Page 46 of Unwritten Vows
Liza
“You nearly killed him!” I say, holding Derrick’s half-conscious body to my own. I’ve thrown off my shirt and sit plastered to him, skin to skin. I also have the heat in the car at full blast on this warm summer’s day, but Derrick is frozen solid, still chattering away.
Daddy doesn’t like it, but he’s stopped trying to tell me not to warm Derrick up, since it’s pretty clear they’ve pushed him way beyond his body’s limits.
“We will talk about what you did today later on. And Derrick will be interrogated again tomorrow. We didn’t ask all of the questions we needed from him. ”
Derrick is half awake, pressing his frozen, blue-tinged lips to my skin and shaking uncontrollably. I know he doesn’t want me helping him, but I seriously wonder if he would have died had they pushed him much further.
“Maybe you can make sure he doesn’t have hypothermia first?” I snap, narrowing my eyes and rubbing my hands up and down his back. I refuse to believe that Daddy’s torture methods are anything besides barbaric in this circumstance. “Have you tried asking him and having a civil discourse about it?”
My father looks so miserable having to explain this aspect of his life, I almost feel bad. Almost . “My sweet Solnyshko . If he was hiding something, do you really think he would discuss it through civil discourse?”
“Then hook him up to a lie detector or something, my lord! There are other ways to tell whether he’s lying or not!”
“There are ways to confuse a lie detector, and I’m sure he has been schooled in all of them.”
“I have,” Derrick grates out, his voice just above a whisper.
“Ah, welcome back to the land of the living,” my father says, looking over at him with one brow cocked. “I see you’re a little sensitive to the elements, eh?”
“Sensitive. Sure. That water was below fucking freezing,” Derrick says, violent tremors periodically wracking his body.
“It was. It has a low salinity content so that we could keep it below 30 degrees.”
“That’s just fucked up,” Derrick mumbles, and I have to squash an anxious giggle under my hand.
“We find that there are not many who have been prepared to withstand the frozen waters, but they can live a long time being exposed to them. Well, usually. Some are simply too fragile.”
Derrick gulps a large breath of air and says, “They had me in there for hours, old man. Let’s see you try to withstand it.” I can tell he’s really starting to get angry right now, and I can’t blame him. I’m starting to get annoyed with my father at this point.
“Let’s all please stop talking? I think everyone has said enough for today.”
*****
That night, there’s a knock on my bedroom door. My father doesn’t often seek me out, since I’m with him voluntarily throughout much of the day. But I’ve been hiding in my room since we returned to this house and he forbade me from seeing Derrick while he considered what he would do going forward.
At this point, I have no doubt that Derrick has gone above and beyond to be with me.
I know for certain he would never endure what he’s endured, especially not killing his own father, just to then go and try to spy on us.
He’s not getting any information out of his stay here, anyway, except maybe a good view of my father’s torture methods.
“Come in,” I say flatly, knowing it’s him before he shows his face. No one else would come knocking.
He opens the door and lingers in the doorway without speaking.
“What did you come to say, father? I’m not going to do the work for you.”
“My little love.” He comes to my bed and sits on the edge, toying with the comforter I’ve had since I was a young girl—the one my mother spent weeks sewing together.
“Derrick Stepinov may have sold you out in every way he could to get in the good graces of our enemies. He may have intentionally used you to make a fool of and bolster his own fame even higher.”
“Daddy, if you think I’m going to sit here while you—”
“Please, let me finish, Solnyshko .” He puts his hand up to stop me, and I do so out of habit.
“He may have done those things, or he may not have. But if his father did do them, he knew about it. He knew about it at some point and didn’t tell us.
That alone is enough for him to be punished with death. ”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I say, feeling tears sting my eyes.
“I know you care about him, and that is the only reason he is still alive. But… my sweet Solnyshko … you can’t truly believe that there is a way for you to be with him. Not after what his father has done. Not after what he allowed for too long.”
“Even if he did everything you said, he killed his father for it. He killed his father so he wouldn’t murder an innocent woman. He killed his father so he could be with me. Yes, I believe that in itself negates everything else.”
“You are so much like your mother, Liza. You look like her. You care for people the way she did and you love fiercely. But in this, you are different. She would agree with me. She would agree that your safety and the safety of this bratva family are paramount. Do you see the kind of danger we could be putting ourselves in if we were to trust a man like this?”
I clench my teeth together, not wanting to admit to anything.
But it’s true that a part of me understands his reasoning.
A part of me feels the need to accept his assessment based simply on what I know already.
Derrick has already confessed to knowing pieces of his father’s plans.
That means he knew at least some of what was going to happen before it did.
“We need to give him a chance, Daddy.” I plead with him to understand, even though I know this is a losing game. There’s no way he’s going to agree with me on this, and I can’t help but understand why. I would never trust a man like this with a loved one.
Daddy stands up and sighs. “I will interrogate him further tomorrow and decide whether he lives or dies.”