29. Kelly
29
KELLY
“ I can’t wait for it to just be over,” Eva admitted.
I shot her a look. “Funny.”
“What?” She smiled. “I’m serious. Planning a wedding is stressful.”
“At least you have an actual wedding to plan,” I reminded her.
She frowned, nodding. “I know. I’m sorry. That wasn’t very considerate of me to say.”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “No, it’s all right. I’ll get over it one day. And honestly, now that some time has passed, I understand why it happened the way it did. Or why it had to happen like that.”
She watched me, sighing as though she knew what I’d say.
“Jerome identified me as a Mafia wife. As a Baranov.” I looked down at the table, pensive and searching for the right words. “It was both my saving grace because it meant I had a strong husband to protect me and his brothers to back him up. But it was also my damning curse because they wanted to use my new Baranov name as a way to get intel.”
“That will always be a risk,” she admitted. “And over time, you will get used to having security with you.”
I laughed, lightly at first, then louder. “Oh, now that’s rich.”
“What?”
“I recall with vivid clarity when you wanted my help in sneaking away from Lev when he was your bodyguard. When you were so determined to lose your security detail that was assigned to you.”
She winced, then smiled sheepishly. “Well, I was young and stupid then.”
I cracked up. “It’s not like you’re much older now!”
“I know. I know.” She rolled her eyes.
“You’re still young. And just stupidly in love now.”
She sighed happily, glancing at Lev, who’d gone to talk with Rurik and Vik in the corner. “I am. And so are you. I’ll tell you what, though. The push and pull I had with Lev just made it all the more hotter. More… forbidden. Unlike you and Rurik. It’s like you were destined to meet and get together. A match made in heaven.”
“Eh, we have our moments. I’m getting fond of bickering with him because it means even better makeup sex.”
She smiled wider. “I wish you could’ve had a honeymoon.”
“Rurik says we will someday soon. I think he’ll try to plan it to be a surprise.”
“He’s so sweet on you and—” She stopped mid-sentence, frowning with a puzzled expression.
By now, the room had emptied out. Someone stopped the music that had been playing earlier too. It was less of a planning party and more of the last stretches of us talking.
Rurik, Lev, and Vik were all frowning and looking far too serious as another Baranov guard stood talking to them.
Something is wrong. I could tell just by the look on my husband’s face that he was trying so hard not to let me see how something was bothering him. But something was definitely wrong.
Immediately, a pit of dread hallowed me from the inside out. My pulse sped up, and I resisted the growing hints of a headache that I’d been ignoring all day. Stress wasn’t kind to me lately, despite the comfort, care, and relaxation that I got from being with such an attentive lover and partner.
Something is definitely wrong.
He must have sensed me looking at him, because he got up and approached me. With swift strides, he crossed the room and faced me. “Kelly?”
“Oh, God. What is it now?”
My mind went to O’Malley. Whenever I feared the worst, I was taken back to the utter dread and horror I felt that one crucial night of my life. That cop represented the worst of me, the darkest moment of my life, and whenever I felt so confined and trapped by panic like I did now, it was a repeat of the nauseating sensation I experienced then.
“We’ve gotten word that there are officers at your old apartment. They’ve been looking for you,” Rurik said, taking my hand and holding it, “but now they are actively trying to arrest you.”
“Arrest her?” Eva blurted. “For what?”
“They want to question you about the night Marcus James was killed,” Lev said. “Because you were an employee who was there before he was killed there.”
“My God.” I rolled my eyes, reverting to that sassy, sarcastic expression as a defensive mechanism. “I wasn’t there. Lots of other people had been at the office that day and evening too!”
“We know,” Rurik said.
“I never even met Marcus James!” I exclaimed.
He nodded, not arguing with me. “We’ve been aware of their interest in you of late,” he said calmly. “And after I killed Jerome Parson, I was under the assumption that no one else would be bothering you.”
“What about Eric Benson?” Oleg said, coming up to join us. He’d been seated in a chair near the fireplace, but as always, listening in. I swore that nothing ever got past the Boss.
I frowned at him. “What about him? I’d never met him before, except when Jerome tried to kidnap me.”
