My vision swims. I can’t breathe. I click another article. Then another. Every one paints the same picture of a violent psychopath, obsessed with power. But the worst is the stories of the victims.
I knew all of this in the abstract, but seeing it in print, seeing the faces of people who’ve been hurt by his crimes, is too much.
And then I read this line:
Volkov is considered a person of interest in the death of Lena Melnikov, wife of his known associate, Davýd Melnikov.
I try to think about everything I know about Anya. What did he tell me about her? She saw her mother die, and she’s traumatized because of it. She hasn’t spoken since. But he never, not once, said that he was somehow involved.
Fury surges through my veins as I think of that poor, sweet girl. I don’t know what she was like before, but she’s a husk of a child now. Every accomplishment with her feels monumental, but she’s too young to be going through any of this. It’s not fair that she has any trauma at all.
“No,” I whisper. “No, this can’t… This isn’t?—”
“Molly,” Kelly says gently through the phone, “you need to get away from him. Whatever you think he is, he’s worse.”
I can’t respond.
My eyes are glued to a photo of a man. He’s young, maybe twenty at most, lying on concrete, blood pooling beneath him. The caption says he was part of a rival group, killed in a “suspected retaliation killing.”
Retaliation. Meaning someone hurt Samuil, and he hurt them back. He killed this man, who was barely even a man. He had no time to live, to become someone.
The truth is so much bigger and darker than I imagined.
“I should go,” I whisper to Kelly.
“Molly, wait—” she protests, but I don’t have it in me to wait.
I hang up and pull the phone to my chest like I’m trying to press the world back into place. But nothing settles. Nothing stops spinning.
I pick the phone back up. I try to breathe slowly but my hands won’t stop trembling. I click the next article. Then the next. Then the next.
One image is burned into my memory: a child’s shoe lies in a pool of blood on a sidewalk. Another shows security footage stills of masked men storming an apartment building. One headline refers to “collateral damage.”
I’m shaking so hard I have to press both palms to the mattress just to steady myself. The walls feel too close. The air feels too thin.
I think of the way Samuil kissed me yesterday, gentle and reverent, like he finally understood something he’d been fighting for years, and of the way his voice broke when he said he wanted to be better than the people who raised him.
And none of it changes the truth. He is still who he is. People die because of it. My baby could die because of it. Will my baby be called “collateral damage?”
I don’t intend to stick around long enough to find out.
21
SAMUIL
When I walk into the apartment that evening, the atmosphere is off. Tense in a way it hasn’t been in days. I’ve gotten used to finding Molly lesson planning or working with Anya, a buzz of excitement and activity in the air. Tonight, it’s still. Almost frigid.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something is wrong. I’m immediately on my guard. I pad quietly into the living room, ready to grab the gun hidden under the couch. As soon as the couch comes into view, though, I know there’s no physical threat.
Molly is curled up at the far end, her back pressed into the cushions, knees drawn to her chest, shoulders shaking in that barely-there way that tells me she’s been crying for a long time. Her hair is down around her face, hiding most of it, but what I can see looks pale and devastated. Her eyes are glassy and swollen. She’s breathing in tiny, uneven pulls, like she can’t quite catch a full breath.
My heart jumps straight into my throat. I haven’t seen her this shaken since the night I found her in the alley. She stares vacantly at nothing, her gaze a thousand yards long. It’s like she’s seen a ghost or been threatened by someone dangerous. My blood boils, and I’m overcome with the need to fix whatever is wrong. Whoever made her feel this way is going to beg for death by the time I’m done with them.
“Molly,” I say sharply.
She doesn’t move or respond.
“Molly,” I try again, crossing the room in three long strides and dropping into a crouch next to the couch. “Look at me.”
