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THE PROTECTOR

S he’s looking at me, fear written all over her face. I scare her—probably more than whoever’s waiting to kill her outside. Why do I make her feel like this?

I keep telling her I’m here to protect her, but it’s clear she doesn’t believe me. Honestly, I wouldn’t believe me either. I need to loosen up.

After my visit to the sheriff’s office there is one thing clear, nothing in Maplewood is as it seems. If anything, things are a lot worse than I imagined and I hate the idea of being wrong and even more not being in control.

I bet she thinks of me as some kind of demon, maybe even worse, she considers me to be Lucifer who has come here to take her to hell. She forces a smile but it doesn’t take long for the curl of her lips to go back down to a straight line.

Why does she think I’m about to torture her?

I’m not into small talk, this is why kids tend to avoid me, because I just stare down at them making them probably feel as if we shouldn’t be breathing the same air.

She bites her bottom lip, which awakes a beast in me. I want to tell her to stop it as her eyes avoid mine.

I really need to have sex, but then as she moves toward me.

She comes close to my chair, and then cups my chin and shifts so I’m face-to-face with her.

“Why did you do that?”

She’s startled by my question and moves away from me. Her fingers are soft, caring and loving. No one touches my face apart from me and my barber to shave. It’s as if she has awakened a different side of me, one that I didn’t know existed.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper, as I grab her hand. “Do it again.”

Her hand trembles as she does it again, but this time she uses her index finger to stroke my chin. My breathing subsides this time, as a memory flashes through my mind. It’s as if a fragment of my childhood rises as she does it.

“Mom used to do that when we were little. She’s the only woman that I’ve had touch my face,” a confession escapes my lips and surprises me. I want her to sit on my lap, to stroke the rest of my face, but if she does, then I won’t be able to control myself.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

I remember my mom’s green eyes are just like Penelope’s, but she had blonde hair. Not red. Like hers, so I know this isn’t the reason Hunter was obsessed with Penelope. They have no features in common apart from that. Mom was tall, whereas Penelope’s only five three if that. I can hear Mom’s voice in my ears, something I haven’t heard for a long time.

“Tell her,” she encourages me to do. A memory. A lie, hidden and I’ve never spoken about it, but I assume Hunter would have done it with Noah.

He probably told him everything about us.

“You see Ruslan and I. My brother, not my cousin , came to America over thirty five years ago.”

“Oh. Where did you live before?” She asks as she backs away and returns to the chair opposite me, the one she was sitting in.

“I observe her face for a moment, as I think about the ghosts she wants to talk about. The ones I thought were dead and buried.

“We lived in Russia. Our father used to be a politician. A powerful man. He married our mother, and he was proud of his position and power. Then, like everything when it comes to politics, there was so much corruption. And we lost our father.”

“He died?”

I laugh at my failed attempt at a joke. I shift in my chair as I retell the story, in which both Hunter and I were told.

“No, he had to go live with his parents, who were ashamed of him, because he had brought shame to the family. He changed from being a powerful man to a dead man inside.”

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s just that I don’t remember him. Not at all. I was around three, maybe four when the abuse got so bad that Mom had to leave him and move in with her parents. They were poor. Dead poor so she worked in a diner, which is how she met our stepdad.”

She smiles, thinking maybe there is a happy ending.

“One day while working in the diner or shopping in the market, I don’t remember the details but a man saw her and asked her on a date. One date led to another, so she left my brother and I with our grandparents, cousin or whoever to look after us as she found love again. He fell in love with her beauty, spirit and everything else. It was so easy, everyone often complimented my mother on her beauty.”

Mom was deluded to think our stepfather was her knight in shining armor. With the availability of the internet, I know now she could’ve easily become a model. Someone would have scouted her to be on the front cover of every magazine on the catwalk and they would have paid her big bucks. She was stunning. I clench my teeth as I think about how her life could have been compared to how it was.

I raise my finger, as a warning, to let Penelope know that this part of the story isn’t pretty nor something she will be so eager to hear.

“But, when he found out that she had a child, he was apprehensive to take her to America. Of course, her parents, my grandparents were eager for her to go. He gave them enough money to throw Mom out, so she had no choice.”

Penelope gasps and holds her mouth.

“That’s horrible.”

I shake my head. “No, it's poverty. When you’re poor, you believe that your life isn’t worth anything. Once someone flashes money in front of you, there's nothing you won’t do to have it.”

Her eyes dart around the room, as if she’s trying to figure out if what I’m saying makes any sense. It wouldn't to someone like her. She has never been poor. Never had to worry about where her next meal comes from, I haven’t either, but I’ve been an agent long enough to see it always leads to poor decisions.

