I know him before I see his face fully. I’ve known the shape and smell of my father since before I knew thought. Seeing him in front of me makes me stumble, and I slam my knee into one of the steps.
“No,” I whimper as Yanov grabs me around the waist and pulls me away. “Please! Papa, don’t do this!Please!”
I can’t help it. The tears start to flow as I’m carried back to the chair and slammed back down. This time, Yanov has tape ready. He yanks my hands back and starts binding my wrists.
“Looks like she gave you a fight,” my father says as he descends down the stairs. He doesn’t acknowledge me at all. His face looks more drawn downward than usual. The normal edges of his downturned eyes seem to dip even more sharply.
“She surprised me,” Yanov says. He’s out of breath. Good. I hope he drops dead of a heart attack.
My father stands in front of me, still not looking at me, but rather, watching Yanov finish binding me to this chair. He wraps my ankles one by one, and when he’s finished, he drops the tape on the table and picks up a rag to wrap the wound on his wrist that I gave him. He turns to look at my father, and his left cheek is deeply scarred with a long, jagged line of blood.
My father observes him for a moment, then… he looks at me.
I’ve never felt so much cold from him before. His face has turned to stone as he stares hard, his eyes dark and soulless.
He clasps his hands in front of him and asks, “Where is the journal, Tatiana?”
The journal. Oh, thank God, they never got ahold of it. I stare up at him, my mind spinning. Maybe I can still appeal to him. At the end of the day, I’m still his daughter, after all.
“Papa,” I say, “please let me go. We can talk this out.”
“There is nothing to talk about, Tatiana,” he says coldly. “You stole something very important from me and I want it back. Where is your brother’s journal?”
The succinct way he’s shut me down makes me want to cry. The child in me is crushed like she’s been every time he’s been angry or disappointed in me, and my eyes start to burn. I swallow to push it away and say, “I don’t have it.”
“But you did take it,” he says. “Tell us where it is, Tatiana, and I’ll make sure Yanov makes it easy for you.”
It.That’s not good. My eyes dart back over at Yanov, who’s smiling to himself as he regards the many implements of torture on the table before him. I sit up straight, trying to show some level of bravery.
“You can’t kill me,” I tell him. “I’m your daughter. Your blood. If anyone finds out?—”
“You really think you can talk your way out of this?” My father tilts his head as his eyes widen with anger. “Do you understand what you’ve done? This isn’t the childish bit of acting out that you’ve subjected me to since you left this house. You’ve inserted yourself into my business. I thought you knew better, Tatiana.”
“So, your answer to that is to kill me?”
“No,” he says. “My answer to your disloyalty is the same as any other person who decides to work against me. I will torture you until I get what I want, then whatever is left of you after that will be disposed of once and for all.”
“What will you tell them?” I say through clenched teeth. “Your men? When they ask what happened to your daughter?”
“No one will ask. What they will know is that you ran off. Disappeared again, the way you did in Europe. Only this time, I’ve decided to let you go. What else can a father do with an unruly child like you? Why, it’s the truest act of self-preservation I could perform. I have to protect my own heart when my child has been lured away.”
The way he says that has a finality to it that rings true. He’s already let me go. I wonder how long it took him to do it. Right after he realized what I’d done? Or maybe weeks before?
“Like Nicki?” I ask him. He raises his eyebrows. “You let him go, too, right? That’s how you explain it away, I guess. Kill him and just blame it on the poor, wayward son.”
He sighs and takes off his suit jacket, then walks to my left and pulls up another chair. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to come to that decision, Tatiana. You see, he was my son. And unlike you, his existence meant something to me. He was the one who was supposed to carry on my legacy.” He sits and starts rolling up his sleeves. The millions of tattoos mark his arms like another article of clothing. “Discovering his disloyalty hurt me in a way that you can never understand. As for you, well, I suppose I shouldn’t actually be all that surprised that this is how you turned out. I had hoped that you would calm down, perhaps marry someone worthy enough to take Nicki’s place when the time comes. I understand now that I was a fool to think that would ever happen. You were born corrupted.”
“Is that why you had him killed?” I say, and my voice cracks, betraying my fear. “At least you’re looking me in the eye this time instead of sending Yanov to do your dirty work.”
Before I said it, I didn’t know if Yanov was the one who killed my brother, but the way he pauses in the background, his eyes tentatively looking at my father, tells me that I’m right on the money. My father just says, “It had to be done. And it had to be Yanov to do it. Viktor was too close to Nicki. I couldn’t trust that he’d go through with it.”
I nod. “And that’s why you sent Yanov to take care of Marla too. You bastard.”
“So goes the job of serving a master such as myself,” he says with a shake of his head. “If I thought that Viktor could handle doing this job, he’d be here instead of Yanov. I’m afraid he’s gone soft as well.” He regards me for a long moment as if trying to memorize my features. His eyes move over my face and my hair quickly.
“I’m sorry you could not be saved, my dear.” With that, he turns and looks at Yanov, giving him a slight nod. Yanov picks up the pliers and walks over to me.
Panic fills me, and before I can stop myself, I say, “If I die, Papa, then so does your bloodline.”
