46. Arkadiy
46
ARKADIY
“ E aston said it would take two hours at the most, so what’s taking him so long?”
Rafael sinks in the chair opposite mine before he rests his left ankle on his right knee. “I don’t know.” My eyes lift from a stack of paperwork when he mutters under his breath, “Maybe he’s buying you time he knows you desperately need.”
He already has my focus, but he wholeheartedly demands it by bringing the only woman capable of making me believe I am not a monster into our conversation. “Mara wouldn’t want you to do this, Ark. She wouldn’t want you sacrificing everything you’ve worked for to take out the trash the authorities should have handled years ago.”
When I remain quiet, incapable of fighting the truth, he drops his leg and leans forward to balance his elbows on my desk. “Tell her your plan before initiating it. Give her a chance to talk you out of it.”
“I can’t,” I murmur, my words as weak and pathetic as the ones I used on Mara three nights ago when I pleaded for her to go slow.
I crave her touch as much as my lungs crave air, but I shook like my abuser hadn’t died two years before Karolina committed suicide.
I guess Mara is right. My step-grandmother wasn’t my sole abuser.
My mother was, and still is, just as evil.
She has yet to admit to the depths of her crimes, but I wholeheartedly believe my mother was the reason Paarth was in the servants’ corridor the night Mara was attacked. She ramped up his anger to the point of no return by saying his dismissal was unjust since Mara was a paid escort, so she should anticipate the unwanted gawks and leers of strangers.
I was so furious at the thought alone that I immediately removed her from the board of my companies and signed an affidavit on her decades of abuse that I will release to the media if she doesn’t maintain her distance.
I’ll even go as far as having her officially charged. That is how serious I am at ensuring she knows that I am no longer her sock puppet.
I tune back in just as Rafael hits the nail on the head. “Because you know if she asked you to stay, you would.”
I pfft as if he is lying.
He isn’t.
I’d stay without a second thought before burying what I did so deep inside me not even the woman with eyes that can see through to my soul would find it. But I can’t do that to Mara. I can’t ask her to look at me and not see me for what I am.
I am a murderer.
A monster.
I became what my mother said I would become.
But I am also a man in love, and at this moment, I want that to rate higher than everything else.
That is what the paperwork on my desk is about. Transferring every asset I own, every bank account, every vehicle, isn’t about buying a way past my guilt. It is love. Support. It is giving Mara and Tillie the life they deserve.
I’ve tried my hardest over the past three days to do precisely that. Just like our first magical twenty-four hours, we crammed a lifetime of memories into three solid days. It was fast, but they’ve honestly been the best days of my life. Mara is amazing. Her daughter is the epitome of perfection. I couldn’t be happier, but I can’t hide from my responsibilities for a second longer.
It is time for me to be honest, which should also yank the scrutiny away from a woman who doesn’t deserve it.
Upon following the direction of my gaze, Rafael reads me like a book. “They don’t want possessions, Ark.” He stares me dead set in the eyes. “They want you.”
“I want them too,” I say before I can stop myself.
Rafael sits up straighter, his suit straining against his back. “Then tell them that.”
“I can’t?—”
“Why?” He doesn’t give me a chance to speak. “Because you’re afraid of the repercussions?” He sees my nod but acts as if he didn’t. “Bull-fucking-shit. You allowed that woman”—he points to my office door as if my mother is on the other side—“to dictate your life for decades. Decades , Ark! But you ran her out of your life in a manner she can never come back from. You fucking told, Ark. You confessed to every horrible thing that woman let them do to you and your sisters…” He stops, swallows, then corrects. “To you, your sister, and your niece, but you’re going to sit here and tell me you don’t have the balls to tell your woman that you love her enough that you don’t want to hand yourself in because not seeing her every day will be worse than death. That you love her enough that you don’t just see her daughter as hers anymore. She’s yours as well.” He pffts me again, and it burns like an oil-ladened bath. “Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck this entire existence, because what’s the use? Why fight only to lie down just as you’re about to win?”
My eyes jackknife to the servants’ entry of my office when a voice I’ll never stop missing sounds through the partially cracked-open door. “Because he’s failed to remember not every fight is a solo endeavor. There are some comps that are a group event.”
