“What do you mean?”
I shake my head gently. “None of them are my stories to share, but no one here had the happiest starts. Ursin didn’t treat Vanessa well, used her for more than one political advantage. Ivan targeted someone Dimitri cares for deeply—numeroustimes, past and present. And Ana wasn’t saved from Papa either. He found uses in her early ballet talent.”
“I’m sorry for you all.”
Our lives were vastly different than the one Zeno ensured she had. Serafina’s only known a mother’s love, a brother’s joy, while Ana and I don’t even know our mother. Vanessa’s died early on, and Dimitri’s ran off.
She studies my body, the scars hidden behind tattoos, most of them from surviving prisoners older and larger than me.
“Being in prison had some benefits; it was an effective training method, though admitting so feels wrong. It’s nothing I’d subject a kid to, but it got me where I needed to be. It’s kill or be killed, so not being the victor wasn’t an option.”
Her countenance lowers. “How old were you the first time?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen,”she practically screeches before moving overtop me, one leg on either side of my hips.
Immediately, my heart jumps, the initial panic sending my finger into position to work through the anxiety. But then, she leans forward and covers more of my body, tightening her arms around my neck, her hair in my face.
She’shuggingme.
The peach and vanilla scent is now tainted with notes from my own soap and aftershave. It replaces the unease with another feeling, something new and nevereverfelt before.
Possessiveness.
“That’s fucked up.” Her whispered breath blows over my neck with her tightening hold. “I’m sorry.”
My hands cup her hips, keeping her there. “Nothing you need to worry about. It’s over.”
She lifts her head, catching my gaze, though I really wish she’d lay back down. “Where’s your father now?”
“Cayman Islands. When Vanessa became Pakhan, she threw everyone from Ursin’s reign out but left his fate to Ana and me. We kicked him out of Russia and kept him alive.”
She props herself up on my chest as she slides her fingers through my hair. Her touch is becoming more natural, which poses so many risks to our future. “He hurt you. No one should be allowed to survive hurting you.”
You hurt me by breathing, by being the only one in the world tonothurt me.
Having someone care about me like this is a strange notion. I’ve always been the person in the background, fiddling with the technology to solve others’ issues. Being on the receiving end of someone’s empathy is…odd.
So strange, she almost doesn’t feel real, except my heart’s coming to believe she is. I tug her down again, resting her head over it, reassuring the thumping beat that this woman is indeed present. Part of me doesn’t want her unblemished skin touching the markings of my less-than-savoury moments in the Bratva, but another part of me can’t imagine her elsewhere.
Dragging the blanket over us both, I tuck us in for sleep.
“That’s why you believe all that shit. You called yourself a resource the first day in Rome. You were always jerked around for your father’s needs, which depended on Ursin’s. But he was wrong about you.”
She falls asleep while waiting for the response I never give.
Once her sleepy breaths fill the room, reminding me of the first night she slept here, I pass out too, matching my breaths to her own.
My head isn’t staticky after talking so much.
My body isn’t overwhelmed having her beside me.
And there’s no need for numbers to help me sleep.
38
SERAFINA
