“I never got to say goodbye to Eva,” I whisper hoarsely. “I don’t even know where she is. If she’s well or even still alive. She would be twenty by now. It’s been that long since I’ve seen her.”
Killian tightens his arm around me, pulling me deeper into him. His lips come to my forehead for a simple kiss that does wonders.
It chases away the grief, even if only for a brief moment.
“I’m going to kill him, stray. Put him in the fucking ground for what he did to you and your sister.”
“I just want her back. And for Fedorov to be out of our lives for good.”
My hope lives on as we drift off to sleep. It allows me to believe Killian’s promise and even believe my wish for our future is possible.
That somehow me and Eva will make it out from under Fedorov’s thumb. Somehow, everything’s going to be alright…
TWENTY-ONE
Killian
The only reasonI’m standing outside this shithole with a bouquet of flowers is because it’s Ma’s birthday and I’m trying to be a decent son.
A couple times a year, I make the dreaded trip to my parents’ place with flowers in hand and a knot in my gut. It’s become something of a tradition, though not the kind anyone writes greeting cards about.
I show up, Ma pretends she’s happy to see me, and we both ignore the elephant in the room ’til one of us snaps and I leave feeling worse than when I arrived.
Good times all around.
The bouquet is a mix of yellow roses, white lilies, and some tiny blue flowers I don’t know the name of. The florist down the block assured me mothers love them, and I took her word for it because what the hell do I know about flowers?
There’s also a card with a few thousand dollars tucked inside, which Ma will probably refuse because she’s stubborn as a mule and twice as ornery.
Jhene asked to come along when I mentioned where I was headed this morning.
I tried to talk her out of it. Told her it wouldn’t be pretty and could even turn downright ugly. She simply peered up at me with her large, dark eyes framed by her glasses and swore she could handle it.
So here she is, standing beside me in the grimy hallway of my parents’ apartment building, about to witness the Rourke family dysfunction in all its glory.
As she once stated, she’s the luckiest girl in the world.
I give her one last chance to bail before even knocking.
“You sure about this? It’s not too late to wait in the car.”
“I’m sure.” She slips her hand into mine and squeezes. “I want to meet them.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I knock on the door of apartment 13C and wait, listening to the familiar sounds of shuffling footsteps and muffled cursing from inside.
A moment later, the door swings open and Ma appears, looking older and more tired than the last time I saw her.
Mary Rourke’s never been a glamorous woman, but the more time passes, the less she takes care of herself.
She’s got more lines bracketing her eyes and creasing her brows, and she’s stopped bothering with the dye she used to use to color her hair. It’s almost exclusively gray, with only a few blonde threads remaining, the stringy tresses twisted back into a loose bun. The housedress she wears swallows her frame up and reminds me that her idea of a meal consists of a cigarette and a few bites of a ham sandwich.
She squints at me through the crack in the door as if I’m some salesman trying to scam her.
“Killian,” she murmurs a second or two later. She opens the door wider but doesn’t move to hug me. “I wasn’t sure you’d come this year.”
“It’s your birthday, Ma. I always come.”
