“I’m so sorry, Ro.” I choke, watching him as he fixates on Z’s profile.He’s scared.
My attention is dragged back to Andru as he continues. “I sometimes wish I was as forgiving as her. She was beautiful, gentle, and too good for the evils of this world. She wanted to forgive. Immersed herself in prayer.” He goes to the bottle of vodka and drinks straight from it before slamming it back down. “I was not like her.” He shakes his head. “When I found out whodid that to her, my rage fueled my need for revenge. I couldn’t eat, drink, or sleep. It consumed me.”
“Who was it?” Z asks, his voice shaking, his head bowed like he already knows the answer coming. Shadows flicker across his face. The horrors of his past are an irreversible scar that he will never fully heal from, and they’re about to be ripped back open.
Andru’s jaw flexes and then he says, “A young man, barely twenty-two. His name was Daniel Chester.”
A gasp slips past my lips and my hand rushes there to cover it.
Z’s back hits the kitchen cabinet, shame washing over his beautiful features. I get up and attempt to go to him, but he holds a hand out toward me. “Don’t.” He swallows, the action visible in his throat, causing the serpent inked there to shift with the movement. My legs tremble. Every fiber inside me is desperate to ease the pain in him.
Rodion follows after me. His hands come to my shoulders, keeping me back.
“Z,” I say, emotion clogging my throat.
“You killed them,” he says to Andru, his hands clenching into fists, squeezing his eyes closed. His tone drops to a deadly octave. “You let them do that to my mother? An eye for an eye?”
My heart pounds like a war drum against my ribs.My blood rushes in my own ears.
Z moves so quick, I startle from the fluidity of it. He picks up a chair and launches it across the room toward Andru, missing him by an inch. Rodion pushes me behind him and backs me up into the corner of the room. The crash as it pings off the end of the table and chips the corner of the counter echoes through the room. Both Rodion and my eyes dart to the baby monitor but Roza hasn’t moved.
“I witnessed what the man did to my mom,” Z roars, tears slipping down his cheeks. Prodding a finger to his head, he hisses, “It lives here.” Then to his chest. “And here.”
“I didn’t sanction that, Zahkar,” Andru rumbles. “You should know I would never authorize that kind of violence on a woman. That man paid with his life for that insubordination.”
Z is breathing so heavy he looks like a beast rather than a man and I want to go to him more than anything, but Rodion’s arms are like a steel wall in front of me keeping me back.
“But their murder?” Z’s shoulders heave. “You killed them all because of what Daniel did?”
“They knew. They knew what he was!” Andru bellows. “He’d done it before, here in the States, to three other women. One was an eleven-year-old child.”
My hands shake. I want to go back in time and not ask Andru the damn question.
“They brought him to Russia to hide him. Your mother was born there, so they had ties. They knew what he was and protected him.” Andru’s infuriated eyes narrow on his son. “If they hadn’t, Katrina would never have met that fate.”
“Why not kill me?” Z asks, the question so fragile on his lips. A sob escapes my chest. I feel his agony like a physical presence inside me.
Loosening his tie, Andru’s eyes drop to his shoes. “I arrived late. My men moved in before I got there, and you were never supposed to be there. You were supposed to be at school.” He works his jaw. “I didn’t take into account that private schools run longer days than public schools.”
Because Rodion’s school would be private but Z’s would not have been back then.
Touching his scar, Z laughs without humor. “It was you that day,” he says in disbelief. “Yougave me this scar.”
Silence.
Then Andru picks up the chair that Z threw and leans against its backrest. “I didn’t keep secrets from Katrina, so when I told her about you, she wanted us to raise you. She believed God would have wanted that.”
“She couldn’t even look at me,” Z snaps, swiping an arm across his face, but the tears still cling to his jaw.
“The demons from that day haunted her.Myactions haunted her.” Andru scrubs a hand down his face. “He fragmented her mind, and she couldn’t reassemble it. The worst thing she could have done in her faith was kill herself. It's the ultimate sin but that’s how broken she became. The only way to quiet the noise.”
Z’s body slows its heavy breathing, and he turns and places his head against the wall counting in a hushed voice, “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.”
“What about Daniel?” Z suddenly says, turning once more to face Andru. “A policewoman told me he died but the reports say different.”
Andru pales, his knuckles turning white against the backrest.
“Dead, right?” I interject sharply, glaring at Andru. “Those reports saying differently are wrong?”
