Chapter 25 Gabi
GABI
“I’ll mind the girls,” Yuri instructs. “You’ll have to manage. Figure it out. Come on, let’s get her up, and I’ll help you in the direction of her room.”
Somewhere in the past days, something has tilted for Yuri, from complete suspicion to what feels like tentative trust. He wouldn’t ask me to help if he didn’t trust me just a little bit.
I’m still on high alert around him, watching my every move, and it’s been exhausting.
This change is welcome, though it still doesn’t give me the all-clear.
Together, we manage to get Milana on her feet, Yuri strong, Milana somewhat frail for a dead weight. She’s all fine-boned fragility, legs long and slim, shapely arms and elegant fingers flaying as she grips blindly for a hold.
“It’s not far, just down here,” Yuri says as we cross the kitchen to her quarters as fast as we can. “Through here,” he adds as we reach the door I was told to never disturb under any circumstances. “I’ll be with the girls. Once she’s asleep, come to us. Blyad’, I still have shit to do today.”
I just nod, out of breath already as he eases his hold on Milana. Her head bobs and I support her with an arm around her back, leaning my hip into her body to keep her upright.
“The second door is her bedroom. The rest is all her suite, studio, and so on.”
“Okay.” I brace myself for the last haul. Yuri could have made the distance, but the girls can’t be left alone. Not on an estate where men with machine guns prowl around.
As he rushes off, and I take a tentative first step, Milana’s head sways as she drags her feet.
“Oh, fucking god,” she grunts. “I’m going to be so fucking sick.”
“No, you’re not,” I bark back, keeping her as upright as possible. I’m not cleaning that up for anybody. “Not until you’re in the bathroom. I won’t have it.”
Kids I get, they can’t help getting sick, but this is self-inflicted.
“Hurry,” Milana slurs on a dark, drunk chuckle. “You gotta…drag. Drag my sorry ass… there.”
“It is a sorry ass,” I reprimand her. Ivan has too much on his plate; he can’t deal with Milana, too.
His own sister is hurting him. I can’t understand where this protective flame for Ivan bursts out from me, but it’s hot and ablaze.
“Setting this example to Ivan’s girls! What must they be thinking? ”
“That I am a terrible drunk?” she whines, swinging between highs and lows. “Worse than their mommy?” She heaves. “Oh, god, nope. Nope…nope… That one took the cake.”
I know nothing about what shredded this family to pieces.
I know nothing about Milana or Ivan’s dead wife.
As an outsider, I don’t have the emotional baggage this family carries.
But I’ve seen women arrive at all the convents I’ve stayed at, seeking refuge from abusive husbands and partners.
For all I know, Milana is still recovering from a toxic relationship, and this is the reason why Ivan wants her here, to protect her from some Russian fucker. I can totally get on board with that.
“You’re not a bad person,” I say, my tone softer. “You’re just sad.”
“So so sad,” she weeps as I manage to steer her through the door.
Dimitri is gone; Grandad is sick. There’s more, I just know it in my gut. Maybe Milana will open up to me.
I stall as we enter her room. What a mess. The bed is unmade, linen rumpled in a heap. Clothes are dumped all over the carpet. Dirty plates and cups on the nightstand. It looks like months since this place saw a cleaner.
“Oh, god…fuck,” Milana sobs, and I speed up, forcing her along to a door that must lead to the en suite.
We make it just in time and she collapses over the toilet. What looks like pure vodka waterfalls from her mouth.
Good grief. Yuri wasn’t joking when he spoke about alcohol poisoning.
Is she trying to kill herself? And still the vomit comes.
I reach for a towel and wet it under the cold faucet, giving the place a swift inspection.
Like her room, it’s a chaotic mess. Milana has let go of everything, not just herself.
She now slumps at the toilet, and I wish she wouldn’t because I have no idea how to get her up again.
“Here.” I hold out the cold towel to her after the last of the convulsions have wracked her body.
She falls back, leans against the bath, and hides her face. I flush the toilet, search for some cleaning products, find some in the vanity cupboard, and scrub the bowl. I don’t stop. I keep going while she just sits there, face hidden, chest heaving.
“You need to take a shower, Milana,” I say, having cleaned the vanity, the bath, and just stopping short of getting into the shower to scrub that, too. She reeks, and I bet Dimitri would hate to see her like this. Or be cruel and mock her, depending on how things ended between them.
“Bath,” comes a raw voice through the towel.
My thoughts immediately go to Ivan. He can’t lose his sister. Whatever went on between them, it would devastate him to lose her. “I won’t let you drunk-drown on my watch.”
A sob wracks through her. Seeing her broken like this reminds me in many ways of myself, except I never had the privilege of drowning my sorrows.
