"Liar." But she's smiling. Small and sad, the smile of someone who knows the truth even when you won't say it. "You care. You don't want to. But you do."
"Caring gets you killed."
"Then I guess we're both dead."
The truth of it hangs between us heavy and inescapable. Soon we will die. Maybe together. Maybe separately. But we die either way.
Unless we win. Unless we somehow manage to kill the Pakhan and survive the aftermath and become something besides weapons pointed at each other. But I stop that train of thought. Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and the last thing we need is yet another obstacle to face.
"Tell me about her," I ask, changing the subject. Needing to hear her voice talking about something besides death. "Your mother. What was she like before..." Before the Pakhan destroyed her. Before I stood in that office and did nothing while he murdered her. Before I became complicit in the violence that created the woman currently pressed against me.
Sofiya's quiet for so long I think she won't answer, then she takes a shaky and uncertain breath. "She sang, all the time. Old Russian lullabies her mother taught her." Her voice gets softer. Younger, like she's pulling the words from someplace deep. "She had this way of making everything feel safe. Like nothing bad could happen as long as she was there."
"But bad things happened anyway."
"Yeah." The word cracks. " I wish I could ask her why she didn't run. Didn't take me and leave while she had the chance."
"Where would she have gone?"
"Anywhere. Everywhere." Sofiya's fist clenches against my chest. "She had no one, but she could've tried. Could've fought instead of just...accepting it."
"Maybe she thought accepting it would save you."
"Well, she was wrong." Anger, hot and bitter, drips from her voice. "All it did was get her killed and me tortured. If she'd fought , if she'd tried , maybe we both would've died, but at least we would've died together."
I don't point out that dying together doesn't sound better than surviving alone. I don't mention her mother's sacrifice gave her ten years of life to build herself into what she is now. I don't say any of the things that are true but wouldn't help. Instead, I just hold her. Let her shake with rage and grief and the weight of years spent carrying both.
"I'm sorry," I say finally. "For not stopping it. For standing there and doing nothing while he murdered her. For every choice I made that led to you bleeding in the desert."
"You gave me water."
"That's not enough."
"It was enough." She looks at me with eyes that have seen too much. "It was enough for me to come back. To find you. To become this."
This. Whatever this is. Alliance and obsession and a dangerous thing that feels like love but can't be because love is for people who survive and we're both marked for death.
"Do you regret it?" I ask. "Coming back? Spending ten years building toward revenge that might kill you?"
She considers the question. Really considers it instead of giving me the easy answer. "No." Definitive. Certain. "I regret not having more time. I regret we didn't meet differently , that you're not just some guy I ran into at a coffee shop who asked for my number." A ghost of a smile. "But I don't regret the revenge. I don't regret becoming strong enough to face the men who tried to break me."
"Even if it costs you everything?"
"I lost everything when I was fifteen. Everything after that has just been on borrowed time." She shifts, pressing closer. "But these last few weeks with you? Learning I have a brother who actually wanted to find me? That's been more than I thought I'd get. So, if tomorrow is the end...at least I had this."
My chest tightens painfully like someone's squeezing my heart with a fist made of broken glass. "It doesn't have to end tomorrow."
"Yes, it does." Soft. Sad. Accepting. "Anatoly knows. The Pakhan suspects. The trap is closing. We can run or we can fight but either way the end is here."
She's right. I know she's right. But admitting it feels like surrender.
"If we're going to die anyway," I say slowly, "what do you want before we do? What one thing would make dying worth it?"
"Besides killing Father?"
"Besides that."
She's quiet, thinking. The silence stretches long enough I think she won't answer. That the question is too big or too complicated or too painful to touch.