My cock throbs as fast as my heart when Mara enters my office without the slightest shudder to her thighs. There are as many people inside as there are exits, but she feels safe here. Protected. She knows this is her home as much as it is mine.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but I have an important meeting, and all the office spaces downstairs are full of the crockery and dishware from a party the man of the hour failed to attend.”
When I look at her, lost as to whom she could possibly be meeting with, she nudges her head to the perch-like balcony hovering over the den.
Fury blasts through me when I notice who is being shown through my apartment. It isn’t my mother as she attempted to do a minimum of four times a day after surveillance footage proved she sprayed my abuser’s perfume into the vents of my room and office.
It is Detective Pascall—a.k.a. the widower of Mara’s abuser. She is accompanied by the woman I had planned to confess my crimes to this afternoon: Detective Lara Sonova.
“Mara—”
She silences me how only she can, by flattening her hand on my chest, right above my heart, and whispering five words that will forever stop my crusade. “You can trust me, Ark.”
I can, and I do.
After curling my hand over hers, initiating firmer contact, I grant her permission to flourish the strength brewing rapidly in her beautiful eyes.
She thanks me for my support with a quick peck on the side of my mouth, both fueling my campaign to protect her as much as it adds gas to the fire Detective Pascall is attempting to light under her ass.
“I thought you were unaware of Miskaela Palkova’s whereabouts?”
Mara hits me with a wordless plea to play nice when my fists ball. I do. Somewhat.
“I guess I have you to thank for our coupling?” When Detective Pascall peers at me, confused, a smirk tugs at one side of my mouth. “I had forgotten about our run-in until you reminded me. Then, when it was only right that I warn Miskaela of your campaign to discredit her undoubtably clean character, I was reminded again in person how exceedingly beautiful my cab-sharer was.”
She doesn’t believe my lie for even a second, and her annoyance that I tried spoils my plans to Mara. “So I’m meant to believe you handed over every asset you have to someone you only met a week ago? No one is that stupid, Mr. Orlov.”
I pretend not to hear Mara’s exasperated gasp.
“I guess you’ve never been to Vegas, Mrs. Babkin.” I sneer her title in the same way she sneered the last name I am no longer associated with, shocking both Rafael and Detective Sonova. “People there don’t even wait a day.”
I could be honest. There’s no need for me to hide anymore. The only reason I’m remaining cautious is because I don’t trust Sanya’s motives. How could I when she’s going after one of her husband’s victims as if she seduced him instead of being terrorized by him?
There’s something we’re missing from this puzzle, but I’m almost out of time to admit what that is. A member of Myasnikov PD is in attendance of our meeting, and she knows it has something to do with Mara’s father’s disappearance.
I lower the severity of my scorn when Mara reminds me that she invited Detective Pascall back into our lives. “I couldn’t work out where I had seen you before. It took hours, combing through footage in my head I wish to never see again, before I finally worked it out.”
She assures me she feels my silent comfort with a ghostlike grin before she moves to my desk and spins my laptop around. The footage Easton was supposed to remove from Veronika’s phone and destroy is on my laptop screen. Except it isn’t stopped at the segment where Mara flees the motel with Tillie hidden under a bulky coat. It is the last known footage of Dr. Babkin still breathing.
“Don’t,” I plead, warning Mara against airing incriminating footage in front of witnesses bound by a code of conduct. It will defeat the purpose of my endeavor to hide it and give no reason to further delay handing myself in.
There are no witnesses to Dr. Babkin’s exit of Mara’s motel room. No evidence he was still breathing when she left. This footage could put her away for years. It could steal Tillie from her as her father threatened to do when he thought he could convince a God-fearing judge that he, an upstanding Christian man, was a better guardian for his granddaughter than a woman who birthed a child out of wedlock.
Against my advice, Mara hits play.
I’ve seen this footage a hundred times since Mara’s father uploaded it to Veronika’s phone for safekeeping in case I reneged on the agreement to pay him three million dollars, but I look at it from a different angle when Mara highlights someone in the far back corner of the frame.
“That’s you.”
