He looks at me as if I asked whether he plans to keep breathing. “I love you more than ever. You are a fierce mother and a devoted wife. You are the perfect woman for a pakhan. More importantly, you’re the perfect woman for me.”
The sentence goes through me like warm rain. I put my face to his shoulder and breathe there. “You made me this way.”
“You already were.”
We fall into the kind of silence that is not empty. His thumb keeps time on my hand. The driver’s mirror shows the set of his jaw and the stillness that means the route is clear. The SUV behind us keeps a polite distance. The city settles into itself like a huge animal that has eaten and is ready to sleep.
“I am sorry I asked you to press the switch. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know that.” He says it like a simple truth.
“I wanted to be the kind of woman who never hesitates.”
“Then you would be someone else, and I love the person you are.”
I look at his bandage again. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” he says. “But it tells me I am alive, so I’m fine with the pain.”
“That’s twisted.”
“That’s life.” There is a small smile, and I cannot bear how much I love him when he lets himself be light for one second.
We pull up to a warehouse I’ve never been to. Funny—I thought I knew all of Vitaly’s secret hiding places. The truth is, I never knew him at all.
In the time we were together, I never saw beneath his mask. He never let me in that close. But he called it love and I was desperate for that, so we misfunctioned together.
He told me so little about himself, just enough to keep me hanging on. Crumbs, really.
How much did I hate myself to settle for that? I’d be angry with my past self if I had the strength to be. But tonight, my strength goes elsewhere.
I didn’t have to be strong enough to kill Roman. I didn’t have to be strong enough to kill Vitaly if Roman couldn’t do it. But I was strong enough to do either, if I had to.
Now, I have to be strong enough to deal with the aftermath.
When we and the second SUV park, I start for the door, but Roman snatches my hand before I see him move. He grumbles, “You will wait in the car, do not argue with me.”
“She’s my mother, Roman.”
“And if there’s a dead man’s wire on the door, that won’t matter.”
I blink at that. “What?”
“Vitaly is—was—a lunatic. If he wanted to assure himself you’d be dead by the end of the night, he may have rigged the door.”
“So you’re going to go in and get blown up instead?”
He smiles. “No. I’m not.”
One of his men knocks on the door. “Ready, boss.”
“Give us a moment. I’ll signal you when it’s safe.” He gets out and follows them to the nearest wall of the warehouse. One of them carries a crate. I can’t make out what they’re doing, but I see someone shine a flashlight on the wall, and another pulls a tool from the crate. Then, there are sparks at the end of that tool. They trail the sparks in the shape of a rectangle.
They’re making a new door.
When that section of the wall falls in, flashlights disco around the inside of the warehouse. I don’t hear gunshots or see an explosion. Roman waves at me, so I race to him.
Cool night air fills my lungs, and I barrel through the hole they made. There, inside a room made of chain-link fencing, are my mother, our sons, and the guards that took them away.
