Chapter 15Ana #2
I sit down on my bed and pat the spot next to me for Artom to sit there. He hoists himself up, using his feet to clamber to the top and standing on the bed before spinning back around and sitting down next to me.
His shoes still on, tracking dirt all over my clean bedspread.
Guess I’ve got a lot to relearn about little boys.
“Are you going to tell me a story?” he asks hopefully.
“Unfortunately, I have forgotten aaaaaaallllll my stories, but maybe one day they’ll come back. Did I used to tell you a lot of stories? ”
“Uh huh.” He nods dramatically just to make sure I really do believe him. “You used to tell me stories about dragons and dinosaurs and school and magic and dwarves and Flagstaff and—”
“Flagstaff?”
“Yep. They were my favorites!”
“Really?” I’m surprised I would have ever talked about Flagstaff; then again, I can’t trust anything Vasily said to me.
I may have regularly traveled to Flagstaff.
Vasily may have kidnapped me because of a connection he and I had in Flagstaff, nothing at all to do with the organized crime connection between him and Tony.
Every single thing he told me could have been a lie.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Artom asks in a smaller voice.
My heart. He’s been so wonderful today, and I can’t believe I’ve raised him to be so amazing on my own. “Of course you can!”
He climbs back up onto his feet, making sure to really massage that dirt into the fibers, and whisper-shouts into my ear, “It’s ‘cause they were stories about my daddy.”
“I told you stories about him?” I pray he can’t hear the cracking in my voice as all the good thoughts I’ve had about Vasily threaten to invade.
“Uh huh. About how he saved you and protected you. And he took you to happy church and he loved you and-and-and how he couldn’t be with us because he had to do scary stuff but that he loved me so much and his favorite food was pierogi, too!”
Oh no.
I purse my lips into a tight ring to keep from hyperventilating. I wrap my arms around Artom, who flops right onto me, giving me his entire weight.
How many times did I do that to Vasily? How often was I in his embrace, listening to him breathe so evenly, like everything was fine even though I was breaking apart, and he was so much stronger than me for being solid?
He was good to me. It was only a couple weeks, and he kept so much from me— because most of what he did share was a lie— but he was also gentle with me. He was easy when he let his guard down.
So many times, he insisted that I needed to remember he loved me.
I can’t fall for it. I haven’t had any concrete memories come back, but other things are.
Names, faces, feelings, places, weird facts about myself like how I’ve won regional biblical quote bees, which how the heck is that a thing, but I’m healing.
I don’t know that everything will come back, and I do need to see a doctor soon about continuing care after everything, more MRIs or whatever, but I’m going to be myself again.
And I should wait until then to decide what to do about Vasily.
“Hey, Artom?”
“Yes, Mommy?”
“Did we ever cook together?”
“I love cooking!” he squeals way too loudly for how close he is to my ear, but I don’t need to hear. I just need to be a good mom.
“Do you want to come with me to see if we’ve got ingredients for pierogi in the kitchen?”
“We just need ‘tatoes and flour!”
And he’s right about that. But we’re going to make way better pierogi.
“I wasn’t expecting you to still be awake,” Tony says to me when he comes home well past midnight. I know what he is. Vasily kept crazy hours, too. He had that office, and it was obvious he did work in it and some of that work was daytime, but when he woke me up last night, it was nearly this late.
I get these nauseous feelings when I think about last night, and I can’t decide if it’s because of how my rapist tormented me again or if it’s because that baby he swore he was trying to give me didn’t happen and never will.
Did he know that already? Is that something they would have noticed during my medical exam and mentioned to Vasily?
“Couldn’t sleep,” I tell him. “Been exhausted all day, but then I fell asleep in Artom’s bed for a couple hours, and when I tried to move to my room.
..” I shrug helplessly to this parlor I ended up in, with its comfy chairs suitable for reading and with a textbook I selected from my shelf because it had so many sticky tabs on the pages that I had to have spent a lot of time with it.
I know everything in it. I just don’t remember anyone teaching it to me.