“No,” Detective Pascall denies, shaking her head. “I…”
She stops talking when Mara plays another clip. This one leaves no denial as to who is stalking Dr. Babkin’s arrival at Mara’s motel room. It shows every horrified thought that filters through her head when Mara freezes upon Dr. Babkin’s illegal entry of her room.
She isn’t excited to see him. She’s petrified. But Detective Pascall’s rant exposes only those who know Mara well can read her expressions. “I gave him over a decade of my life, I birthed his child and helped him set up his practice, and he repaid me by sleeping with a woman who was barely legal.”
My fists clench so fast my knuckles pop when she has the gall to sneer at Mara at the end of her sentence, but before I can add words to my nonverbal response, Mara says, “I wasn’t legal the first time he raped me. I was just a child.”
Rafael’s cuss is faint.
Mine is nowhere near as quiet.
I want to hold her again and promise I will never let anyone hurt her, but when a bull wants to charge, you must let it charge.
Mara needs this. She needs to dispel the fear, which hasn’t stopped weighing down her shoulders since she learned how close her father was to Tillie’s school, so she can start living again.
Her father was in the same town as Tillie, but he wouldn’t have gotten close to her. Darius would have never allowed that to occur, and neither the hell would have I.
“I wasn’t even the age your daughter is now.” Tears gloss Mara’s eyes as they flicker through horrid memories. “The first time they hurt me, I rode my bike to the emergency department.” I have no regrets for what I did when she whispers, “My father used the hardness of my bike seat and the length of my trip to excuse the blood in my underwear when the hospital called him to advise him that I had sought medical assistance. The second time…” I’m at her side in an instant when she chokes on her words. “He blamed the saddle on the ponies he hired for my birthday party. The th-third?—”
“That’s enough. She’s been through enough.” I dance my begging eyes between Detective Pascall and Sonova. “Don’t make her go through more. Please. ”
After wiping away the tears streaming down her face, Mara says, “My father had an excuse for every horrible thing that had happened to me so he could hide his own malicious crimes.” I see the train coming. I hear it clattering along the tracks. But the words leave her mouth before I can push her far enough away from the collision to stop her from getting hurt. “So when I thought he was going to do the same to my daughter, I made sure he couldn’t.”
“No!” I shout, my voice a roar. “She doesn’t understand what she’s saying. She is traumatized from me admitting to what I did.” I cup Mara’s cheeks and align our eyes. “Tell them the truth. Tell them what really happened.”
Nothing but love beams from her eyes when she whispers, “I just did.”
“No,” I shout again as Detective Sonova stands to her feet, removing her cuffs on the way. “She’s lying. She isn’t telling the truth. She is trying to protect me.” I return my eyes to Mara, wet and begging. “Please tell them the truth.” I switch tactics when I realize there’s only one person who can save her from herself. “Don’t do this to Tillie, Mara. Save her from this.”
She smiles like she didn’t just confess to murder before saying, “I don’t need to save her from this because you already did.”
As she’s cuffed and read her rights, Mara keeps her drenched eyes on me. They repeat the same three words again and again and again.
I trust you.
It is in that instance I know what I must do.
I fight, and I fight hard.
When Mara is walked out of my apartment, I bark orders like everyone in my realm is beneath me. I order Detective Sonova to keep Mara in a private cell, I tell Mara not to talk to anyone without a lawyer present, and I instruct Rafael to get me the best defense attorney in the country like he isn’t already on the phone doing precisely that.
I take control as I should have decades ago, my tirade only ending when the faintest snivel sounds through my one good ear.
Tillie’s ashen cheeks as she hides behind Mrs. Lichard’s somewhat curvy frame announces she is aware of her mother’s plan, as does the quiver of the breath she releases when she spots her father on the open screen of my laptop. She is as devastated as me but vainly trying to keep it together because she trusts that her mother would never lead her astray.
Her faith is admirable, and it has me doing something I haven’t done in years. I close my laptop screen before bobbing down and holding out my arms in offering.
She runs into my arms in an instant, almost knocking me over with the strength of her hug.
Once I have her tucked under my arm, I promise to make everything right.
“I won’t let them take her from us, Tillie.” I hug her in closer, lessening her shakes. “I won’t let them win.”