Then she continues to explore my face, slowly and carefully as if she wants me to tell her more about my past. As if she’s a priest in a church and I’m in the confession box, as if confessing all to her will make all the pain go away.

From the moment she went back to her chair, I’ve been craving the feel of her touch again. I want her to sit on my lap and cup my face as she did only moments ago, instead I face the fire and continue to tell her about the past, as I was told.

“Mom had nowhere to go, but she’d heard so many great things about America, so she packed our things and put us both on the plane. She decided the moment our stepfather saw us, he would love us as much as she did, and there wouldn’t be any issue.”

Penelope drops her hand, tucking it close to her chest, waiting for the but, because clearly there is one.

“We arrived on the private plane, our stepfather didn’t greet us, but he left a clear message for our mother was to keep her child in the outhouse. The house he built at the back of his main house. Out of sight out of mind. But he didn’t know that we were two.”

“But this makes no sense. Surely when you were on the private plane. The staff must have said something to him?”

I chuckle, at the innocence in her question and she smiles as if I’m telling her a prediction, not the story of my past.

“No. He was a cruel, and heartless man. No one spoke to him unless spoken to. All he did was say to his staff, go and get this woman. He didn’t even mention that Mom had one kid. The staff didn’t know and they never asked who the kids were, so from the moment we moved to the outhouse. She would come and keep an eye on us. She spent more time there when she didn’t have to carry out her marriage duties.”

I don’t have to spell it out to her. She’s young, but not completely stupid to know what that means. Even with the attempt on her life, she is smiling at me trying to reassure me.

“Then as the years went by, my stepfather grew tired of Mom. You see he thought she’d give him a child. A boy. So, after countless doctor visits he continued to blame her. Mother didn’t want another child. She did everything to make sure she couldn’t conceive, but she soon found out that she didn’t need to. Our stepdad was impotent. No one knew there were two boys living in the outhouse. Everyone assumed we were one. Mom said once we grew older, she would find a way to make us two boys, just like we were back in Russia. But as we grew older, we loved the game we played. Ruslan would go to school one week, and I would stay home the following. It was a game for us, until we got older.”

She covers her mouth in shock. It’s as if me spelling it out to her has made her realize that we were never brought up as two people, but always one.

“What about your birth certificates?” she asks.

“Birth certificate.”

She shakes her head. “At school no one noticed.”

I shrug. “I think one time. One teacher suspected we were two boys. She told mom of her concern, and mom made an excuse and we changed schools.”

“You say we , as if you and your brother were treated as two different people,” she says.

I corrected her. “I say we, because all these changes not only affected me, but him too.”

It’s as if the more I tell her about the past, the less she wants to hear as she starts to tremble. I wonder if hearing about the lives my brother and I led, makes her fear me more?

“What about friends?” She asks.

“We had none,” I say. “Our stepfather was a powerful man and not to be crossed. Parents made sure their kids never played with us, because if something went wrong and got back to our stepfather there would be consequences.”

“But you were only kids. Kids do silly things, it doesn’t mean they should pay for it.”

“Go tell that to your aunt!”

Shit, I don’t know why I blurted it out of my mouth, but I did, knowing that it was cruel.

“What about when you got older? When you went to middle school or even high school?” She asks, ignoring my little outburst.

It’s as if she is trying to find a flaw in my past. I can show her the scars of when my stepfather took his anger and beat me, and then I would have to do the same to my brother, so my stepfather would be none the wiser.

This part of the story, I won’t tell her. She needs to know a lot, but not everything. Especially in this short space of time.

“You said that your stepfather wanted kids and your mom couldn’t give him any?”

I rub my brow, trying to erase the days and nights of abuse I’d endured by my stepfather, knowing that the only reason he came to visit—or to hit me, or rather, us—was because he wanted his own child. He blamed Mom for this, even though he was clearly the one with the problem.

“Mother got older. He got bored, so when we were about seven, only four years after we arrived, no more was she welcome in their bed, or any part of the house unless he was entertaining, he had mistresses who would take her place.”

“That’s horrible. Why did your mother stay?”

The answer to her question is simple. I’ve never been a mother, and never will be, but I did ask my mother a thousand times the same thing, and as I got older, I stopped asking because the answer was clear.

“There was no public health care at the time, when we were sick, which at times we were when we were young, she would take us to the doctor. He would pay. The same thing with university fees, she wanted us to have the best. Well one of us to, and in the future, the other would help the other do the same. But it didn’t work out that way, because Hunter had other ideas about what he wanted to do with his life.”

