Page 14 of Waters that Drown Us

Luanne, Jimmy, Alan, Paul who owns the pawn shop, Geneviene the bartender, Nigel the pastor, Willy and Dean who fish at the docks, Dominic the retired welder in his mobile home. It’s impossible to know exactly how many people have lost their lives because of me, but in my worst nightmares these names are added to the list, next to my mother’s and uncle’s.

I have no idea who Ilya will kill to get to me. He doesn’t see human life the way normal people do. Even his brother, who he probably cared for more than anyone else, was disposable to him. He was valuable because he was a tool for Ilya to use in his mad grab for power and influence. A fitting heir to my father’s empire.

I was naive when I was young. I believed the story my father told me about my mother’s drowning. How she went for a swim in the sea and the rip tide pulled her out unexpectedly. He let me cry into his arms, said he would grieve her forever, just like me. He brushed my hair, like she used to, and told me all the stories about how they met and fell in love.

And then I never heard a word about her again.

I was only nine, but it felt like from that day forward, I was never a girl again. My father was both closer and more distant than ever before, giving me small glimpses into his work while simultaneously distancing himself emotionally. When I was thirteen, I started attending events with him. I thought it was because he trusted me, but really it was to show me off. To market the prize a lucky man would win if he could prove himself worthy of becoming heir to the most violent and cutthroat weapons runner in the world.

I was a signing bonus. A jewel some cruel man would fit onto his ring, fill with his children, and dispose of when I was no longer useful, the same as my mother before me.

For a while, it didn’t bother me. Shamefully, I was even a little proud. I knew I was beautiful—my father told me constantly. He bought me dresses and jewelry and perfume to remind me of it. I went to language and music lessons, learned about Russian and international politics, was even taught about the weapons we traded in. I found, or perhaps desperately created, a sense of power in being the most coveted prize my father could offer. I wanted to be desired, even as a teenager. I was taught that it was the most important thing I could be, and I craved it more than anything except my mother’s presence.

Until my father met Ilya.

The Andreeva brothers were newcomers to the scene, much like my father was when he started out. They were humble enough to earn their stripes as ground troops, but proved themselves loyal and useful, bringing in new clients and viciously extinguishing any threat to my father’s success. Ilya in particular impressed him. Cunning, detached, motivated only by what he could gain. My father saw something moldable in him, and took him under his wing.

When I first met Ilya I was fourteen. He was twenty-two.

My father waited until I was slightly older to make his intentions known, but I saw the writing on the wall from that first meeting. Suddenly the fairy tale that I thought I would have, where someone strong and capable but who secretly wantedmemore than anything else, came crumbling down around me. Even at our first meeting, Ilya cared nothing for me. He was curt and polite, but more interested in my father’s lessons than any allure I provided. For a while I tried to change that. At a painfully young age, I flirted with him, tried to make myself into the type of young woman my father’s commanders married. Nothing affected the blank way he started at me.

When I brought it up to my father, he said Ilya was being respectful of my young age. That he would show more interest when I was a woman instead of a girl. But when I did turn sixteen, the only thing Ilya wanted to do was control me.

Marriage into the Zakharov family was his key to my father’s empire, and he was going to ensure that I did not compromise his future. My lessons stopped almost immediately. The clothing I was presented with became more conservative. The hallways and paths I used to sneak from my father’s estate to play music in bars or drink in parks with strangers were sealed. I was shut out from meetings, given less and less knowledge about the operations of my father’s business. I was isolated from the world, save from the few times Ilya handed me a dress and told me to be ready for a dinner where I would sit silently and demurely next to him.

Even then, I tried. I didn’t know any other life. I convinced myself that my parents loved each other, and my mother did these things for my father, so it would work out. Ilya’s ice would thaw, and he would show compassion. Not love, that would be asking for too much. But respect. Maybe, if I was lucky, desire.

It didn’t matter that I wasn’t attracted to him. Love was something you chose, and I could choose this. For my father, for his empire, for the memory of my mother.

The resentment began to build. An accumulation of so much indifference in the wake of my mother’s ever-present love. The way Ilya’s hands tightened around my arms when we were in public to control the pace of my steps, and how my father shrugged when he saw the bruises and said I would eventually learn to read my husband so well he wouldn’t have to direct me. Seeing the few friends I still spoke to, the daughters of other commanders and messengers and footsoldiers, fall in love.

But I didn’t break. Not until Ilya truly put his hands on me.

After my engagement, when my mother’s family started slipping me notes through the chefs and housemaids and drivers under my father’s employ, I knew the window to escape this life was closing quickly. As soon as Ilya had me under his roof, I would never have the opportunity again.

So I died. It’s been years of paying in cash and moving towns under the cover of darkness. I’ve taken buses and trains and even boats, all at the direction of my uncle, who promised to keep me safe as an apology for not granting the same grace to his sister.

I’m certain he’s dead now. Another casualty to add to the endless list of people who died so I could live in fear, hiding in abandoned towns and big cities, remaining unnoticed.

When I pull up to my apartment, I realize that only muscle memory got me home, but that isn’t anything new. I often find myself lost in the blood of those who died for me even though I never asked for it. I lean my bike under the window outside my unit and contemplate the new name I have to add to the list.

Emily Vargas is the mostly likely collateral damage to my eventual discovery. We spend so much time together now, it’s impossible to think Ilya won’t have some interest in her. Morethan anyone else, the guilt over her inevitable death gnaws at me. Probably because I’ve come to peace with the fact that I chose this place. I knew when I started making my presence more obvious—letting my accent slip in towns friendly to my father’s business, not keeping my face covered when I bought my bus ticket here, placing calls from the payphone to a bail bondsman I know Ilya once had under his surveillance—that I was accepting responsibility for whatever happened to these people. If any god existed, I’m sure he damned my soul long ago. But coming to terms with how many might become unintended casualties, even accepting them as means to the ends of my plan, put the final nail in the coffin of my fate.

Emily feels different. She shouldn't be here. She wasn’t a part of my calculation. And she could have picked anywhere on the western coast of the United States to study her ridiculous fucking jellyfish, but she wound up here. Spending hours and hours with me.

She could have lived if she stayed away.

But I can’t control that now. There’s no saving her, and there’s likely no saving myself. Even if my plan works absolutely perfectly, I will likely be dead by the end.

Mechanically, I put away my paltry groceries, ignoring the roar in my stomach and sitting on the floor at the foot of my futon. Hunger, shame, remorse, attraction—they all roil in my gut, making me more nauseous than the sea or rattlesnake venom ever has. I draw my knees to my chest and lay my forehead on them, blocking out the fading sun with my curtain of hair.

Even though I haven’t felt this way about anyone else in this town, I feel this unignorable draw to do something for her. Even though it’s impossible, I want to make up for the fact that she will likely die before me. I want her to live as much as possiblein these days or weeks or months before Ilya finds me, and consequently her.

I want her to feel free of the fear that plagues her, that lives in her like a virus. I want her to feel weightless in the middle of the ocean, and to see the majestic whales when they leap from the surface. I want her to see the whole world beneath our hull.

I want her to live before I cause her death.

Chapter 8