Page 59 of Bratva Sacrifice

I have no choice. He’s made it for me already.

I go, but only so far. My cage guarantees it.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Alexei

My bedroom is dark when I enter late in the evening, and this is how I know Katya is not in bed waiting for me. Always—always—she needs a light left on. Even just one, to soften the severity of the darkness that she abhors.

She is pouting. In a sulk, because of the way I sent her from my office earlier today. Probably it should not affect me, but I saw her face when she left. The same face she made the night she was mistaken about my refusal to take her to Moscow. A hurt that makes my heart ache with the desire to soothe it.

If she were anyone else, I would not care about this. But I care when she hurts.

It is not difficult to find Katya again. There is just one door in the hallway that has light behind it, peeking out from under the door. All these doors have been unlocked since I first took her out, since she stayed when she had the chance, however briefly, to run from me.

Tonight is the first night since that she chooses a bed other than mine. Anatoli would have something derogatory to say of this...lovers’ tiff, I think this is called. She takes offense at my refusal of her requests, chooses to sleep elsewhere.

The bedside lamp is on when I enter. Katya is not asleep. She lays on her side, her back to me. In her hand she holds her mother’s picture, the one I had Anatoli rescue from her cheap motel in Minneapolis along with the rest of her things. Her face, in profile, is blank. Expressionless.

Maybe she hurts more even than I knew.

She knows I am here with her, but she does not acknowledge this, does not look at me. She evinces no reaction when I sit at the edge of the bed.

I do not explain myself to others. This is not something I have to do, ever. And now I realize—because I do not have to do this, I also don’t know how to do this. Only Katya receives this privilege from me, and explaining her mistaken impression of the Moscow trip was easier by far than explaining my fucking feelings.

There is nothing I fear. I have not feared anything since I was a child.

Today, I felt fear that she would leave me. That if I give her these things she asks for, she will use them to run from me. That I will always want her more than she wants me.

My hand falls onto her hip. My voice is rough when I lift my chin to indicate the picture she holds and say, “She was pretty, your mother.”

“Yeah,” Katya says softly, though still she does not look at me. “She was.”

“You look like her.” They have the same blue eyes. The same smile.

“I know.” She rubs her thumb over her mother’s face in this picture, where their cheeks are squeezed together as they wear matching grins. Katya’s mother’s hair is short; only a couple of inches. But it is the same blonde as Katya’s. She is her mother’s miniature; the part of her mother that remains in the world after death.

So much more her mother’s child than her father’s. “She was a teacher,” I say, and this is not a question. I already know this. Katya wants to be a teacher—like her mother.

“Yeah. She taught elementary school. Fifth grade,” she says. “She loved it. She loved her kids; all of them. She didn’t make a ton of money or anything, but she loved her job so much.” She makes a small sound. A sniffle. “She was always there to pick me up after school. She was home during the summer. It was really perfect. She gave me that. A perfect childhood.”

I’m not jealous of this motherly thing I have never experienced. It is not possible to miss what I never had. But I am jealous of her mother. To have had so much of Katya’s love, when she does not truly offer it to me. After today, perhaps she wants to do that even less.

A rough sound ekes out of my mouth. I kick off my shoes. Pull my shirt off over my head.

“What are you doing?” Katya asks, her brows drawn as I stand up.

“You want to sleep elsewhere?” I yank down the fly of my jeans, strip off the last of my clothes. “Fine. This is your choice. Mine is to sleep with you.” I crawl over her, over the shrimp-like curl she has made of her body, her legs pulled up toward her chest. The light is obnoxious. Too fucking close to the bed. It burns behind my eyes even when I close them.

But she needs the light. So this is a concession I make for her, for her comfort.

She does not resist when I pull her into the circle of my arms. But she does sigh. It sounds sad. Resigned. She stretches out one arm, gently sets her mother’s picture back on the nightstand. “She would be…so disappointed in me.”

That fucking twinge in my chest. “Why do you say this?”

“She wouldn’t let herself be kept,” she says. “She didn’t let herself be kept.” Her breath snarls in her lungs. “She didn’t know that Papa was married when they started dating. Didn’t know he had a family. And when she found out, she walked away from him. He wanted her to stay, to be his mistress. But she knew she deserved better than that. And then, when she found out she was pregnant…she knew I deserved better.”

Of course Katya deserves better than a fucking piece of shit father like Giulio Russo.