“And no wonder,” he says sympathetically as he tosses his jacket over a divan. Glitter puffs out of it like he was just at a strip club. He owns one. Or Vasily does. Huh. A weird fact to pop up, but no weirder than any of the others that randomly pop.
“I don’t think I thanked you,” I tell him.
“For what?”
“For taking care of Artom. And for going all the way to Florida to pick him up. That was a big ask.”
He waves me off. “Never. You’re my sister. You and Artom are all that’s left of the family. Of course I was going to pick him up and take care of him. ”
“Did you know what happened? To me?”
He shakes his head and sits at the end of the divan.
“No, not really. We found security footage of your restaurant. We saw you getting taken. But you were closing that night. No one saw it or even knew it had happened the next day. Your car was in the parking lot, but it’s a restaurant; not super weird for people to leave their cars.
And Tia, the lady Artom stays the night with when you’re working, called me first, so the cops weren’t even notified until after that. ”
“Is there an investigation happening? Do I need to call them? The people who rescued me, I don’t think I should tell the cops about them, but I don’t know what else to say. Can I just say I got amnesia so I don’t—”
“Lacey, Lacey, Lacey,” Tony rushes out with a laugh I feel like isn’t normal for him.
He’s older than me. I’d say about Vasily’s age of 32 if not even older.
He’s fit, a different build from Vasily’s bulky frame, more of a smooth, slender physique, but he doesn’t have any laugh lines.
Even Vasily, who didn’t laugh much with me either, had them.
I look more closely at Tony, at his slick-smooth black coif, his high cheekbones, his arguably weak chin, the twin gold chains peeking out from his white dress shirt and the array of rings on his hands.
He’s slightly disheveled from the day, but there’s something Barbie-like about him.
Plasticky, like a Ken doll. It’s possible his hair is so dark it lacks any highlights and as yet untouched by grays, but I saw the pictures of Dad.
He went gray young. I’m only 25, and I’ve plucked a couple on my own head.
It’s not my place to judge him, though. He’s my brother.
And he’s saved me. He’s taken me in when he didn’t have to.
My son, too. For better or for worse, I’m going to be here for the long haul.
Now knowing that I’m unmarried and on the opposite side of the country from a business I doubt I’ll be able to return to any time soon, if ever, there’s this other level of uncertainly I haven’t yet considered.
I don’t even know if I have health insurance.
“I’ve taken care of everything,” Tony assures me. “We have connections there, too, of course. They were able to close the case without any pushback. We were just lucky those guys rescued you. What did you say their names were?”
A tingle of doubt shivers down my spine.
This is my brother. This is my childhood home.
This is where I’m supposed to be. But the way Tony asked me that, the way his eyes, so similar to my own they could be mirror reflections, glimmer with interest despite the casual way he asks that question, makes me feel like nothing good will happen to Sasha or Gio if I give Tony names.
“Oh, everything was so crazy that I don’t even know. They were...” I laugh for effect. “They were angels. Do angels have names?”
“Usually, you’d be the one who answers that question,” Tony points out, and already I’m listing them. Twelve named archangels from the Kabbalah, but only two in the Christian bible, Michael and Gabriel.
And Lucifer. The fallen angel. The Morning Star. The Shining One.
Vasily has the face of an angel.
“Well, the guys who saved me, I didn’t know their names. I had a concussion. It wasn’t until later that I understood what was going on.”
“When Baranov picked you up?”
I nod, pushing away that familiarity. For a week, that was my name. Ana Baranov. Turns out, I’m Lacey Lombardo .
“Yes? But the moment he got me, he had me on a plane and flying cross-country, telling me we were going home when—can you take me to my house sometime? I know it’s going to be a big trip, and I don’t know what I have here, but I don’t have anything here.
Everything in the closet is too small. Vasily bought me a whole new wardrobe—”
“Don’t think he was doing you a kindness.”
I shake my head and slump forward, tenting my elbows on my thighs. I can’t sleep, but I am tired. Exhausted. I’m so relieved that Tony has reunited me with my son, but I don’t feel comfortable here. Not like I did at Vasily’s.
