I look at him without really seeing him. He could havedied. And I wouldn’t have known where he was. The thought makes my throat choke with anger.
He stops in front of me, a few steps away, as if he’s not sure whether he can touch me.
“Zolotse,” he chokes out. “I am so fucking sorry.” His voice is raspy and ragged.
I don’t accept his apology. “I didn’t know where you were. Why did you leave me?”
He steps closer, like he can’t resist the impulse. I step forward, ignoring how comforting it feels to be this close to him again, and pound my fists against him. He’s warm and solid beneath my hands.
He’s really alive. He really abandoned me while he went to put his own life in danger. Like a fucking inconsiderate idiot.
His hands close around my shoulders and he pulls me closer, even as I keep hitting him. He takes a deep, ragged breath, his face burying in my hair.
“I don’t care how angry you are,zolotse. Take out all of that rage on me. I deserve everything you’ve got for me.”
I sob against his chest, breathing in his cedar scent and hating myself for how much I crave him.
When I look up at him, he’s smiling down at me.
“I missed you,” I admit in a whisper. I missed him looking at me like this, with tenderness in his eyes. I missed his smiles.
He takes a deep, rasping breath. “When I thought you’d betrayed me, I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. It wasn’t worth it without you,zolotse. I almost lay there on the floor while the vaultexploded.”
I loop my hands around his neck and pull him down to my lips. “I’m glad you didn’t,” I murmur against his mouth, the familiar rasp of his stubble finally bringing it home that he’s alive. He tastes like ash and blood and gunpowder, but he’s alive.
Then I remember my father is in the room and rage replaces the happy haze that’s washed through my veins.
I pull away from Leks and go to my father, whose face is so swollen that he’s almost unrecognizable. However much pain he’s in, it’s not enough.
“Malyshka,” he says. I think he’s trying to smile, but it’s hard to tell with his injured face. The sight makes my skin crawl.
Leks’s voice is soft behind me. He steps beside me, looking down at my father in that chair, stained with blood. “I won’t do it,zolotse. Not if it hurts you.”
I meet those midnight-blue eyes and see that he’s telling the truth. After everything he’s been through, Leks would let my father keep living if it makes me happy.
“I have something to ask him, first.”
“Of course.” Leks turns to leave the room, but I grab his hand. I want him to hear this, too.
“Why, Papa?” My voice trembles. “Pyotr, Fyodor, why?”
He makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “They weren’t like you,malyshka. They never listened to my advice.”
He’s trying to turn this back on me, thinking that I will save him if he praises me. Instead, it just fills me with regret that I trusted him. That I followed him blindly, without knowing better. I don’t know how I was so easily misled.
He nods to Leks. “These unionists had got into their heads and distorted everything.”
The patronizing tone of his voice is familiar. I stare at this man, bleeding out in his own office, finally facing the consequences of his own actions. He’s so self-deluded that he doesn’t know these might be his last words.
“You understand me? They would have brought it all down,malyshka.”
I do understand. I understand he killed my brothers because he couldn’t control them. Because of his own greed.
“They wouldn’t stop going on about what these two had told them about the paintings. What the workers at the port suspected. Not even after I told them that their information was shoddy and unreliable.”
“But that was the truth, Papa. Thatwaswhat you were doing. My brothers were right.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “This is exactly why we had to keep you safe from the rest of the Bratva. Like your brothers, Natalia, you’re too easily influenced.”
