He ran back to me. “See? The guards are all around to watch, too. They’re not bad guys. They’re here to help Dad keep us safe.”
I took his words as a truth he was convinced of. Questions still built in my mind.
To keep us safe from what, though?
“You go ahead,” I told him, sticking with the warmth inside.
“Okay.” He shrugged, happy to dash off in the snow. While I resumed my spot on the loveseat at the bay window, I watched him and almost wanted to give in to a smile. He looked so innocent. So happy. Sonormal. Waving at me as he played, he didn’t seem bothered about playing by himself.
It took a couple of minutes of watching Misha outside for me to realize that I was alone in the cabin with Alexsei all this time. The tall, strong man. The one who could truly be a threat to me.
I wasn’t too worried about loosening up around Misha, but his father was another issue altogether. He could be a threat while his son wasn’t.
As I glanced back, watching him dry his hands on a towel as he stepped out of the kitchen, done cleaning up after making lunch, I wished I could convince myself that he was nothing more than a gentle giant in the background.
“He loves the snow,” he admitted in a casual tone, coming closer to see his son out the window. He didn’t approach the one I was at, choosing to stand at the other side of the front door, peering out from that side of the house.
To give me space.
I acknowledged it and wanted to believe he wasn’t trying to make me lower my guard.
“Ever since he was a baby, he loved the snow.”
Baby.
In a flash, a spike of panic cut through me.
Raisa was expecting a baby.
Misha mentioned other young children in the family.
Was Misha bred by your wife?
The absence of a mother in Misha’s life filled me with dread now. Surely, she had been bred to give Alexsei this son he seemed totreasure. With all that had been taught to me for years, I couldn’t yet make sure of how fond Alexsei seemed to be of Misha.
“Where is his mother?”
I held my breath after asking it. Proud that I didn’t wince and close my eyes for speaking up and asking a man a question, I endured the quiet that followed.
“Elena,” he replied. “My wife was killed when Misha was still a baby.”
Blinking quickly in shock that he’d answered me at all, I turned to face him with my chin dipped. Fully confronting him seemed too risky. Yet, the glimpse I got of this tall man was sobering.
Alexsei didn’t only sound sad to share that detail. He looked it, too. As if it pained him to speak of this woman in his past.
Once more, questions flooded in.
Killed how? When? Why? By whom? You?
He hung his head and turned to go back into the kitchen, giving me no other details than that.
Perhaps it wasn’t something he wished to speak about. Or maybe he was conflicted in having a conversation with me at all about anything. Even worse, he could be annoyed that I’d done the bold thing to ask him a question of any kind.
As I returned my gaze to the window, watching Misha throw up handfuls of snow and laugh at it scattering, I wondered if it was all just another trick. Another test.
Alexsei’s first wife was a mystery thus far, but I was too traumatized to dismiss the chance that what he told me was part of a manipulative control over me.
No matter how comfortable and at ease I could try to be here at this cabin, I would always be trapped in this shell, stuck in the memories of my traumas and punishments.