Healthcare is a big problem in America, and one Mom didn’t really think about. She sometimes stole things in the house and blamed the staff for it, in order to take one of us to have our vaccinations or if we needed medical treatment the other one had already. She drove miles, so no confusion could ever be made with our medication nor diagnosis. She sacrificed a lot for us.

Especially me.

The two of us sat by the fire, not saying a word—both of us drowning in the silence, but neither of us reaching for air. It should’ve felt uncomfortable. Awkward, maybe, but it didn’t.

I watched her while she watched the flames, and I knew she wasn’t mesmerized by the fire itself—not by the heat licking at her skin.

It was the chill in my story that held her still. The weight of it, and the ugliness I’d laid bare in front of her like bones on the floor.

It wasn’t just some tale I spun to pass the time.

It was my life. Raw. Twisted. Unforgivable.

And even with all its wreckage, she didn’t look away.

She just stared, quiet and steady, like she finally understood what kind of man was sitting next to her.

Yet, she didn’t try to leave, but continued to stay.

I 've never told a soul every sordid detail about my past, and I never thought I would, even if I did leave out a couple of bits.

The two of us sat in silence, the fire cracking between us like it was the only thing keeping the night from swallowing us whole.

We didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. Not after what I’d told her.

It should’ve felt uncomfortable—too heavy, too raw—but it didn’t. I watched her as she stared into the flames, her expression unreadable, still, like she was trying to make sense of the wreckage I’d handed her.

And still… she didn’t flinch.

Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe that’s the moment something inside me twisted a little deeper.

Now, I don’t know if I lust after her more than I already did—an obsession I kept trying to bury beneath guilt and logic—or if I just want her here, next to me, always. She left quietly, heading to her room, and I didn’t move. I stayed by the fire for hours, staring into the burn of reds and golds and blues, wishing I could pull my words back. Wishing I could unmake the past.

But that’s not how this works.

I am the abyss, endless and black, and she’s the flicker of light that dares to shine down into it. But what she doesn’t know is that the darkness calls to her. It pulls at her like gravity, wrapping itself around her, drawing her closer even as she tries to stay away. She might think her light is strong enough to keep me at bay, but I’m the dark she can never outrun.

By the time I dragged myself to bed, I didn’t even bother to change. I wasn’t expecting sleep to come so easily—hell, I wasn’t expecting it to come at all. Yet it did.

And when I woke to the buzz of my phone cutting through the quiet, it hit me.

I’d been carrying my past like a corpse strapped to my back, and speaking it out loud—letting it bleed into the room with her beside me. It wasn’t the exhaustion of chasing criminals, nor running miles in the dark. It was the weight of memory, and finally letting go. The irony being that for the first time in years… I slept.

The burner phone is ringing so I throw the covers off me to try and find it. I don’t even remember changing let alone getting under the sheets. I slip out of bed, my feet hit the cold floor of the cabin. The room smells like pine and wood, the scent grounds me, and reminds me of the reason that we’re in the cabin in the first place. We’re not here to have a weekend away. Someone murdered my brother and that someone is after Penelope. I need to keep it together. For her. For me.

I step into the living room, once I find the phone, and swipe the screen to answer trying to keep my voice down, so I don’t disturb Penelope.

“Jamie,” Noah says, with a sense of urgency in his voice.

“What is it, Noah?” I ask, my voice still hoarse from sleep. I rub my face, trying to shake off the fatigue.

“I’ve got something, man,” he says, his words spilling out in a rush. “I hacked into the asylum system with a buddy of mine. You won’t believe this—there’s a bunch of patients missing. We’ve got records. Names. It’s bigger than we thought.”

I don’t understand, because he already said that they were organ trafficking, so this makes sense.

“But you said that they were organ trafficking.”

He clears his throat. “Yeah. I assumed that it was for patients that died there, but it’s as if they are killing patients to sell their organs.”

Oh. I shake my head, because I feel as if once again we’re getting distracted.

“Noah,” I start, my voice steady, but my grip tight on the phone. “This has nothing to do with my brother’s death. I’m dealing with enough shit right now. I can’t—” I pause, swallowing down the anger, and frustration which wants to bubble over. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

I glance back toward the other bedroom, but I can’t look in on Penelope. Not while I’m trying to hold it together. I walk further into the cabin, pacing in the silence that feels too loud.

There's silence on the other end. I can tell that Noah is probably disappointed with my response and this reminds me of the reason I work alone.

People expect me to give a shit about their reasoning for wanting to do things. I’m an agent who solves cases, I don’t run around trying to solve everyone’s problems.

