Chapter 12
NINA
I’m unpacking the boxes of my belongings with the television on in the background when the anchor says something that jerks my head up.
“—a fire in Baltimore has destroyed a landmark mansion owned by prominent Russian art dealer Melor Kotov—”
The shirt I’m folding slips from my boneless fingers. That’s my father they’re talking about. My childhood home. I don’t have many happy memories of either, but it’s shocking to learn that both have been destroyed.
I pick up my phone and hover my thumb over the dial icon next to Rafail Volkov’s name. I hardly know him. He’s my father’s rival. But who else would I call? Andrei ordered me not to contact him under any circumstances.
Before I can make a decision, the phone starts ringing. Startled, I drop it and have to search for it in the mess I’ve made of the bedroom. I find it dancing inside a fuzzy slipper.
“Nina? It’s Rafail. I have bad news.”
Instantly my heart begins racing. “Andrei?”
“Yes, partly. He went to meet with your father. He says Melor attacked him.”
“I believe it. Is he alright?”
“He’s pretty beat up. Andrei managed to get himself to an underground hospital. He’s on his way back to Brooklyn. He lost a lot of blood. He won’t exactly be as pretty as he was when you last saw him.”
I huff a reluctant laugh. “He wasn’t pretty to begin with.” Handsome. Intimidating. Pretty, not so much.
“He will live. That’s the important thing. Your father on the other hand…” He trails off.
“I saw the news.” I don’t feel sorrow. I feel numb, with worry for Andrei trying to crowd past it.
“I’m sorry, Nina. Your father is dead and the house is gone, too.”
“All of it?”
“Pretty much. Andrei says he had to dispose of the body in a way that would destroy evidence of his involvement.”
“Andrei…killed him?” I feel as if my mind is stuck in first gear while events race past me at ninety miles an hour. I can’t quite process what’s happening.
“He says it was self-defense. Andrei can give you the details when he gets home in an hour or two.” Rafail chuckles mirthlessly. “Depending on traffic.”
I disconnect and stare around the disaster of my bedroom. I have to clean up. Make space for Andrei on the bed. He will need to rest.
Married for less than a week and my husband has already killed my only living relative. I wanted him to do it. I just didn’t think…I didn’t know how much that would scare me. A tight ball of pain lodges inside my ribcage. Squeezing my heart.
I flatten my hand over my stomach. My period is a couple of days late. I don’t feel anything that might be a sign of pregnancy, but suddenly my instincts are flashing red—Run. You cannot have a baby with a man like your father.
I thought I was choosing safety. But if Andrei killed my father, he also killed my only chance of ever finding out what happened to my mother. He might kill me, once the honeymoon phase wears off. What have I done?
Trapped myself in a life exactly like the one that got my mother murdered by her own husband. That’s what.
I place a pile of shirts in a drawer. Hang skirts and dresses in the closet. Finally give up on any semblance of organization and toss everything on the bed into a corner of the big closet and shut the door. All that’s left is to take the cardboard box downstairs for recycling.
When I pick it up, something rattles and the weight is off. A brown object hidden in shadow sits at the bottom. I didn’t notice it earlier when I was emptying it. The worn leather blended in. Now, I take out the purse and stare at it in disbelief.
It feels like a sign from God. My mother looking out for me from beyond the grave.
The purse lining is still stuffed with carefully sewn stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
The plastic rectangle with my fake name is there.
Maybe it isn’t much, but it’s enough to start over somewhere else where no one will ever find me.
There’s no choice. I can’t live like this.
Can’t bring a baby into this life. Let him or her suffer the way I did.
There is very little daylight between Andrei and my father.
They are both—were both—wedded to the bratva before any woman, and I refuse to spend the rest of my life married to a nightmare.
Andrei
The morphine the clinic gave me to deal with the stitches and blood transfer knocked me out cold during the ride home.
Home.
Where the city meets the sea and my anghel awaits.
But when the car pulls in and Rafail’s men help me out of the back seat—every muscle aches, covered in so many stitches that I look like Frankenstein’s monster—the house is empty.
