17. Sandrine
Sandrine
“Jess?”
A voice pulls me back from somewhere else.
I turn my head and almost cry. “Lourdes?”
Sitting in a chair pulled close to the bed, she strokes my cheek. “I’m here, Jess.”
Kirill said she was on her way. But she’s so tense, her knuckles have gone white. She looks different than she did in Arizona a few weeks ago. She looks terrified because of me. I don’t like this. I’m done with all of this.
“What… What happened?” My throat feels dry, like I’m breathing in hot stones.
“What do you remember?” She deploys the therapeutic tactic.
It makes me want to scream, but a little face comes into my head. God, remembering that young child feels like stepping onto thin ice that may crack any second.
“I was in the library.” I don’t mention the child calling me the same name that Kirill had been calling me.
And that her mother has the same name.
“You had an episode,” Lourdes breaks it to me gently without judgment.
The careful way someone speaks around someone fragile. I am so tired of being fragile.
When I say nothing, she continues, “But it’s okay. You’re okay now. I’m here.”
As she has been for the last six months. But it’s time to take care of myself.
I swallow and push myself up slightly against the pillows, taking back my agency.
For the first time, I’m careful about what I say.
I’ve let Lourdes choose what she thought was best for me for five years.
First, she moved me from Lakeshore to the facility in New York.
Then she moved me to Marlowe Rehab in Arizona.
Then Kirill brought me back here to Chicago.
I am done being dragged around.
“Jessica, look at me,” Lourdes urges me back.
“Jessica,” I whisper, shaking my head. “That’s not my name, is it?”
Lourdes goes still and bites her lower lip in anger.
“I’m sorry. Dad changed your name. He never told me why.
We had been working with the doctors to prepare a transition for you.
A gentle one, with all of us around you.
Me, Ares, Elodie. But that… That man just stole you from us, from your care. He ruined everything.”
“It’s okay.” Now, I’m consoling her. “He said my name is Sandrine.”
She exhales and smiles. “I’ve been waiting to tell you.” Gripping my hand, she kisses my fingers. “I’ve been wanting to tell you who you really are.”
I think about that. God, the stress she must have been under for five years to keep calling me by a different name.
“Kirill also said he’s my husband,” I say to address that next.
My sister’s face reddens. “Well…”
“You knew that, too?” I whisper harshly. “About Kirill and me?”
My sister closes her eyes briefly, as if she’s bracing herself. When she opens them again, there’s guilt there.
“Married, no. We thought you had gotten engaged before the accident. Kirill sent Ares a video on New Year’s Eve,” she admits.
That was months ago.
“A video?” I repeat.
“You were in a park. With Kirill,” she says, no longer cushioning the truth. “You were showing off a ring. I assumed you weren’t forced.”
I grip the edge of the mattress as her confession threatens to send me spiraling. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
Her jaw tightens with a flicker of hardness beneath her usual warmth. “For this exact reason,” she says roughly. “I knew it would overwhelm you. You weren’t ready.”
I can’t argue with that. I wasn’t. Who would be ready for something like this?
“There was a little girl,” I say, the memory of her cutting through everything else. “In the library. She said her name was Violet.”
Lourdes blinks several times.
“And she said…” My voice fractures, splinters under the weight of what happened next. “She said her mother’s name is Sandrine.”
A blush creeps across my sister’s cheeks. “Let’s wait until your medication arrives.”
My heart thumps against my ribs. “You knew I also had a daughter?”
“No,” she says immediately, shaking her head. “Kirill kept that part from us. We didn’t know about the child. Until just now.”
I let out a breath that scrapes my lungs on the way out. “I don’t believe it. I would know if I gave birth to a child.”
Would I?
My hand moves instinctively to my stomach, pressing the soft flesh that’s been there since I woke up in the hospital. I try to feel something, some echo of pain. There’s nothing unfamiliar from a few days ago.
But Lourdes is watching me now with a strange, searching look.
“You do have more of a belly than I remember,” she says cautiously. “You were a string bean when I left for college.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking,” she replies, an unfamiliar edge in her voice. “Sandrine, I know you don’t remember anything before the accident, but you were dating Kirill Volkov, and you never told me. You got pregnant and didn’t tell me. You got engaged, married, and had a baby, and you didn’t tell me.”
Each sentence cuts deeper than the last. Every word is the truth but also distorts everything I thought I knew about myself. But all I knew about myself this time around was what others told me.
I never imagined I had a husband and a child somewhere. I trusted Dad and Lourdes to tell me the truth. But it looks like I was living a secret life with the heir to the Bratva.
“In that video you saw…” I swallow. “What did I look like?”
Lourdes gives a soft smile. “I recognized your smile. You looked very happy. Like you were in love. And so did he.”
My chest tightens painfully because now I think he hates me. But I don’t voice that.
“I…” I falter, my mind scrambling to defend a version of me I don’t remember. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.”
Lourdes leans forward, her voice softening again. “Do you remember the exercise they taught you on how to coax a memory?” she says. “You think: what would I do now?”
I nod faintly, my fingers curling into the blanket.
“I need you to be strong, Sandrine.” My sister says my name with a smile, like it pained her to keep this part of me in the shadows. “You’re still the same person. You still have the same heart. If you loved that man—”
“Kirill,” I finish, the word slipping out before I could stop it. “When I woke up in the hospital, I remember Dad calling people, pacing, acting…frantic. He never mentioned Kirill. Why didn’t he tell me I was married? Or that I had a baby. Or let me see my baby?”
I calculate that Violet must have been an infant.
