Page 7

“You know,” he says softly, “I once watched Leone shoot a man for winking at Lydia; it was their wedding. It was quite the show, to be honest; it was disrespectful. Lydia should have known better than to invite her previous boyfriend to the wedding. Never mind that; I wonder what he’ll do when he sees what I’ve got planned for you. ”

I clench my fists.

I know what he’s trying to do. It’s not about hurting me. Not really. It’s about hurting Leone through me.

And for the first time, it works.

Not because I’m afraid.

Because I know Leone will see this, and I know what it will do to him.

That’s when Mikhail strikes me. A hard, flat slap across the face that jerks my head to the side.

Still, no scream.

My body jolts.

He hits me again. And again.

My lip splits. My vision blurs.

And finally, I let out a sharp gasp.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “There she is.”

I fall to my knees when my vision swims and my ears ring, my body folding under the weight of his fist connecting with my eye and cheek. The pain is sharp and deep. I force my arms around my stomach, protecting the only thing that matters.

He can break my bones. However, I can’t let him touch what he doesn’t know exists.

I spit blood on the floor at his feet. His eyes flicker with something, rage or admiration, I can’t tell.

His hand fists my hair, and I hiss at my hair ripping from my scalp.

“My brother?” he demands. “I know you know what happened to him, do you know?” he demands.

“Who?” I sneer.

“Pensò!”

“No idea, maybe he is visiting Lydia,” I spit at him. He sneers, dragging me toward where the wall extends, making some sort of concrete table. I squirm at the pressure of my hair pulling when he dumps me on the floor, only to grab my hand, forcing my palm flat on the cold surface.

I try to yank back, and he grips my wrist.

I don’t scream. Not when he presses the knife to the ring finger. Not when I feel the cold kiss of the blade.

“You know what a man like Leone does when he sees his wife’s finger in a box?” Mikhail asks, his smile returning. “He remembers exactly how powerless he is. Now I am giving you one last chance to answer before I remove it.”

I go still. “Where is my brother?” he demands, and I laugh. I literally told him a second ago. Only he doesn’t know I was telling the truth. He presses the blade harder, the knife cutting deep and easily through my flesh, and I sputter in the air when I feel the blade hit bone.

He waits, giving me a chance to regain myself. “The same place you’ll be for touching Leone’s wife. Your brother should have kept his hands to himself. I wasn’t joking when I said he was visiting Lydia.” I spit at him.

His jaw tightens. For a second, he looks like he might actually cut it off when he snarls, slamming my face into the concrete bench, blood spurts out of my nose, and my cheek instantly swells like a balloon.

“Still not a scream,” I rasp. “You’ll have to try harder.” Though I know I’m on the verge of passing out, I don’t know how many more knocks to the face and head I can take.

He lifts me by the chin, forcing my eyes to meet his.

“I’m not done,” he says.

Then—the door creaks open.

We both look over at it.

It’s Rebecca.

Her expression is impassive, composed. Only her eyes betray that she is bothered by what she is seeing before her.

“Mikhail. We have a problem.”

He growls, not letting go of me. “I’m in the middle of something.”

Rebecca steps fully inside now. “You need to see this. It’s about the shipment. Police are raiding the warehouses and have pulled up the ships at the docks.”

That stops him.

He stares at her for a long beat.

Then slowly releases me, letting my body fall back to the stone floor. He nods to his goon, who stops filming. “Edit and send it. That’s good enough for now,” he tells the man, who nods and walks out.

He turns to Rebecca. “Watch her.” His gaze flicks to me briefly. “Clean her up.”

“Will do,” she says quietly.

He turns to leave when she speaks. “Am I allowed to take her up to shower and eat?” she asks, and I peer up at them, though my vision is cloudy on one side with my eye swelling shut.

“Keep Igor with you,” he tells her, only to step closer to her.

I cringe, knowing how heavy-handed he can be with my mother, and I don’t fancy witnessing that again.

Instead, he cups her face with his huge hand, his thumb tracing her cheekbone.

“You can’t keep her. She is not your friend or your pet.

Don’t get attached to this one.” His words confuse me, and my mother drops her gaze and nods slowly.

The door shuts behind him.

Rebecca stares at the door for a second and rushes to my side the second he’s gone. I peer up at the camera in the corner. “It doesn’t pick up audio.”