It hits me this binge-drinking and then storming up to Yuri, demanding more vodka, is Milana’s loud cry for help.
She’s asking, where I have only coiled into myself, deep into my shell, using a patchwork of watered-down reasons to avoid my own despair.
I haven’t healed, and if this is the way for her to get through the day, who am I to judge?
I’m a hot fucking mess, too scared to live, always on the run.
I push this revelation to the back of my mind, because now isn’t the moment for epiphanies. “I need you to get up. Get in the shower. Wash yourself. Wash your hair. And brush your teeth. Can you do it yourself, or do you want my help?”
I stare at her, waiting for a reaction. She slowly drags the towel down her face, until her eyes peek out. They are bloodshot, making her baby blue irises pop like two full moons in a midnight sky.
“Yes? Please?” I push. “You’re going to do that for me? Wash yourself? Or do you need help?”
She shakes her head. “No. Can’t see me naked, love. Too many…secrets.”
Yes. I get that. I have secrets, too, that I don’t want anybody to see.
There isn’t a single mark on her arms or legs, but then, women get battered inside, too, where the pain doesn’t leave visible marks.
Verbal abuse, gaslighting, keeping them trapped without money…
No, Ivan has his reasons, and they aren’t cruel.
It’s something else. Milana is all in one piece, but I get the feeling she’s also irreparably broken.
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to clean your room while you’re in the shower. I’m leaving the door open, so you can call if you need anything.”
She nods and push-staggers to a stand.
“How much did you have to drink? Can you remember?”
“Dunno. So much wine. It’s a blur. That day, yesterday…and last night… this morning…rage-downed the vodka in minutes.”
Most of the vodka should be out of her stomach, but alcohol is still flooding her system. She’s on the slippery path of becoming an alcoholic and this family has suffered enough, what with the two girls’ mother gone. They can’t lose an aunt, too. “When last did you eat?”
“Dunno.”
“Okay.” I shudder a sigh. “You’ve got to eat, Milana. Wasting away like this…it just makes them win, don’t you get it? And then, when you have the chance to run, you’re going to need your strength. Trust me, I have experience in running.”
Milana holds my gaze, her own eyes searching, and she might be drunk, she might act out, but she soaks everything up, and I’ve just overshared.
“Let’s get going,” I say, wanting to steer her mind away from my verbal slip. “I’ve got to make dinner so you can have a decent meal. Ivan will be home, so it has to be good—”
Milana snort-laughs and rolls her eyes. “Not hard. The bar…so fucking low.”
It might well be, but still, I want to inject some happiness into this house, and being Italian, I’m going to do it through food.
I help her with the robe, drop it in the overflowing laundry basket, then step into the shower and open the faucet.
I test the water until it’s just right, then step away. “Call me if you need anything.”
She nods, and I walk out of the bathroom and take stock of her bedroom.
Fuck this shit pops up in my mind, in Dominic’s voice.
I start tossing discarded clothes into a pile and rip off the dirty bedlinen.
I keep half my attention on Milana, listening to the shower and for movement.
Through the sound of water, I hear sobs, but I let her be.
I can’t walk in there and hug her. She needs to cry and let go of all that tension—tension I feel building up in myself with every passing hour in this house.
It takes twenty minutes for her to finally turn off the faucet, and by that time, I’ve done my best to set the room straight. It will have to do. All I need is clean bedsheets to make up the bed.
As Milana comes to stand in the bathroom’s door, our gazes meet.
We don’t know each other, but between us, silent words about the unspoken tragedy of being a woman flow unhindered.
Something has broken this woman, and all she’s left with is exhaustion as she tries to find a means to forget. A means to carry on.
“Can I make your bed?” I ask, gently now. “Where can I find clean bedsheets?”
“Down the corridor,” she says, exhausted. “There’s a walk-in linen cupboard.”
I nod, and she nods back, authorizing me to leave her space and walk around unchaperoned. Once in the corridor, there’s more than one door, and I open one at random hoping to find the linen cupboard.
My breath stalls as my stomach plummets. Dimitri gone. Grandpa sick. That’s only half of it.
The once beautiful sitting room has been shredded, torn to pieces as if it has been bombed.
An acrid scent still hangs in the space, probably from the gunshots, as nothing’s been done here since war happened.
The walls are riddled with bullet holes, sometimes in a line that you’d make with a machine gun.
In my mind, the shots fire, and I cower by instinct as every bang is followed by the thump of a body hitting the floor as full stop.
I close the door, hand trembling as panic floods my veins.
Not now, Gabriella, not now.
You have to take care of Milana. You have to take care of Irisha. And Katya. And cook dinner. For Ivan. For the family. This family who is barely holding it together.
Later.
You can have a meltdown later.
With a deep breath, I pull myself tall and get on with it.