Page 110 of Nikola

“Why is she saying you remember her?” Papa demanded to know, signing and mouthing the words at the same time. “Why would you remember her?”

Cold panic tore through my chest and my throat tightened. I tried to hide it, but it was like trying to hold back an avalanche.Impossible.

Papa took my face, my eyes darting around like a deer caught in headlights.

“Skye, look at me,” he demanded, but before I could sign a single word, Papa’s shoulders tensed. He whirled around and lunged at the woman.

I stood frozen as I watched Kostya and Alexei peel a raging Papa off the old woman while she was cackling with a crazed look in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Papa signed, his hands shaking. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

For the first time in a very long time, I cursed my lack of hearing because I didn’t know what was said. I wanted to sparePapa any pain, but it seemed to be a moot point now. The ghosts hidden in the shadows of the past came to light, raking hell on everything.

“What did she say?” I asked, my hands surprisingly calm.

“That she had her filthy paws on you.” Papa’s expression was gutting me alive. “We failed to protect you.”

The words barely left his mouth when the door opened and Nikola came into view, wheeling himself into the room. For a heartbeat, the world stopped spinning and my poor, aching heart started beating again.

Sasha came up right behind him, both their pale eyes surveying the scene.

“What’s happening here?” Sasha demanded while I stared at Nikola, my heart pounding in my chest. The tremor moved up my body, creeping through every vein. My lungs tightened, every breath closing them a little more, and tears blurred my vision as images of Papa and the Nikolaev men swam all around me.

Nikola. Papa. Sasha.

Nikola. Papa. Sasha.

I shook with emotions as cold fingers touched my cheeks. They were Alexei’s.

“Kid, focus on your papa. Nikola. Sasha.” His expression burned with cold fury that I oddly found comfort in. “Focus on anything but the past.”

My eyes darted around. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. Despite being in a wheelchair, he had never looked more like his father than today.

Nikola’s pale blue gaze locked on me and I inhaled slowly.

His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and his mouth moved. “I failed you.”

It was another self-inflicted reason to deny me.

“No, I failed you,” Papa claimed with a wretched expression.

“We should have found you earlier,” Sasha hissed.

“No,” I signed to all three. Scared of another rejection by Nikola, I took a step closer to my papa, shaking my head fiercely and speaking to all the men in the room. “You protected me. All the years outweigh those days I spent handcuffed to the radiator.” I glanced around Papa to find the woman staring at us with a curl to her lip. Despite her advanced age and frail state, she still had hate in her heart. “I want you to tell her that I forgot all about her. In all the years, I never thought of her once. She never mattered enough to think of her.”

A heartbeat passed, then another, and then Papa related my words.

The woman glared at him, then me.

I faced Nikola, struggling to find the right words to say. My heart squeezed in my chest, and somehow I felt small and vulnerable even as he sat in the wheelchair. I wanted to be his shield as much as he was mine. This woman hurt him, and while I wanted to make her pay, I knew Nikola probably needed this more than I did.

“You shouldn’t witness what comes next,” Nikola said.

“I can handle it,” I signed.

His jaw tightened as he watched me with the kind of longing I felt deep in my soul.

“I know, but you shouldn’t have to. I’ll take care of her.” He looked over to Kostya. “Don’t let her stay.”