I kissed my son’s forehead as he slept, soft as a feather.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I whispered. “I’ll be better than my mother. Then your father’s mother. I’ll keep you safe.”
And I would.
Even if it meant losing myself in the process.
4
Konstantin Tarkhanov
The traitor died easily.
He fell to the ground like a sack of wheat, air and life escaping his form. Blood stuck to everything it came into contact with, including my hands and cuffs. I straightened them out. Bloody cuffs were one thing, but wrinkled ones? I was a gentleman, after all.
“Anything?”
I turned my head. Danika was pushed up against the wall, almost like she was trying to disappear into the bricks. Sweat covered her in a shiny sheen, worked up from hours of interrogation and being trapped beneath the banya. All the men had abandoned me to my interrogation, but Dani had, surprisingly, stayed.
“No.” I recalled her question. “Tatiana’s whereabouts remain unknown.”
Danika bit her lip. “Titus,” she corrected. “Her name is Titus. Tatiana is a woman we loved; Titus is the woman who killed innocents.”
“They are the same person.” I did make an effort to soften my voice. Danika was having a hard time coping with the loss of her surrogate mother and her dearest friend. “Sometimes the ones we love the most are the ones who hurt us the most.”
Something flickered behind her eyes. She knew I wasn’t talking about Tatiana.
Some raw part of me wanted to poke at Danika, to try and push her buttons. I wanted her to get irritated enough that she said her name. Enough dancing around the subject, enough sly looks and unfinished sentences.
But I wouldn’t do that to Danika.
I would save that wrath for my enemies–even if the only time they ever used her name was to mock me or summon my fury. Where is she now? Titus wants her dead; who’s to say her bones don’t already line my master’s crown?
To my enemies’ credit, this tactic usually worked. Saying her name did infuriate me, summoning the reaction they wanted. But they could never enjoy it long. Their deaths came quickly.
It was my family who avoided the topic like the plague. Not a single one of them had said her name for three years.
Sometimes I mouthed the syllables silently, reminding my tongue how to pronounce it.
“Olezka said he is following another trail. We should go and speak with him.” Danika’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I suspected that was why she had followed me down into the darkness, so she could be my way back up to the light.
If only she knew it was too late for me. The Heavens would burn before they saw me walk through their pearly gates. My soul was now a collection of violence and hatred, blood and madness. There would be no relief–except when I finally took my last breath.
Some days I contemplated it. A bullet to the head, a fall off the roof.
But then who would make the world safe for my family? For my niece and nephew? I was the only one capable of doing so. The only one who had nothing left to lose.
“Leave him until he brings someone to us,” I told her. “That is his job.”
“His job is to assassinate.” Not deliver prey to your dungeon, she didn’t add.
I stepped away from the body and exited the room. When I held the door open for her, Danika made a concerted effort to look everywhere but at the mutilated corpse we were leaving behind. She would never admit it, but she had kept her eyes closed for most of it, even covering her ears at some parts.
When we reached the hallway, she slowed down.
There was loaded silence for a few moments.
“Is everything okay, Danika?”
She glanced up at me, honey-brown eyes shiny with tears. “Do you...do you believe what he said?”
“What part?”
Danika looked down at her hands. “About her being...gone?”
A swirl of emotions grew inside of me but I kept my expression clear. “Tatiana had her chance to kill her and didn’t.”
“She had her chance to kill all of us,” Dani noted. “For years. Yet she didn’t.”
“Snakes are patient.”
She looked up and met my eyes head on.
One of the reasons Danika was such a good interrogator was that when she turned her full attention to you, you felt like the only person in the entire world. She has gripping eyes, Roksana had said when she had first come into the family. With just one look, you’re under her spell.
Per usual, Roksana was right.
“Yes,” Danika said, voice quieter but no less demanding. “They are, aren’t they?”
A weaker man would’ve answered Danika’s question in a rushed breath. The primal and hormonal part of their brain overriding their rational thought.
But I knew better than to fall under Dani’s spell. After all, who do you think had trained her? Had nurtured her abilities? It certainly hadn’t been charmless Artyom, rude Roman or dreamer Roksana. Not even Tatiana and Dmitri, though the two of them had doted on her in her youth.
It was that affection I had for her that stopped me from seeing her words as a challenge. If one of my men had spoken to me like that, I would’ve sprayed the walls with his blood.
“All done?”
Roman stepped out from the end of the hallway, his eyes immediately going to Danika. He had argued when she insisted on joining me and I knew he was checking her for any signs of hurt.
“We are. He told us nothing,” I said.
His eyes fluttered momentarily to the blood staining my hands. “Nothing at all?”
“Except that she was dead.”
Pain and denial warred together in his expression. A feeling I understood well. “That’s bullshit. Those fuckers are just saying that to piss you off.”
Danika interrupted, “It worked.”
“It’s bullshit,” he reiterated.
“That doesn’t make it any less effective,” she replied.
I stepped past Danika, sensing a fight about to happen. Both of them held back their comments when they saw me moving. Most likely, they would start up again when we got home.
The word ‘dead’ hung in my mind. There was nothing to say she was; but there was also nothing to say she wasn’t.
But I knew if Titus’s men were right, and she really was dead, that I was terrified to find out what would she would say to me when we met on the other side.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t think too much about leaving this earth. The fear of seeing her, the fear of her reaction when she saw what I had become, would be too much for me. I couldn’t bear to see the disgust and disappointment in her beautiful green eyes.
It would tear my heart from my chest–for a second time.
My men didn’t look at me the way they once had.
Even as I stepped onto my private estate, their eyes were casted downwards. I had known these men for years, trusted them enough to protect my sanctuary, but sometimes I doubted that would stop me from tearing out their throats.
They respected me, were still loyal to death. But whereas before they had feared me, now they were terrified. Now when meetings were held, cups were shattered, and palms were slick with sweat. My decisions went unchallenged, even by Artyom, who I had always counted on to keep me in check.