My eyes squeeze a little at the corners. For the first time since meeting him, his words are heavy, and it feels like too much of an effort to voice them. I wonder if I’m being cruel by making him remember everything.
“You don’tactuallyhave to tell me now if…if?—”
He continues, “My mother had this dream I would becomePakhanwhen my father retired, even though we all knew Wolfgang was going to inherit the title. He was smarter, older, and way more strategic. I was a reckless mess.” He looks away, as if recalling a specific memory. “To counter that, my mother started torturing him, in hopes that maybe he would injure himself too badly to continue chasing his legacy. He was only twelve, and the things she had the guards do to him…”
My stomach flips at the images forming in my head. “That’s awful. Where was Wolfgang’s mother?”
“Dead. It’s why our father remarried. Then, they had me.” He crosses his arms, placing them on the table. “At first, I was helping Wolf. The guards wouldn’t feed him, at my mother’s request. They let him spend days on end in a basement filled with rats and snakes. One night, I got caught by his cell door trying to bring him food. And then, everything got worse.”
I tighten my lips, knowing where this is going.
“On that same night, Wolf was dragged out of the basement and beaten to a pulp because of me. He threw up all the food I’d brought him. He was so weak and broken, I actually thought he was going to die. And it wasn’t the only time—the more my mother saw I cared, the more she ordered him whipped, starved,and beaten. She knew how much I cared about him…and she took advantage of that weakness. Until, one day, she won. Not only did I stop helping him, I became an active perpetrator, to sell her the idea I no longer cared. It was the only way I could control how much he suffered. And it destroyed me, Cecilia, almost as much as it destroyed him.”
The duck arrives as he speaks, but neither one of us looks at it. The steam reaches my nostrils, doing nothing to appease me. How awful, what his mother put him and Wolfgang through. And here I was, thinking my childhood was a complete mess.
“You were just a kid,” I say softly. “A kid whose parents failed him. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“Oh, I don’t blame myself for that,” he smiles wryly. “I blame myself for what happened after. My brother was too smart not to see through what I was forced to do. He wasn’t mad at me. He understood exactly why I was locking him up instead of the guards. Problem was, eventually, I shut down completely. There was too much pent-up anger, and I didn’t know what to do with it, how to handle it. So, it just seeped out of me in every aspect of my life. Including him.”
“You pushed him away,” I say.
He nods. “Until we were miles apart, and neither of us knew how to get back to what we used to be. Then, our hatred became mutual. We became rivals for something I didn’t even want in the first place. Challenging him for our father’s throne was the only way I knew to be close to him. Even though I won, I knew the title was his. So, I just walked away, realizing the game was over, needing to start another one.”
My chest is heavy with the weight of his confession. Suddenly, it all makes sense: the way he keeps disappearing, the way he acts like he doesn’t give a damn about anyone and anything, the way he intuitively gets close to me, only to shut down when it gets to be too much…
“Where is your mother now? And how come your father didn’t intervene?”
“They’re in Russia—after Wolfgang stepped in, Father really wanted to retire. He thought that by turning a blind eye to what my mother put us through, we’d toughen up. And I mean, we did, but…we also grew apart.”
I blink, feeling the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” is all I can think to say because everything else sounds small.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that. I don’t need or deserve sympathy. This is the life I earned, Cecilia.”
Before I get to add anything else, he drags my plate toward him and starts cutting into the duck with expert fingers, as if a switch has been hit inside him, reducing our conversation to a thing of the past. Picking up a morsel with the fork, he adds a bit of sauce and tops it with a squeeze of orange.
“Open your mouth.”
“I can eat by myself, you know,” I protest, feigning a smile. He continues to look at me expectantly, like saying no isn’t even an option. So, I indulge him.
And when he brings the fork to my mouth, I wrap my lips around it, releasing a clipped moan at the immediate mix of flavors and textures—silky, sweet, soft and a little tangy. The meat is so well cooked, it practically melts in my mouth.
My husband’s hand extends out across the table, his warm fingers brushing a few rebel strands of hair behind my ear. Heat floods me at his gesture, and I swallow, unable to hide my reaction this time. He brings me to my knees without touching me—claiming me, delighting in me, never offering himself in return.
And this one simple gesture…it’s enough to tell me what I already knew deep down—that after everything we’ve been through, I’ve unequivocally fallen in love with my husband.
26
Mikhail
Ican barely stand to be around my wife as we enter the foyer back home. Every timid glance she throws me, every accidental brush of her small body against mine, threatens to obliterate the little self-control I have left.
It’s too fucking much. Never in my life have I denied myself anything to the point of literal pain.
But as I sat across from her at the restaurant and let her peer into my past, I realized there was nothing, really, I couldn’t tell her. Nothing I wouldn’t do for her. And it scared the shit out of me.
The past five days proved one thing: no amount of violence, alcohol, or cigarettes could keep my mind off Cecilia. I only wanted to be where she was. To hear her play until her melodies crawled under my skin. To see her face light up when the world softened around her.
