Chapter 60 Lukas
LUKAS
Crayon on construction paper. Three stick figures holding hands beneath a yellow sun.
Written across the top in wobbly capitals:
On our fourth day in self-imposed captivity, I wake to cold sheets and an empty space where Rae should be.
The panic is instantaneous and primal. I reach out and find nothing but rumpled linen. The ghost of her warmth is already fading.
She’s gone.
I’m on my feet at once. She left. She finally saw what you are and she ran.
I deserve it. Fuck, I knew it was coming, too. I’ve been living on borrowed time from the moment I touched her, and now, interest is due.
But knowing it was coming doesn’t stop the howl building in my throat.
I tear through the house, bellowing her name. “Rae! Rae!”
I receive no answer. Even if she did call back, I’m not sure I’d hear her over the roar of my blood in my ears.
I take the stairs down three at a time. My knee protests—an old injury, older than Rae herself—but I don’t slow down.
“Rae!”
The kitchen is cold. The tray from yesterday’s breakfast sits on the counter, plates scraped clean but unwashed. There’s no sign of her in here.
She wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Would she?
Why wouldn’t she? You’re a monster. A killer. A miserable bastard who slaughtered his wife and has been decaying from the inside ever since.
Fucking hell. I should’ve known: This is what happens when you let someone in.
I storm through the rest of the downstairs. Bathroom—empty. Living room—empty. Study—empty. The panic is starting to consume me.
Think, you bastard. Think!
But I can’t fucking think right now. I just need to find Rae. Once I can put my hands on her again, everything will be fine.
I limp back upstairs as fast as I can, even with my knee screaming in protest. I’ve checked every room on the ground floor. The brownstone isn’t that big. Where the fuck could she have gone?
I shove open each door on the second-floor corridor. Closet, half-bathroom, closet—
Then I stop.
This one used to be Kirill’s bedroom.
A race car bed is parked in one corner, buried under a decade and a half of dust. Superman posters are flopping from where they were once tacked to the walls.
Sunlight sneaking through the gaps in the blinds has leached the colors from the paint.
Action figures stand mid-battle on the dresser, locked in a war that will never end.
Above the bed, a mobile of planets hangs motionless. Their universe has stopped turning.
I brace one hand against the door frame as I struggle to breathe.
I haven’t set foot in this room in eighteen years.
The past rushes up like blunt force trauma to the throat. I can hear Elena’s voice, singing Kir to sleep. His small hand reaching for mine.
Papa, stay.
I always, always stayed.
Until I didn’t.
Kir was still wearing the Batman pajamas, cape and mask included, even though he’d turned seven in the summer. He threw a fit whenever Elena or I tried to wrangle any of it off of him.
But even Batman couldn’t stop him from trembling in his sleep.
I was in my study, like always, when I heard his voice shatter the stillness of the brownstone.
“Papa, Papa, there’s monsters!”
I dropped my papers and ran through the house. My knee wasn’t so crippled in those days, so I got there quickly. I burst through the door and knelt at his bedside.
He’d been so small back then. A dark-haired scrap of a boy, scrawny as hell, all limbs. Those knobby knees were pulled to his chest when I entered the room. His eyes were damp and huge in the gloom.
As soon as I was close enough, he reached out and I swept him into my arms. His fingers clutched at my shirt with the frantic strength of a child who knew beyond any doubt that his father could fix anything.
“Tiho, syn,” I’d murmured into his hair. “Zdes’ net nikakikh monstrov. A esli by oni byli, ya by ubil kazhdogo iz nikh.”
Quiet, son.
There are no monsters in here.
And if there were, I’d kill every last one.
He’d believed me. Of course he had. I was his father, after all. I was invincible. I was the unyielding wall between him and everything terrible in the world.
Little by little, his breathing slowed and his grip on my shirt loosened. Sleep took him back under.
I sat there for hours after he drifted off, watching my boy breathe. In that moment, I’d have killed anything that threatened him. Would have torn the world apart with my bare hands.
And now?
Now, my son looks at me and sees me as the monster.
When did that happen? When did that small, trembling boy who believed in me without question transform into the cold-eyed man who tried to eviscerate me in front of a boardroom full of witnesses?
Was it the night his mother died?
Was it the years after, when I buried myself in work and vodka and empty women while he raised himself amidst the wreckage of our family?
