24. Elena
ELENA
V iktor and Nikolai stayed with me while I worked.
I knew they weren’t supervising me. They didn’t need to. Sacha and Igor and another IT specialist were in and out of the room I was supposed to call my office.
I wasn’t a loose thread that someone had to hover over.
It seemed more like they weren’t sure what else to do.
As though he decided it might be better for me to not be alone.
Try as I might, I couldn’t focus on the screen. Numbers blurred and my thoughts wandered.
Sitting at the computer and working on any spreadsheet while knowing that the man I’d given my body to was heading out to kill my father…
This isn’t normal.
This can’t be normal.
Yet, I wasn’t hysterical.
My sense of normal had already been skewed. When I first figured out that the specific accounts I worked with belonged to crime families, my normal had shifted.
Then when my father gave me to Adrik Volkov as the price to pay for the mismanagement of that one big shipment and transfer, I acknowledged that it wasn’t normal either.
I’d sat in the women’s restroom until Linda-Lisa found me, convincing myself that this couldn’t be reality, that it was fiction, not my life.
All this time I’d been living here and working as the Volkovs’ head accountant, my normal had shifted again. Perhaps I was too laidback. Or maybe I preferred to cling to the loose idea of ignorance being bliss, that so long as I didn’t know any details, my personal moral compass was still intact.
That killing people was bad and saving or helping people was good.
That lying was frowned upon and truth was rewarded.
Even when that intruder had clearly been shot outside the guest house, I could waver with my judgment, thinking that he’d been shot in the line of self-defense on my behalf.
But I do know the details now.
I was weighed down with the stark reminder of details. I was fully aware—from Adrik’s own words—that John Morovov was going to be killed.
Adrik had been direct and honest about going there to kill him.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I couldn’t claim ignorance about this.
All I could do was try to compartmentalize it. To box and lock it up and hope that one day, I would process it.
But that wasn’t going to be today.
Because in a “normal” world, this wasn’t right. As his daughter, I should’ve protested for his life.
I couldn’t have, though, because he had brought this on himself through his own actions.
In a “normal” situation, as a concerned bystander, I should’ve called him to warn him or contact the police.
But that wouldn’t have done a damn thing.
My father had zero contact with me and dismissed anything I ever said. And if I’d called the police? Ha. I was entrenched in the Mafia world, beholden to their rules and laws and idea of justice. Calling the police would be an act of defiance against the Volkovs, and I didn’t want that either.
“Maybe you could go lie down or something,” Nikolai suggested.
Viktor nodded. “Take a nap or something.”
I pulled my lips into my mouth and nodded. It was sweet of them to give me that idea. “I’m not sure I can, um, stop thinking and turn off to rest right now.”
Nikolai nodded sympathetically, which surprised me. He killed just like the others. This was nothing big for them to morally accept. Yet, he was cognizant of how I struggled, convincing me that there was more than what met the eye with all these brutish men.
“This might help,” Viktor said, deadpan. He held up a bottle of vodka.
I winced. “I’ll just… lie down for a while.”
They walked me to the house. Everything felt off. Weird.
He’s going to kill him.
He’s going to kill him right now.
It looped in my head, making me feel like I was losing my mind. Standing in the shower seemed like an idea to ground myself, but once the water hit me and steamed in a cloud, the tears started.
I couldn’t be sure when he would be dead. Or how.
I just knew that he would be.
Grief swept in, but it wasn’t necessarily only for him.
Not the loss of him.
My father and I had never been close enough for him to warrant such compassion from me.
But I was a good person. I liked to think I had a good heart.
I couldn’t have saved him even if I tried.
It made my heart ache to consider any senseless deaths happening, but in his situation, was it so senseless?
Wasn’t he complicit in earning a punishment like paying with his life?
I sniffled and wiped my tears away, but they still came.
Hatred mixed in with the loosely defined sadness. Grief was one matter. But this deep regret? I didn’t know how to box that up and lock it away in my mind.
I hated how he’d used me my whole life. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of me to judge him now, at the end of his life, but as I thought back to how he’d always been a part of mine, it wasn’t with fondness.
He’d used me, forcing me to do a job I never wanted.
With his death, I was forced to come to a full circle of realizing I really had been helpless and stuck so he could take advantage of my willingness to assist him at the firm.
“What is it about me that makes people so eager to use me?” I whispered to myself.
It came out as a broken plea to no one, and I doubted I’d ever have an answer.
So starved for love and attention as I was, I was so profoundly conditioned to want to help and please others that I couldn’t even get out of a situation when I was used.
When I let myself become a dismissible thing.
“Just like he’s doing now…” I whispered in this solitude of the water pelting my back.
Adrik Volkov was earning a similar description of what I’d saved for my father.
Adrik didn’t care.
He didn’t love me.
He only gave me attention when it benefited him—when I could be his personal accountant or when I could be his fuck toy.
He wasn’t putting himself on the line for when I wanted or needed him, even for something as simple as seeking comfort after the news that someone had almost broken into where I lived.
For a long while, with so many minutes passing that I lost track of time, I stood in the shower and let all the thoughts and questions bombard me. Eventually, I lowered to sit with my back against the wall.
Alternating between zoning out, sobbing, frowning, and lightly crying, I let an entire array of emotions assault me.
The water had turned cold, but without knowing how to articulate my grief—not just for the man who was supposed to be my father but also for myself in how he’d used me for so long—I couldn’t find the energy to snap out of it and move.
I sat there, shivering.
And I probably would’ve sat there freezing all night long if Adrik hadn’t come.
He stormed into the bathroom, clearly seeking me out.
“Fuck.”
His form moved behind the frosted glass wall.
“Yes. I found her. She was showering.” He hung up his phone, tossing it to the vanity as he hurried to the door.
It slid open loudly, but I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. I was too numb—with my skin so cold and my mind so dulled.
He scowled, reaching over to shut the water off.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded as he reared back to grab a towel.
I don’t know. I really don’t know.
“You knew it was coming.”
I should have. I’d done myself a disservice in avoiding reality for too long. I should have known something like this was coming once I realized I wasn’t going to be killed after that first day.
“How the hell can you be this broken over him?” He wasn’t slow or gentle as he wrapped me in the towel.
The thick, plush terry fabric barely registered as a tangible weight on my skin, I was so cold.
“How the fuck can you be grieving him, Elena?” He spoke with such disgust, so much incredulity, that it should’ve jarred me to react.
As he lifted me off the floor of the walk-in shower stall, I couldn’t do anything.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t speak.
I shut down, and as he carried me to place me in bed, his face so stern and disapproving, I wondered what kind of world I’d find when I snapped out of this haze.
One where I would still be used and dismissed, never loved and appreciated?
Or something else?