Our home.
The loft has burned to the ground. The warehouses where Yuri’s office was, too.
“Where is he?” My voice cracks. I turn to Vera with a plea in my eyes. “Where is Leks?”
Vera looks shell-shocked, her horrified expression matching my own.
The knowledge that he’s dead and it’s my fault drops into my stomach like a stone falling into a lake.It settles there, unmovable and certain.The ripples take hold of every limb until I’m shuddering with fear and regret.
“He’s dead.”
I drop to my knees in the ashes where the loft used to stand. I don’t know what I’m hoping for. A sign that can show me it’s not true.
Vera tries to pull me to my feet but I stay there, casting my eyes out to the horizon. The ache in my chest deepens.
My whole body feels frozen in place. He didn’t love me, at the end. He wanted me, but he didn’t trust me.
And yet I know that I’ll never move past this. Never be able to shake this love for a man who didn’t feel the same way about me.
“Oh my God,” Vera gasps. “Natalia, look.”
A flash of hope flares in my mind.
I blink away my tears and follow her pointing finger to see movement in the ashes. For one wild second, I hope that it might be Leks.
It’s not, but the sight still makes me sob with relief. Apparently, not everyone at the port was killed in this explosion.
Dasha is picking her way through the ashes, remarkably unscathed. I watch, stunned, as she makes her way over to us. When she reaches me, she brushing her soft fur against my legs and purring.
She’s okay, even if the ashes have turned her fur to a sooty grey. She mewls at my feet. I scoop her up into my arms and press a kiss to her ashy fur. “I missed you, Dasha.” Her purring vibrates through my chest, warming my frozen heart.
If Dasha’s alive, that means Leks could have survived too. I cling to that hope and start to think.
The sight of her reminds me of my family. That my father has been spying on Leks and I this whole time.
I don’t know where Leks is, whether he’s dead or alive, but my father will know.
“We’re going to get your Daddy back,malyshka.”
I tell Vera where I want to go and she nods, her jaw set. As we get into her car again, she turns to me with a raised eyebrow.
“You really think he’ll tell you where Leks is?”
I don’t know the answer to that.
But I do know that, even if my husband is dead, I still owe it to him and my brothers to bring down my father.
My mama is seated in the living room, pretending to concentrate on her embroidery. When she sees me with Vera, she purses her lips.
I can’t believe that she can be so delusional at a time like this. Acting like it’s a normal day where nothing out of theordinary has happened. I can see it now, the fragility of her fake smile. Like a glass-blown sculpture that could shatter at the slightest touch.
“Where is he?” I demand.
The tone of my voice must make her realize my urgency, because she doesn’t even tell me off about the lack of polite greeting.
“In the office,” she says, shuddering viscerally. “Malyshka, they are doing Bratva business in there. It’s not the kind of thing you want to be involved in.”
The way she says it makes me think that my mother knew the whole time about this darker, awful side of my father and she went on pretending everything was normal. That she blinded me to it by keeping me wrapped in cotton wool.
