kirill know? If not, Tino is the only one who doesn’t know I tried to kill a man, and now that same man is still out there somewhere. I glance over at Kirill’s expression, trying to read in his eyes if he knows or not. The look he gives me is one of sympathy combined with a new kind of respect.
Yes, he knows. Dom must have told him.
I clamp my lips together and shake my head. I can’t say it out loud.
Tino frowns at me. “Are you okay?”
“I—I?—”
“Did you think we would never find out, Duchess?” Dom continues. “We were always going to, eventually. I’m surprised you managed to keep it a secret for this long.”
“Keep what a secret?” Tino asks. “Would someone explain to me what the fuck is going on?”
Dom addresses his friend. “Our Duchess tried to kill a man. No, correction—she thought she had killed him. It’s the reason she and Lucia came to Verona Falls. They were running from the cops, or so Mackenzie thought. Only, it turns out this man isn’t dead, and he’s most likely after her now.”
Tino’s jaw drops as he regards me in a new light.
I can’t believe everyone knows now. This is so messed up.
Now they’ll have this to hold over me as well as everything else. I’m in a cage, and the bars have just been welded around me. No matter which way I turn, I’m trapped.
The blood drains from my face, and the room swims around me. I don’t think I’m going to have a seizure, but I may well suffer a panic attack. That everyone knows feels like a kind of claustrophobia. My deepest, darkest secret put on display for everyone to judge. There are other things they’ll know, too, things that don’t put me in the best light. That I was willing to have an affair with one of my professors for the best part of a year, for one, but also that I was assaulted. I shouldn’t feel ashamed about that. It wasn’t my fault, but I still do.
Worse, the fact Dom knows my prof is still alive means he has to have found out from Nataniele, and that means my mother knew all along he wasn’t dead. She lied to me, again.
“Let’s get you back to your room.”
Kirill takes my elbow like I’m his elderly aunt, but I shake him off.
“I’m fine. I can walk. I’m not some kind of invalid, and I don’t want to be treated like one either.”
He jerks back at me snapping at him. “I didn’t mean?—”
“Just leave me alone, okay? You’ve all got fucking problems, and so do I, but that doesn’t mean we need each other. A problem shared just means you’re forcing someone else to carry the weight of it for you, and right now I think we’ve all got enough to carry, don’t you?”
His blue eyes harden. “If that’s what you want, Duchess.”
Tino stares at me. “That isn’t what you wanted last night.”
“Things changed since last night.”
He shakes his head. “Bullshit. You’re ours. You know that. You can fight it all you like, but nothing will change that fact.”
My gaze shifts to Dom. “What about you? Are you still going to try to get rid of me?”
He holds my gaze. “No, but if you’re ours, I want everyone to know it. And there’s to be no more secrets between us, okay? I’m never going to accept your bitch of a mother into my family, but you, little sis, I could maybe get used to.”
I don’t want to accept my mother into my family either, or Nataniele, for that matter. But Dom, and Tino, and Kirill, could they become my new family? No, I immediately push the dangerous idea aside. I can’t let these men in because they will take over.
I’m on a precipice. If I step the wrong way, I could fall over the edge.
“I’m not sure…”
His finger touches beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to his. “You belonging to us means you do as we say, understand? You go where we want, you sleep where and when we say, you eat what we put in front of you.”
I swallow, hard. This is what I mean. Their words are too much, their intentions sick. Domineering. They don’t get to tell me what I can eat and when.
Although I’m so exhausted by life, that tiny part of me weirdly welcomes the idea.
“And in return,” he continues, “we will protect you with our lives.”
I smile, hoping it is enigmatic. No way am I giving myself to them unless they do the same in return. I’m not going to be their stupid toy, to play with and mistreat. If they want me, they have to earn me.