But that doesn’t mean anything except he’s very manipulative and this isn’t my home and no one’s comfortable with uncertainty.
“No, it seems he did everything he could to prevent me from getting my memories back.”
“Not just that,” Tony says grimly. “You know he was trying to hurt you, right? He was trying to hurt both of us, but... he’s sick, Lacey.”
I recall all the medications in the drawer in his office, the syringe, too. There were so many of them. He never said anything about it, and what with everything else I found and everything else that happened, I all but forgot about it.
“In the head,” Tony clarifies. “He’s a sicko. I’m serious, Lacey. He’s a bad man.”
I should agree with him and move on. Tell him I think I’m ready to go to bed now and attempt to go back to sleep. Read in my room if not, or go snuggle with Artom in his bed, way too big for such a small body because nothing in this house is child-sized.
But Tony doesn’t make me feel nearly as safe as Vasily did. I know that’s because Vasily’s safety wasn’t real, but I’m still chafing from it. “Well, aren’t you a bad man, too? And our dad? I mean, have you killed anyone before?”
A blip. A crack in the facade. A slip in the Botox. He’s killed, I can tell by that glint, and I don’t think he feels an iota of guilt. I think he might enjoy it.
“It’s different,” he bristles. “It’s—he’s going to come for you, Lacey. He’s fucked up, and I need you to get that he’s gotta be fucking pissed right now. He’s going to be pissed that Artom, his own son, was the one who convinced you to leave. You’re both in danger.”
“I—no.” I bridge the gap between us, stretching my hand to his to give it a squeeze that’s a promise.
“I don’t have any plans on seeing Vasily, Tony, but he’s not going to hurt me either.
Maybe he was a monster before, and he shouldn’t have kept me like he did this time.
But he wouldn’t physically hurt me. And Artom? No way. He wouldn’t hurt his own son.”
Tony takes his hand back to pull something up on his phone.
“I didn’t want to show you this, Lacey. But I don’t think I’ll be able to explain the monster that he is without it.
He sent this to me three days after he kidnapped you.
Not just me either. He sent it to most of the men on our side.
His men, too. Everyone saw it. Your classmates saw it.
This was why you went to culinary school instead of finishing out your bachelor’s degree when you came back. It’s—oh, here it is.”
I have no idea what he’s about to show me, but my stomach’s already going all loose as he spins the phone around.
It’s a video. Looks to be a basement at first, but then I notice the wall in the background is mirrored, giving a back view.
Of me .
Dressed, but my hands are linked to a chain and Vasily is standing in front of me, holding a knife. The video is muted, but my mouth is moving. I’m talking to Vasily. I think I’m begging him to stop. And then he slices the knife straight down.
I gasp. I don’t have any scars on my sternum so I know he’s not harming me in the old movie, but I still put my hand on my chest as though to make sure my pieces are together. But then Vasily pushes the two sides of my shirt away, and everything showing there is smooth, unmarred.
My breasts are... nonexistent. I was nineteen; I hadn’t had a kid yet. My back was bowed, my chest sticking out. Any shape my chest might have had is contorted to nothing except my nipples. Tiny, taut peaks.
Vasily spits on one.
I cover my mouth, horrified. He spit on me. He actually spit on me, like a psycho. Like Tony claims he is. And in the video, I’m obviously begging Vasily to stop.
He spits on me again.
He’s disgusting.
And then he spins me around, pulls down the shorts I was wearing, and spanks me for the whole world to see. The red handprints are just barely blooming when he dips his hands into the space between my thighs and pulls them apart.
I screech and look away but not before getting an eyeful of something that I can never take from my memory. That my brother is looking at, too, that who knows how many people have seen. Tears leak from my eyes as I cry out, “Turn it off, turn it off!”
Tony nods and does so solemnly, saying, “It only gets worse from here. I’m so sorry.”
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I whimper, already rising on shaking legs, already thinking that I’m going to walk straight through my bedroom and into my bathroom so I can barf my pierogi dinner up.
“Yeah, that would be for the best. Sleep well, Lacey.”