Lifeless. Just like that mansion felt before I set it on fire.
“Nina?” I call out. The men leave at my insistence. If she isn’t here, I don’t want anyone to know that I let the most precious person in my life slip through my fingers like a fool.
I haul myself up the stairs to the bedroom. The freshly made bed is tempting. I want to return to the dream world where pain can’t reach me. Not yet. I have to know.
“Anghel?”
No response.
I flick the lights on in the stairs leading to the apartment she has adopted as her studio. The smell of paint reaches my nostrils. If she left, she went without her precious art supplies.
At the top of the stairs, I see through my one good eye an easel with an unfinished canvas. I limp closer. Melor narrowly missed an artery when he stabbed my thigh.
I have seen Nina’s paintings in store windows, in online images, and printed in glossy gallery catalogs.
But never have I seen her handiwork up close like this.
A single light attached to the top of the easel casts a bright light over the scene she has created.
It’s deceptively simple, and utterly devastating.
A girl sits on a swing, her skirt flying, mouth open, and laughing. Behind her is a dark figure with black holes where his eyes should be and blood dripping down its cheeks like tears.
The painting cuts deeper than any knife. I suck in a harsh breath. Stitches strain and pull on my flayed skin.
I’m the monster. I always knew I was Nina’s nightmare. This picture is proof. She is the child. I take one step back. My knee buckles. I drop heavily on the floor clutching my head. That image will be seared into my memory forever.
Tears sting the backs of my eyelids. I haven’t felt this hot, itchy sensation since the day my parents’ landlord threw me out of their flat back in Moscow—when I was a child like the one on Nina’s canvas.
“It’s not you,” a female voice says from across the room. Distant. I jerk my head up and make out the shape of a woman’s head against the moonlit window. “The figure in that painting—it isn’t you.”
“You’re here.” Relief washes over me. “I thought for sure you had gone.” I try to rise and fail on the first attempt. Between my injuries and the morphine, I’m not completely steady. Nina turns, her profile illuminated by pale light.
“I stayed. I needed to know if you found out what happened to my mother’s body.”
The surge of hope I’d felt crumbles into dust. I shake my head. She sighs and comes over to me, tugging my elbow to help me stand. “I tried, Nina, but I had to defend myself. He attacked me.” I gesture vaguely at my ruined body.
“So I see.” Nina’s brows pinch over the straight bridge of her nose. “Andrei. I am glad you killed Melor. He was the monster who haunted my childhood. Not you. You call me ‘angel,’ but you are the guardian who has always watched over me.”
“I sent you back to him,” I say remorsefully.
“You didn’t know the full depth of what he was capable of.” Her blue eyes search my face. “You thought men protected their women. Wives and daughters should be safe with their husbands.” She closes her eyes. “Maybe it’s because violence is all I’ve ever known, but you make me feel safe.”
That spark of hope flares to life once more.
“In the end, you protected me the bratva way. Saved me the only way the Kotov faction could respect. Now you’re their leader. I am so proud of you.”
Cupping her face, I crash my bruised lips down on hers.
She is the only softness I have ever known in life, yet she is steel at her core.
“You are my life, my love, my breath. Without you, I would die. You were never a means to an end, Nina. You were always the main objective in my pursuit. The thought of hurting you, anghel…I would rather take this kind of beating every day than harm a single hair on your head. I want to make a life with you. I know I’m a selfish monster.
You have every right to paint me as a shadow over your life.
If you want to go, I won’t try to keep you.
But if you do leave, remember that this world is not safe for the likes of us.
The only place you are safe is with me.” I kiss her forehead.
Her cheeks. I taste the salt from her tears.
“You are my monster, Andrei,” she says in a voice that wobbles ever so slightly. “I am not going to run. I love you. The only place I ever want to be is by your side. So I will ask you…can we try again? Start like this was our choice all along and not a union of desperation and survival?”
“I’d like nothing more, anghel.”