“But he was open to Jerome’s idea of getting you to rat out our secrets and plans. To use you as a mole.”
“Which I never would have done, Oleg,” I reminded him.
“Yes. I know.” He nodded once. “Perhaps he’s reconsidering, though, and is using any means possible to get you to come to him. If he has you brought in, then he could have access to you.”
I shook my head.
“Unless there is something else that would make the cops interested in talking to you,” Rurik said. “Something else that hasn’t come to light yet.”
I gulped, swallowing hard because my mouth had gotten so dry. Staring into his eyes, I tried not to freak out that he was catching on, that he was sharp enough to realize I wasn’t being completely honest.
“I can sympathize and understand why you were so nervous before, Kelly. You were being followed, you were alone by choice and without family. And you were tired, overworked, and unhappy. All those things would make anyone nervous about joining a Mafia organization.”
Still, I stared at him and said not a single word.
“And asking you to be part of my family, to willingly leave a so-called normal civilian life to be in my organization, is a big adjustment to make.”
I nodded, clinging to the familiar grip of his hand engulfing mine.
“But I’ve been curious why you still seemed so guarded, almost skittish at times.” He stepped closer, brushing my hair back out of my face until he held me, stroking his thumb over my cheek. “I’ve tried to understand what you meant when you’d say you weren’t worthy or deserving of anything good.”
He was hitting so hard, so close to where my heart ached with my past. A single tear leaked from my eye, and I damned the burn of more to come.
“Kelly, what haven’t you told me?” he asked gently.
I sniffled, hanging my head. “You won’t love me.”
He sighed, wrapping me into a tight hug. Being in his arms was my safe haven, but right now, with him voicing how he’d had suspicions of me all along, I couldn’t convince myself that I should be in his arms at all.
“That’s not true. What did I tell you after our wedding? I will always love you.”
When he tipped my chin up, I lifted my face completely and wiped my tears away.
“But I need to know if there is something else that would prevent me from keeping you completely safe.”
“We need to know if there is anything that can threaten any of us,” Lev said.
I nodded, gathering my courage even more when Eva took my hand and held it with a comforting squeeze. Behind her, Irina nodded. “What have you got to lose if you tell us?”
After a deep sigh, I replied, “Your love and friendship? Any respect you might hold for me?”
“I doubt that,” Oleg said gruffly.
Looking Rurik in the eye, I took the biggest, bravest step I ever could have imagined taking. I licked my lips, drew in a deep breath to steady myself, and began. “You once asked me if there was anything Jerome could hate me, specifically, for. Or if there was anything he could hold over me.”
He nodded, not letting me out of his loose hug.
“It wasn’t ever something I’d done to him. I wasn’t strong enough to take him on, and I never wanted to try that.”
“He’s dead now, anyway,” Vik commented.
“And I am so very grateful for that.” I looked at Rurik again, wanting him to see how open I intended to be with him. “Which is why I thought my secret would die with him.”
“What secret?” he asked.
“When I was a child, only eight years old, Jerome and I were in the same foster home. We both split up after our time there and ended up in another house together, but it was that first home where something happened.” I paused to steady my breath, feeling like I was ripping off a Band-Aid on my soul to speak about this. For years, the weight of this burden tormented me. Now that I had support, I wanted to shed the boulder in my mind and just be free of this pressure to keep this such a secret.
“The foster parents were assholes, neglecting us and abusing the younger ones.”
“It sounds like you were a younger one if you were only eight at the time,” Irina said.
I shrugged. “I had already grown and matured too much by then. The foster parents were terrible, even though they put on such an act and tried to impress the social workers. They were the biggest frauds. The mom would gamble and sleep around for money, and the father would do all kinds of drugs. They both had good jobs and were supposedly decent and upstanding members of that small town upstate, but they were evil. The father had this one friend who liked to visit.”
“Oh, fuck,” Vik growled and shook his head. “I can see where this is going.”
I nodded.
“He raped you?” Rurik guessed, his tone icy cold and his eyes so dark with anger.