I don’t look at her. I don’t move.

My face throbs. My finger aches. My pride is bloodied and bruised.

She kneels beside me, her movements slow, as she examines my face.

I let her.

“You should have let him take the finger,” I mutter bitterly. “Would’ve been fitting.”

“No,” she says quietly. “That would’ve made it harder to hold the gun when the time comes.”

I freeze.

My eyes flick to hers, searching her expression.

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look away.

Rebecca presses a shaking hand to my cheek, and I don’t pull away.

Not this time. Her touch is gentle and firm at the same time.

Like she’s done this before, helped someone survive worse.

It makes me think back to Mikhail telling her, “She isn’t your friend or pet.

Don’t get attached to this one.” I’m suddenly curious about what he meant by that.

“Can you stand?” she asks.

I nod, barely. She pulls me to my feet, wrapping one of my arms around her shoulders. I lean into her only because I have to, not because I want to.

When the door opens, Igor is waiting in the hallway.

He’s tall. Built like a wall of cinder blocks. Dark buzz-cut hair. Narrow, cruel eyes that look like they’ve never blinked at anything soft. His arms are thick and covered in faded prison tattoos—Russian symbols I don’t understand, though instinctively distrust.

He says nothing. Just glares at me like I’m not even a person. His hand never leaves the holster on his belt as he follows us up the stairs.

Rebecca keeps her pace slow and steady, murmuring to Igor in Russian from time to time. I don’t understand the words, but I hear the tone. Calm. Almost soothing, like she is trying to stop a rabid animal from pouncing.

Whatever she says, it keeps him from interfering.

When we reach the top of the stairs, she leads me into a large guest room. Clean. Luxurious. The air smells like lavender and soap, and it almost knocks the breath out of me after weeks in the dark.

The bathroom is tiled in marble and lit with soft, warm lights. She helps me inside, and I flinch away when she reaches for my shirt.

“Don’t,” I snap, my voice sharper than I meant. “I can do it.”

Her hand hovers in the air for a second. Then she drops it.

“I’ll get you a towel,” she says softly.

And she leaves.

I turn to the mirror.

I almost don’t recognize myself.

My eye is swollen shut. Blood crusts around my nose and lips. The bruise on my cheek is dark and spreading.

What truly wrecks me is what I see below the surface.

I reach for my waistband, trembling as I peel the pants down. My hips are thinner, legs more bruised, but right beneath my navel?—

There.

Barely visible.

Undeniable.

A tiny swell. My baby. Still here. Still holding on.

I press a hand to the bump. Close my eyes. Whisper nothing and everything.

You’re okay.

The door opens softly behind me.

I glance up, already telling her to leave again when her breath catches before I can speak.

She freezes in the doorway, towel in hand, eyes wide with something between shock and horror.

“You’re… pregnant.”

I say nothing.

Her voice is a breath.

“Does Mikhail know?”

I shake my head. Her shoulders sag with relief as she clutches the towel to her chest.

“Good. Don’t tell him. Don’t let him see it. He’ll use it. Or worse.”

She walks to me slowly, turning the shower on and letting the noise drown out my heavy breathing.

Then she whispers, “I’ll send word to Leone. I’ll get you out of here. I never wanted this life for you.”

“How?” I ask, skeptical. “Carrier pigeon, or perhaps smoke signals?” I snort with a shake of my head.

She meets my gaze in the mirror. Her voice is calm. Her eyes are cold.

“No, now get dressed, I am making lunch.”

Igor’s eyes follow me as Rebecca stirs something on the stove, her movements careful like she is afraid to move too quickly, while also simple and domesticated.

A domesticity I never knew she possessed.

The woman before me is a stranger wearing my mother’s face, and something sharp twists in my chest as I watch her hum while she cooks.

I shift in my chair at the island counter, wincing as my ribs protest. The bruises there are the deepest purple, blooming across my skin violently. Igor notices my discomfort and smirks. His massive frame blocks half the kitchen light when he moves, a human eclipse with dead eyes.

“Sit still,” he says, his accent thick and impatient. “No trouble.”

“Almost ready,” Rebecca says, her voice soft as she places plates on the table. Five plates making my eyes scrunch at who will be joining us. She moves with a careful grace, like someone who’s learned exactly how much space she’s allowed to occupy.