Maybe this is why whenever I get awards and recognition, it was because Ruslan, the silent hero took my place, whereas I stuck to the case, and didn’t do anything more, unless I was getting a big reward out of it. A pending promotion which would lead to more money. Not that I needed it.

Noah keeps talking, I run a hand through my hair, feeling the loss of my brother and realizing that Noah’s not taking no for an answer. Just like Ruslan wouldn’t. They have a lot more in common than they realize.

“Jamie,” Noah presses, his tone softening just slightly, “just listen. I’m telling you, I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to do anything. I can handle this.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Noah. I don’t.”

I’m trying to stay calm, but my head is spinning.

“I’ve got enough on my plate right now. I need to focus on the funeral. I need to get my brother’s things in order.” My voice cracks.

“Leave it to me,” Noah says, voice firm. “I’ll arrange everything in Indianapolis, so that I can use his real name and no one will be non-the-wiser as to where he’s being buried. I can do it on Sunday. You don’t have to worry about it.”

He’s letting me know that he’s sorting my brother’s funeral the way that he would have wanted it. I can’t do it, because I won’t be doing it with Ruslan’s wishes in mind, unlike Noah.

I close my eyes, letting the words settle. Sunday. The word hits me harder than I expected. It’s our birthday, me and my brother’s. He’s gone, but Sunday is supposed to be for him, for us.

I take a deep breath, steadying myself. I force my hands to relax. “Sunday… that’s our birthday,” I murmur.

“I know.” Noah’s voice softens, but only for a moment. I know he’s been dealing with his own demons, too. But this… this is something else. I’m supposed to be there for him, but I can barely keep myself upright. “I’ve got it, Jamie. You can’t keep carrying everything. Not like this.”

I don’t respond right away. I can feel the tension tightening in my throat, the grief sitting like a lump. I want to scream, but I don’t. Finally, I clear my throat and whisper, “Fine. Do it. Sunday. But don’t call me about it again. Just… do it.”

Noah hangs up without a word. I don’t even know if he heard me. He’s probably pissed about my reaction to everything. Then it hits me, like a ton of bricks, I’m thinking about Ruslan’s death and the person after Penelope, but he’s worried about the farming.

Could the two be connected?

Is this why Noah ’s so hell bent on figuring that out, so he can solve both mysteries at the same time?

I stand, feeling the silence of the cabin settle over me, deeper than before. I stare at the door, my mind racing. I need to move. I need to get out of my head, out of this cabin. Out of everything.

But maybe I should call Noah back, and just clear the air?

When the fuck did I get so indecisive. Shit, I need to get out of here, quickly! Before I really do lose my mind.

I walk back to the bedroom where Penelope slept, but she’s still sleeping. I pull on a pair of jeans. I don’t care if it’s freezing outside. I don’t care about the cold air that’ll slap me across my face the moment I step out the door.

I need to run.

I grab a shirt from the back of the door, where I dumped it after Penelope went to bed. I pull it on over my head without thinking twice. I grab a Post-it note and leave her a message and put it on the back of the door, so she’ll see it when she gets up. Then, barefoot on the cold floorboards, I slip into my sneakers, and I’m out the door before I can stop myself.

The cold hits me instantly, and it’s brutal. My breath turns to fog, and I can feel the icy sting of air against my skin, but I don’t care. My body reacts before my brain can even process what I’m doing.

I start to run.

Something I do naturally in NY, but between my new acquired taste of beer, even smoking which I haven’t done since I was a teen and pizza, I struggle doing something that I usually do every single day of the week.

My feet pound against the earth, and the rhythm of my breath slowly becomes the only thing that matters. Everything else fades away—the cabin, the grief, the phone call, my confession to Penelope and most of all my obsession with her. The type I used to scold my brother for having and now I seem to have taken on the role which I never thought I would do in a million years.

It’s all a blur now. I focus only on my feet, the motion, the feeling of the cold wind cutting through me like a thousand tiny needles.

I push harder. I run faster.

The cabin is behind me now. I can’t look back. Not yet. My thoughts, as much as I try to push them away, creep in. I think about my brother. How he’s gone. How there’s nothing left but memories. The questions that he’ll never answer, and the fury inside me that burns hot and bright every time I think of what happened to him.

My lungs ache, but I don’t stop. I keep moving. Keep running. Keep pushing. It’s the only thing that feels real right now.

I think of Penelope, waiting back at the cabin, unaware. The thought makes my chest tighten again. She deserves better than this. She deserves more than a man so broken that he can’t hold himself together.

I’m not strong enough for both of us. Like a wound which will never heal.

Not today.

I’ll run. I’ll run until I can’t anymore, because it’s the only thing I can do.

It’s all I’m willing to do right now.