“No. He wanted to. He tried to. Over and over, the mom and dad at that home would set me up to be ‘babysat’ by him at his house, which happened to be just diagonal from their house. And every time, I would sneak away. I was too small, too quick, and I would slip away and avoid him. He never touched me, never got close enough.”
Rurik released a deep breath of relief, but I knew that would be short-lived.
“They owed this friend a favor, though, because he’d helped them out of a jam before. Or several times before. Each time I ran off and hid from these babysitting nights, they’d whip me and tell me I had to go back to him. That I couldn’t escape it. Every time I escaped, it made him think that it was a game, that he had to catch me sooner or later and it would be sweet when he did. So, one night, he handcuffed me to a chair.” I trembled, fighting through the flashback. “But he was sort of drunk and high, and he didn’t seem to realize the metal rings meant for an adult wouldn’t hold my tiny wrists. And when he came toward me, um, naked and aroused, I slipped out of the cuffs and got ready to run again. For some reason, though, he laughed. And laughed. And laughed. He was cracking up, telling me that I would never win, that I would never be worthy or good for anything but fun for him, and he would catch me if it was the last thing he’d ever do.”
Rurik ran his free hand over his face, disturbed and struggling to hold his fury in.
“And I knew that he was right. I’d never be worthy of anything if I let him touch me. I already knew what sex was and what rape meant. I had to watch another foster parent rape a girl younger than me, and I remembered being so scared that it had to hurt. I knew this man, this ‘friend’ of theirs would never give up. So when he lunged for me and tried to catch me, threatening to kill me once he was done with me so it could be his little secret, I dodged him and grabbed?—”
Rurik hugged me.
I can do this. I can tell them.
“I grabbed the gun from his belt on the floor, turned around, and shot him until there were no more bullets left.”
Silence filled the room. I’d just admitted my darkest secret, which couldn’t be that terrible compared to all they’d done. But it had been a damnable sin I struggled with as a child, as a teen, and as an adult. It didn’t matter if they were killers and did it all the time. I wasn’t a killer, and it had hit me hard.
“I killed him. I didn’t know how many bullets hit him, but I saw a lot of blood. He fell, too, and didn’t get up. So I wiped off the gun because I’d seen it in movies the older foster kids watched, dropped it, and ran. I escaped, knowing he would never bother me again. I’d made sure of it. When I ran out the back of his house, though, I bumped into Jerome. He’d come and spied on me there, and he saw it all.”
“Jerome knew that you killed someone?” Eva asked.
I nodded. “He saw it all and just laughed at me as I escaped. I ran from that town and lived in the woods for a while until I was picked up and taken in to another foster family. I lied about where I was from, knowing I had to stay mobile like that until I was an adult. I never saw Jerome again until that other foster home, and he didn’t say anything about it. Then after that, I never saw him until he showed up on campus. He recognized me, of course. Once, when I fell asleep at the library studying, he slipped a note in my book that said ‘ I know what you did. ’”
“He saw you and knew—even before you married Rurik—that he could use your kill as leverage against you,” Lev guessed.
I nodded. “I think so. He was always trying to con other kids into doing him favors and helping him out, usually to shoplift or steal, and then later, to peddle drugs.”
No one spoke for a long time, just standing around and glancing at each other as my story sank in.
Rurik had yet to release me from his hug, but he gave me space to back up so I wasn’t leaning all the way against him and practically burrowing my face against his chest.
“And nothing happened with that man you killed?” he asked. “No one traced him to you?”
“No. I ran and never looked back. The foster family never looked for me. No one did. And I never spoke up about it to anyone, obviously, because I was terrified I’d be in so much trouble and everyone would judge me.”
“You acted out of self-defense,” Eva insisted.
“I had, but…” I lowered my gaze.
“Kelly,” Oleg said, speaking up for the first time since I started to spill my secret. “You said you took the gun from his belt.”
I nodded.
He narrowed his eyes. “What kind of a belt?”
“A utility one.” I heaved in a deep breath. “Like the kind cops wear.”
Rurik stiffened. “What?”
“He was a cop. I killed a cop and ran.” Feeling strangely braver to share this, I looked at him directly. “I killed Officer O’Malley and have been running and hiding from that secret every day of my life since.”