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I do not know what this will all lead to, but at this moment, I am grateful that Chiara is here with me, breathing.
Any maybe, just maybe, there is hope for us after all.
Chapter Eighteen
Mikhail
Istill can’t breathe right. My chest is tight, and I have to force each inhale, like the air around me has turned into something thick and impossible to pull into my lungs.
My eyes are glued to Otets’.
I’m trying to read him, to understand how the man who raised me could have carried these secrets for so long.
A sister.
He says we have a little sister, living in the same city we took Chiara from.
But that isn’t what’s twisting my insides right now. That isn’t what’s making it so hard to stand here and keep my hands by my sides.
It’s what he said about her; my mother.
His office feels smaller somehow, the weight of every revealed secret pressing down on me, as my mind keeps circling back to that one thing.
She tried to kill me.
My mother. My own flesh and blood.
Why can’t I remember anything?!
I’ve tried—so fucking hard—but I can’t seem to rememberanything.
I’m half tempted to slam my head against the wall to see if that triggers any memories of being held under the water, and forced to stop breathing.
And as I hear him speak, my heart rate only slows down even further.
Why didn’t Nikolai tell me anything?!
I grip the edge of the chair in front of me, my fingers curling so tightly around it that I feel it creak under the pressure.
My heartbeat pounds in my chest, driving out the faint sounds of conversation between my brother and my father. Nikolai is stone-faced as usual, his gaze hard as it moves between Otets and myself, but I can’t focus on him.
I can’t focus onanybodyexcept for the twisted version of my mother that now haunts my memories.
She wasn’t overly loving to us as children, but she was stillthere.
She was present.
I remember her soft voice as she spoke to us both, and the way her hands used to smooth over our hair when we were only young boys.
She wasn’t cruel to us growing up.
Was it all fake?
Did she hate me that much?
Squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, I try to push it all away, but it doesn’t work.
The memories don’t fade.