Pieter looks at me from across the chessboard board and I look at Anya and the scattered pieces sit between us from where my elbow knocked them, reaching for the fallen king. Nothing about this moment makes sense except the fear radiating off my sister in waves I can feel from three meters away.
“What’s going on?”
“Mishka. Now.”
She grabs my arm and pulls me up from the chair. Her hand is shaking so hard I can feel it through my sweater.
“Is it Roman?” I keep my voice low because Pieter is still watching, and he doesn’t know anything about my life except that I’m good at math and bad at making friends. “Did something happen with the—”
“Roman killed her.”
The words come out flat and dead, and they don’t connect to anything in my brain, just sounds in the air that could mean.Because Roman is my sister’s husband, Roman is the man who pays for this school, Roman is the reason I have guards and escape routes and a phone that connects directly to someone named Luka, whom I’ve never met.
“Killed who?”
“Mama.” Her voice cracks on the word, and her grip on my arm tightens until it hurts. “He signed the authorization. She was a test subject for a drug, and I saw his signature, Mishka. I saw the intake form with her photograph and her name and his handwriting at the bottom, and she was conscious for most of it, she was awake while it—”
“That doesn’t—”
The door explodes. Wood flies. Cold air rushes in, and suddenly the room is full of men with guns. They don’t look at me at all, don’t look at anything except—
Except her.
And behind them comes a man I’ve never seen before.
Tall. Huge. He fills the doorway. Stubble. Blood on his collar. And eyes that lock onto Anya like nothing else exists.
And something about the way he’s looking at her makes my skin crawl because it’s desperate and focused. He looks at her like a wolf looks at a rabbit. No. Worse. Like a starving man looking at bread.
This is Roman.
This is the man my sister married.
This is the man who killed our mother.
“Out.” His voice addresses Pieter, flat and cold and not a request, but his eyes never leave Anya’s face. “Now.”
Pieter runs so fast he knocks over his chair, and I don’t blame him because I want to run too, want to turn and sprint for the fire exit at the back of the building. But I can’t move because I’m watching my sister stand perfectly still while this man walks toward her.
She stays.
She stands her ground and faces him, and her whole body is shaking, but she doesn’t back away, doesn’t do anything except breathe the same air as the man who just broke down a door to get to her.
“You need to leave.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t move. “I’m not going back with you. I’m not fucking going anywhere with you.”
Roman walks toward her.
Slow.
His boots leave wet prints on the floor, and his eyes never leave her face. His expression never changes, and something is building in the space between them that I can feel even from where I’m standing, something thick and heavy and wrong.
“You killed my mother.” Anya’s voice cracks, but she still doesn’t run. “I have the proof. Your signature—”
“I know what I signed.”
He stops an arm’s length from her, and the room goes so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears, can hear the snow falling outside through the broken door, can hear my sister’s breathing coming fast and shallow and terrified.
He just stands there with blood drying on his collar.