Lourdes’s mouth tightens. “Dad kept that part from me, too. He must not have wanted you with Kirill. Maybe that’s why you kept it a secret. And that’s why he changed your name. And never told you. To keep you apart.”
I hadn’t thought much about the life I had before. But that life found me.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” my sister lowers her voice. “If you want to leave here, Ares will make that happen. We underestimated Kirill. He found you when we took every possible measure to keep you hidden.”
Freedom. Escape.
But instead of relief, an icy dread settles in my chest. The image of the little girl flashes in my mind again. The way her nose wrinkled, I saw myself.
“That’s what Dad did!” I push myself out of bed and stand on my own two feet. “He hid me. I won’t leave my child again.”
“Where are her meds?” Lourdes shouts over her shoulder, getting to her feet as well so we’re eye-to-eye.
“No. Meds are not the solution to everything!” But the realization settles over me like a slow, inevitable tide. “Yes, I guess I did all those things you mentioned. I kept those secrets. I have to take responsibility for them. Here. Not hidden away.”
Lourdes watches me carefully. “Kirill said her name was Violet. It was your favorite color to paint. I can see you naming her that.”
I fumble for a response, but there’s a knock at the door. “Come in.”
As it opens, Ares strides inside. “How do you feel, Sandrine?” he asks.
“Weird,” I answer and sit back on the bed.
Lourdes whispers to her husband, but I hear it. “I offered to take her out of here. She wants to stay. She wants to get to know her daughter.”
Ares’s gaze shifts to me, assessing. “We can demand a DNA test.”
“No,” I say sharply. “Why would Kirill lie? Of all the people on the planet? Why pluck me out of a rehab in Arizona and tell me I’m his wife and the mother of his child?”
Ares thinks about that. “That is an elaborate scheme if it had no merit.”
Lourdes strokes my cheek. “Ares said, she has our eyes.”
Ares stands up straighter. “Kirill just spoke to a doctor at a place called Norridge.”
Lourdes nods. “That’s where she was before Lakeshore.”
“He will take you there tomorrow,” Ares continues.
“To stay?” Panic flickers through my chest. “I can’t—”
“No,” Ares interrupts gently. “As an outpatient. On a trial basis. He agreed to let the doctors determine what is best for you.”
“I know what’s best.” I straighten my spine. “All that treatment in New York and then at Marlowe has made a difference. I’m strong. I can manage the headaches, the dizziness. My words don’t feel sluggish on my tongue as much anymore.”
Lourdes smiles. “You do sound like the old you.”
The tension in my shoulders loosens just a fraction with her acknowledgment.
Ares turns back to his wife. “We need to go back to the hotel, my love. You need rest.”
I watch the way he looks at her, the way his hand rests on her stomach. Did Kirill look at me like that when I was pregnant? A strange ache blooms in my chest because all those memories are lost.
Lourdes said Kirill looked like he loved me in this video she’s talking about. But he doesn’t anymore. I can tell.
“Where is Elodie?” I ask, remembering that she’s still missing.
A strange silence falls over the room, and Ares’s expression hardens. When Lourdes looks away first, my stomach twists into a knot.
“What?” I ask, looking between them. “What happened to her? Tell me! It’s my fault.”
“No, honey, it’s not,” Lourdes tries to assure me.
“Nothing happened to her,” Ares says, his shoulders squared.
Which means something definitely happened.
“Ares,” Lourdes says quietly.
His jaw tightens. “I’m working on it. Calls have been placed. I know the man who has her.”
“Where is she?” I press. “What are you working on?”
Lourdes reaches for my hand. “Ares will bring her home.”
Home. The word has no meaning to me anymore.
“Bring her home from where?”
Another look passes between them. One I don’t understand.
“We’ll talk more about it later,” Lourdes says softly. “Okay? You need to rest more so you feel better.”
I don’t like that answer. I don’t like any of this. It’s always been about me. I don’t want my cousin to be less of a concern because I had a freaking panic attack.
Lourdes squeezes my hand. “We’re staying at the Fairmont,” she says. “I’ll call you later.”
“How? I don’t have a phone,” I say with more bitterness than any other time since the accident.
For the first time in five years, I’m back in the world, and I feel how far behind I’ve fallen.
“I’ll get her a phone,” a deep voice cuts in from the doorway.
My entire body goes rigid as I turn my head to see Kirill leaning against the doorframe, watching us with those impossible cobalt eyes.
“And I’ll give you her number, Lourdes,” he says kindly. “You can call anytime.”
Ares and Kirill stare each other down for a few moments. Then Ares straightens and lifts his hand to shake Kirill’s. The two powerful men don’t say anything. Ares breaks the hold first and uses that hand to wrap it around Lourdes’s waist, keeping her from touching Kirill.
They leave me alone with him. My husband. The father of my child.
Violet. My daughter. God, she saw me melt down. She’s here in this house. I feel a strange pull. I want her.
Kirill steps inside and shuts the door.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Better,” I admit.
He nods, seeming to believe me. “Your medication is on the way. I sent one of my men to pick it up.”
“I don’t want medication anymore.”
“They control the headaches and the dizziness,” he says.
“How do you know?”
“I looked it up.” He leans against the fireplace. “I looked up a lot of things in the last hour.”
“Oh,” I say, studying the tension in his shoulders. “Lourdes told me there’s a video of us,” I say carefully, looking for regret in his eyes. “Can I see it?”
“Of course.” Without missing a beat, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He taps the screen a few times and then holds it out to me. “Just press play.”
I take it with shaking hands, knowing nothing will be the same after I watch this.