Or was it slower than that? A gradual erosion, year by year, silence by silence, until one day, he woke up and realized his father was no hero? Just a hollow shell wearing a dead man’s skin?
My knee throbs. My chest aches.
I became the monster.
I did that.
I shake my head angrily until the memory dissipates. Just like that, this place returns to being what it is, what it’s been for nearly two decades now: merely an abandoned room. Nothing more.
In any case, there’s no sign Rae was in here. I would’ve seen her footsteps in the dust coating every surface.
I back out slowly and close the door behind me silently, same as I did that night all those years ago, as if I might still awaken the boy who was once my son if I make too much noise.
When the door is closed, I look up—and there she is. Rae pauses mid-descent, halfway down the stairs that lead up to the third floor.
“Hi,” she says, smiling like she hasn’t just shaved ten years off my life. “You’re awake.”
The relief that crashes through me is so violent it’s almost shameful. My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists so she won’t notice.
“Where the fuck were you?” I spit.
Her eyebrows lift at my tone. “Exploring. There’s a little veranda up on the third floor—did you know? I couldn’t sleep, so I went up to watch the sunrise.” She tilts her head and squints. “Lukas, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I charge up the stairs, aching knee be damned, and haul her against my chest. She makes a small sound of surprise but doesn’t resist.
“I woke up and you were gone,” I mumble wearily. “I thought… I thought you’d left.”
Rae pulls back just enough to look at my face. As she does, her body stiffens against mine. “Even if I wanted to leave,” she says slowly, “where would I go?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I have no job, Lukas. I’m basically FBI’s Most Wanted.
The press is circling like vultures waiting for me to step outside so they can pick my bones clean.
” She laughs humorlessly. “I’m not saying I’m trying to go anywhere; really, I’m not.
It’s just that I’m not exactly spoiled for choices, either. ”
“I’ve told you: I’ll take care of everything. The press, the job, whatever you need—”
“Lukas, I don’t want to be taken care of. I mean, yes, I do, but not like… Not like that. Not like a damn houseplant.”
She wriggles out of my arms. I let her go, even though it feels like ripping off a limb.
“I want to be chosen,” she continues. “Not acquired or collected. Not kept, like some cute little pet you feed and water and pat on the head when it pleases you.” Her eyes are watery but her jaw is set. “I need to know I’m here because you want me.”
A bit of my old anger surges up in me, though it’s moving through different channels these days.
My hand finds Rae’s waist, and I push her backward until her spine hits the stairway railing.
The old wood creaks under the pressure, but I don’t give a fuck if it splinters and takes us both down with it—I just need her to understand that I mean what I say next.
“Sweetheart… you think I gave up a billion-dollar company because I wanted a pet?” I cage her in with both arms, my hands gripping the railing on either side of her hips.
“I chose you, Rae. Every hour I don’t answer that phone, I’m choosing you.
Every meeting I’m missing, every crisis I’m ignoring, every bridge burning to ash while I stand here with my cock hard and my chest cracked open—that’s me choosing you. ”
She stares up at me. Those brown eyes are searching my face for something. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but whatever it is, I hope to God she finds it.
“You want to know if you’re chosen?” I lean in until my forehead rests against hers. “Sweetheart, if you so much as shivered, I’d set fire to everything I’ve ever loved just to warm you up.”
I feel her uncertainty in the wavering breath that leaves her lips. “Prove it,” she whispers.
“Tell me how and I will.”
She thinks for a second. Then she says, “Okay. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.”
Her face is tilted up toward mine. The morning glow through the skylight overhead catches the faint freckles scattered across her nose.
Her Cupid’s bow lips are plump and soft.
The parallel lines between her brows, the ones that only show up when she’s frowning, come and go, like they aren’t sure whether to jump wholeheartedly into doubt or belief.
She wants the truth. A truth, any truth, just so long as it’s a real one.
I could still lie. I’m good at lying. I’ve done it for so long now. Eighteen years and counting.
But she’d know. I know she’d know.
So I give her what she’s asking for instead.
“I held Elena while I killed her,” I croak. I clear my throat. “And it felt so fucking good to watch her go.”
I’ve never said that out loud before. Not to Kir, not to the priests or the cops or the endless well-wishers. Not even to the ghosts that haunt me at three in the morning.
But I’m saying it now.
To her.