FAINA
It will be okay.
Nothing is okay.
Nothing is going the way it’s meant to. I was under no illusions that this would be easy, but the months we’ve spent traversing Europe only to end up on our way to Egypt hoping to catch the head of the snake who has been, according to Rocky and my gut, laying destruction in his wake without a single hesitation.
This man is a monster and I fear he’ll consume everything I care about before we get a chance to stop him.
“If we’re too late,” Cian says after a moment’s silence, “Then we’ll just have to make sure we don’t let down the ones watching over us.”
Cian doesn’t look me in the eye. He turns his head toward the sky and closes his eyes against the glare of the sun. In this light, his pale skin finally looks like it’s gaining color that isn’t just crimson sunburn. His hair glows like molten metal and his lips press together with the corners downturned a fraction.
“Is that what you tell yourself about your family?” I ask softly, blinking away my tears. “That they’re still with you?”
He nods while keeping his eyes closed. “I was never strongly religious but my mother was. I think she’d have everyone looking down at me whether they wanted to or not. And I try to think they’d be proud of me now.” He sighs and rubs one palm against his knee. “You know… when I woke up in that hospital and they were all gone, I felt like a part of me died with them. That I was just this husk left over to walk around with a cavern of emptiness inside me.”
Dabbing my fingers under my eyes, I sniffle and focus on Cian as he opens his eyes and glances at me briefly. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“No one can. I’d spent nights trying to work out what hurt more. Losing my brother? My twin? Knowing their families were dead with them? My mother? Each time I settled on who I missed the most, another memory would surface and I’d be back to square one. I felt like a sack of shit dragging myself after this faceless killer. I knew I was going to murder him. And then I was going to kill myself afterward.”
My stomach drops like a rock and I’m grasping his hand before I can stop myself. “Cian!”
He looks at me again and this time, I hold his gaze. “It was the only path I had.”
“Not the only path!”
“Yes,” he insists. “My family were dead. My survival felt like some cruel joke, like I was alive just to be laughed at by fate or whatever fucker is up there in control of all this. I had no hope. I heard from no one because every other family was protectingthemselves and the smaller Irish families we used to protect either tried to claim our leftover power or they wanted nothing to do with me like I was some kind of omen. I had nothing and no one, so killing the devil and then ending it was my plan.”
“Was?” I ask cautiously. He talks in the past tense but is that just a slip of the tongue?
“I don’t think I feel that way anymore.”
“What’s changed?”
He scoffs softly. “I don’t know because the answer would be you, but then I find out you used to be a cop. That it runs in your family. And now I don’t know who I see when I look at you. A few days ago, you accused me of being morally corrupt because I could overlook the trafficking the Russians did but I can’t overlook your being a cop.”
My stomach twists but I nod. I’m right. Cian’s picking and choosing what’s moral and what’s not, and I don’t intend to entertain that kind of Olympics. “It’s true.”
“When you accused me of that, I knew you’d missed the point.”
I withdraw my hand from his. “Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t just the fact that you were a cop. It’s that you lied to me. More than that, it’s that I’ve poured my entire broken soul out to you, you’ve been around me during theworsttime of my life and still, you couldn’t trust me. You didn’t tell me your past. You didn’t trust me enough to share that, and that’s what hurts me, Faina. That’s what makes me doubt that a life with you after this is even a choice I have.”
I don’t have the words.
I never once considered that this was the real reason Cian was angry with me. I was hung up on Interpol and assumed he was too, that he couldn’t look past my history and was going to crucify me for it. In truth, it’s my lie that affects him.
My hands curl against my thigh while I search for words that don’t come.
“So my point is,” Cian continues quietly, “and I’m making it badly, I know, but when things feel like the end of the world, there’s still hope. It will be unexpected and can arrive as an old flame turning up at your table and making you readjust your perspective.”
He is making it badly, but Cian has never been incredibly eloquent and I can’t fault him for it. My fear that the worst of the worst has happened to Anastasia can be offset by Rocky’s lack of knowledge on the matter. If the Russian Godmother were dead, then Hawk wouldn’t hesitate to parade it around.
“I think I understand what you’re saying.”
“You sure?” He smiles softly. “I think I lost it myself halfway through.”
