Page 58 of Unwritten Vows

Derrick

Liza is barely conscious as her adrenaline wears off, but I’m not leaving her alone in this bed without me. I pick her up with the sheet wrapped around her, even though I have more work to do here.

“Give me a gun,” I say to the man closest to me.

He passes me a handgun without a word. There are silencers, but it’ll still be loud.

I hold Liza close to me, stretch the arm holding my gun, point it to the nearest camera, and unload a few rounds directly into it.

Liza’s body jumps in response, but at least I know that she’s not as out of it as she was earlier—that the drugs are leaving her system.

I shoot the next camera I see, hanging off the neck of a dead soldier a few feet away from me.

It explodes to pieces, and then I unload a few extra bullets into the dead man for good measure.

My guys get the picture after a while, and we walk through the building, just in case one of those fuckers got away somehow.

I still feel uneasy about the cameras, or any lingering men left alive, able to drag themselves away, even after casing the entire building.

I don’t want to take the chance that there’s a picture out there that I don’t know about.

I tell my men to grab some accelerant from the gas tank nearby, and then I finally head out with Liza still in my arms, half conscious and clinging to me like her life depends on it.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Shush,” I tell her as I walk her to the car. “Don’t thank me. I should be thanking you.”

She’s crying quietly, wiping her tears on my sweaty shirt. “I didn’t just change you. You changed me, too.”

I don’t want to have changed her. She’s too good. I don’t want to mar that. “Don’t say that. Stay the same as you were weeks ago.”

She shakes her head. “That girl wouldn’t have survived what I just went through. That girl would have been traumatized forever. And without you…”

She doesn’t finish that sentence, and while I’m thankful for that, it’s still not enough to stop my own mind from going there.

So many things lined up today for the perfect storm.

Thank goodness Edoardo’s idiot cousin wasn’t smart enough to take Liza to Edoardo’s house, or we never would have gotten through security.

Out here on the dock, haunted by the spirits of those the NYC Italian mafia have killed—the place that most of humanity knows to leave alone—we are isolated and far from prying eyes, with little protection.

Edoardo probably would have been smarter than his nephew, but luckily, Edoardo is in fucking jail.

An explosion sounds from behind us as we walk away from the building my men have just torched.

There’s no way anyone, or any cameras, survived that.

The threat is gone for now, but with Liza’s soft-spoken words, I know now more than ever that her father needs to pass the baton to me.

He needs to relinquish her safety after this, because if this ever happens to her again, I’ll kill everyone.

I’ll kill him for not seeing it coming. And it could have been so much worse. Thank God it wasn’t worse.

“Hey.” I feel her gentle hand on my face, her bright blue eyes shining up into mine, unshed tears still misting there. “I’m not traumatized, and I haven’t disappeared. Because of you. I’m alive and I’m here. And I’m telling my father… that this is where I belong. Whether he likes it or not.”

*****

I head north toward Rhode Island. There’s no way in fuck I’m taking Liza to her own house, and it’s not just because I don’t want anyone else to touch her right now. I certainly don’t want her to be alone. But that’s not the full reason either.

It’s because I’m going to be with her no matter what. I’m going to defy the Bolyar if I have to. I definitely don’t want to be around when he finds out what’s happened.

But first I make sure to have Liza checked out.

I take her to a private hospital that Divny owns a massive share of through one of his non-profit groups, which I have a large stake in as well.

I make sure to get a female doctor to check her out.

It’s not like we can call the police, but I think she understands that I’ve gotten more justice than they probably would, anyway.

And I plan to get more. But that’s for another day.

She remembers being violated to some degree, and while I’d still like to bring that fucker back from the dead and kill him again for putting his disgusting hands on my girl, it seems like that was the worst of it, from what the forensics can tell.

Liza holds my hand through all of it, turning her head to the side and crying as soon as a tool touches her skin.

I wash her down in the large open shower at the hospital, gentle with her body, but promising myself I’ll make new marks to cover the ones she has now.

But there’s nothing lasting. There’s nothing obscene.

Once these benign marks fade, there will be no outward sign that she’s any different from every other woman on this earth.

But I know the scars will be inside, and I’ll be there to soothe every one of them.

She cries the entire time. But she gets through it, and the very same night she’s sent home without any major injuries and the drugs working their way out of her system.

We go back to Rhode Island, back to my father’s mansion. It turns out that’s a good call when her father gets out of jail the next morning and calls me, his loud voice halfway through a sentence, booming through the phone before I even get it to my ear.

“The talk about my daughter being with you better be just that, because if she’s not home—”

“I saved her life, sir. I did it because you were in jail . And I was not going to have my future bride be manhandled by a bunch of morons with cameras who were intent upon sending young women to sadistic pieces of shit half a world away.”

Yaroslav is fully silent, as if stunned by my words of logic and sincerity. I realize that I finally don’t fucking care if he believes me. Everyone lies in this game, including him. In fact, as I changed after I met Liza, I was only lying to myself.

And the words need to get out of me, after weeks of not speaking out, after 24 hours straight of stress and pressure on my shoulders.

“With all due respect sir, I’ve said everything I can say, shown you everything I can show you.

If you don’t know who I am by now, well, join the fucking club.

Because neither do I. But if I know just one thing about myself, it’s that I’ll never betray your daughter, and by extension, you.

Because she loves you maybe as much as she loves me. ”

Silence again. Then finally, he asks, “How can I ever trust you again? How could she?”

I shake my head. “I’ve made some bad decisions.

I might make more in the future. But don’t tell me you’ve never made a bad decision, Yaroslav.

Because this whole fucking life was a bad decision, and you chose it.

I didn’t even have a choice. You don’t get what that was like, just being born into this, knowing I might be worse than dead if I ever disobeyed my father.

In the end, I killed that fucker. In the end, I’m far more devoted to your daughter than I ever was to him. ”

I finish, slightly winded, with passion behind the words that I didn’t even know I had.

The Bolyar gives me nothing. “Put her on the phone.”

I run my hand down her arm, but she doesn’t even stir. “She’s sleeping and she’s been through hell. I’ll have her call you in a few hours when she gets up and eats something.”

He goes to argue, but then probably realizes that I’m right. “I will kill you if you’re keeping her there when she doesn’t want to be there.”

“I wouldn’t save her from being kept against her will so that I could do the same.” Maybe I would, actually, If she ever wanted to leave me again. But he doesn’t have to know that.

“All of this notwithstanding… you are on thin ice, boy. Tell her to call me as soon as she’s awake.” And with that, he hangs up on me.

But it’s a poor man’s move, like upending the game table after I clearly won. He’s just given us his blessing, as far as I’m concerned.