Page 62 of Inked in Devotion

“So what’s gonna happen, Ivan? You’re going to shower Sebastian with attention, and when Aralina or Lucy gives birth to your Zahkarov grandchild, you’re going to forget about Sebastian?”

He turned whiter if that were possible. “I’m sorry. I do not blame you for thinking that.”

And damn him, he looked like a pitiful old man. But I had to remember this was Kirill’s father. Lucy’s husband had to learn manipulation somewhere.

“Stay away from me and my son,” I told him before I spun around and hurried to the back of the house, past the servants’ quarters, and into the garden. The first signs of spring were in the air, and I cursed the pollen that was stinging my eyes, but if I were honest with myself, it was seeing Ivan in the flesh.

His image that had been a blur since childhood sharpened and populated the missing pieces in my memory.

I was four years old, and I had just finished a stick drawing of a man, a woman, and a child. Maybe now Papa Ivan will come home. When he left, the outside was a pretty red, orange, and yellow. I remembered because I crayoned those colors on paper.

Now the tree resembled a skeleton.

I clutched my finished drawing and walked toward the door. Mama had finished preparing dinner, and I heard the familiar show she watched in the background. It was usually also the time Papa Ivan came home.

As I passed her, she called, “Where are you going, Chloe?”

“Waiting for Papa Ivan.”

Mama made a choking sound, a familiar sound right before she would cry, but I didn’t turn to her. She’d been crying a lot lately. She said it was because of the TV, but I had my suspicions it was related to the heaviness I didn’t understand that also made me sad.

It was connected to why I had not seen Papa Ivan in a long time.

I sat in front of the door where he usually came in.

“Baby, stop doing that,” Mama chided and sat beside me. “What do you have there?”

I showed her. But somehow that upset her more, and she left my side and locked herself in the room.

The TV show droned on. It finished. Mama had not come out of her room. Papa Ivan hadn’t shown up. I stared at the drawing. What will make him come home? He said I was the best-behaved girl, and he loved me, adored me.

When I asked if he loved Mama, he wouldn’t answer. Maybe Mama drove him away with her crying?

Sometimes I heard them arguing. I think it was about me because I heard my name a couple of times.

I got up from the floor because I was getting hungry, but there was no sign of Mama yet. When I reached her room, I couldn’t hear any sound coming from it.

I opened the door. She was lying on the bed with crumpled tissues scattered on the floor.

“Mama, I’m hungry.”

She rose slowly and sighed. “I’m sorry, baby.”

As I looked back at that memory, I understood she was not apologizing for not having dinner on the table on time, but because of the life of disappointment she’d set me up for.

Renée tried her best as a single mother, but when the two men in her life showed her she only deserved to be second, she never gave a chance to the relationships that followed. I even liked some of her boyfriends. But whenever one of them became serious, she would break up with him, and we’d move to another county or state.

She said she wasn’t going to disappoint me again after all the moping I did with Papa Ivan.

There were times I blamed my mother. Harbored resentment. Especially as I grew older and understood my place in society. Because how could she expect to be first if she’d been a mistress? Sure, she didn’t have to work. Duncan or Ivan provided enough money for us to buy a house and live comfortably, even lavishly. I understood only later why she was opposed to settling in one place.

Renée was afraid of Duncan’s wife.

This was how paranoid she’d become after we nearly got into that car accident on that stormy night.

My mother let her fear of Esther dictate how we lived our lives.

But I promised myself—Sebastian and I?