When she reaches for the salt, her sleeve rides up, revealing a faded scar circling her wrist. My stomach knots. I recognize those marks. They match the fresh ones on my own skin making me wonder what she apparently did to earn them for them to scar like that.

Igor grunts, checking his watch. “Girls come in soon. They’ll be hungry after play.”

Girls? I frown, trying to make sense of his words. Rebecca hasn’t mentioned any children.

As if summoned by his words, the back door swings open.

Fading sunlight pours in, momentarily blinding, and with it comes the sound of laughter, high, innocent, and unburdened.

The kind of laughter I haven’t heard since Emma was small in the rare moments her illnesses did not consume our lives entirely.

And then I see them.

Two little girls, maybe four or five years old, with matching blonde pigtails and wide green eyes. They’re identical in every way, from their pink-cheeked smiles to the grass stains on their knees. My lungs forget how to work. They look so much like Emma did and like my mother.

“Mama!” they cry in unison, running to Rebecca.

She kneels, arms open wide, her face transformed by a smile I’ve never seen before. It reaches her eyes, crinkling the corners, erasing years of hardness I remember from my childhood. She hugs them both, kissing their foreheads with tender precision.

“Did you have fun outside, my loves?” she asks, brushing dirt from one girl’s cheek.

“We found frogs!” one announces proudly.

“Three frogs,” the other clarifies, holding up fingers to demonstrate.

“Anya, Mila, wash hands,” Igor interrupts, and the spell breaks slightly. The girls don’t seem afraid of him, but they obey immediately, scampering to the sink where Rebecca helps them reach the soap.

I sit frozen, trying to process what I’m seeing. Rebecca has other children. Twin daughters who look like the healthy sister I never had who look like my mother and me.

“Fallon, this is Anya and Mila,” Rebecca says carefully, her eyes meeting mine with a silent plea I can’t decipher. “Girls, this is… a friend who’s staying with us for a while.”

The twins stare at me with matching curious expressions, then smile simultaneously. The effect is eerie and heartbreaking.

“Your face has purple,” one of them—Mila, I think points out innocently.

“I fell,” I lie, the words scraping my throat.

Igor makes a sound that might be a laugh, and Rebecca quickly directs everyone to the table. She serves soup with steady hands, slicing bread, pouring juice for the girls with careful attention to equal amounts.

The twins chatter through their food, taking turns speaking as if they’ve worked out a system.

They talk about frogs and butterflies, and a treehouse uncle Igor is supposedly building them.

God knows how they can possibly think of that man as an uncle.

He barely acknowledges their words but occasionally nods when directly addressed.

Rebecca responds to every comment, every question with engaged patience.

She never responded to me like that. Not once in all the years before she left.

I remember standing on a chair at age eight, stirring soup because Rebecca was passed out on the couch.

I remember begging her to come to my school play, only to sit on stage scanning an audience where she never appeared.

I remember her forgetting to pick me up, forgetting to shop for food, forgetting my birthday three years running.

But she remembers to cut the crusts off Mila’s bread before she dips them in the soup.

“Eat,” Igor directs at me, noticing my untouched bowl.

I lift the spoon mechanically. The soup tastes like nothing. I force it down anyway, knowing I need strength. Each swallow feels like forcing down shards of glass as I stare at the two girls who could have been me and Emma if we had a real mother.

Rebecca catches my eye across the table, something like shame flashing across her face before she turns her attention back to wiping juice from Anya’s chin.

This is what it looks like when Rebecca loves her children.

This is what it looks like when she’s present, sober, engaged.

This is what Emma and I never had, what we never even knew to miss because we couldn’t imagine this version of her existed, not that Emma would remember her, she was only a baby when she left us.

The twins finish eating and ask to be excused, slipping from their chairs with practiced ease. They hover near Rebecca, whispering something that makes her smile again, that real smile that transforms her face into someone I’ve never met.

Rebecca’s eyes meet mine, and for a second, I see the ghost of my mother there, the one who left us, the one who chose drugs over her daughters, the one who vanished without a goodbye.

Yet, she got better for them. Not for us. Never for us.

She had it in her all along, this capacity to mother, to care, to love. She just didn’t have it for me.