Because I know in my heart that whoever they are isn’t him. He left me again, truly left me. The little girl in Nicolai’s manor at least got an explanation. I don’t care…
This time, I get nothing but comparisons to a dead girl who no longer exists.
Even now, I’m not good enough for him.
I never was.
“I think it’s her,” a voice calls, distinctly male but unfamiliar. His steps race toward me, and warm fingers brush the hair from my face. “God, it is her. Send word to Mischa. Fuck…”
The horror in his voice triggers a wave of confusion until I realize I’m curled on the floor beside the desk, my face coated in dust. I don’t have my knife anymore, just a crumpled business card clenched in my fist though I don’t even remember grabbing it. My dress hangs off of me, my panties discarded nearby, my knees clamped together, my face damp with tears, eyes squeezed shut.
And the blood. His blood—I can feel every smeared drop, drying on my skin.
“She doesn’t seem injured,” the man nearby says, his voice wavering with relief. “From what I can tell, at least.”
I can’t move to reassure him, or the other worried voices that erupt nearby.
I can’t move at all.
“Here,” another man demands, “put this on her. Cover her up now, you idiot!”
Soft fabric drapes me. A coat?
“Are you okay, Ms. Stepanova?” the first man asks. “Can you hear me?”
“She’s in shock,” someone else declares. “We need to get her home.”
I’m a little doll again, callously thrown away, but I lack the rage that infected Safiya in the aftermath of Donatello’s betrayal. I don’t fight the man who bundles me into his arms and spirits me into a waiting van. I don’t bite at the fingers that gently wipe the grime from my face. I can’t even process the voice urging assurances into my ear.
“You’ll be okay, Ms. Willow. You’re safe.”
Without Donatello, I have never felt safe. If anything, I’ve rebelled against any feeling of stability or peace. I always held out hope for him, even out of hatred. He would see me. Acknowledge me. Let Safiya finally die avenged.
But Donatello never loved that girl I used to be. He couldn’t even see her shadow standing before him years later.
Only one man has ever upheld his promise to keep me. Protect me.
I don’t feel anything until I finally open my eyes and see him, standing on the steps of our family home. The van barely comes to a stop before I lunge for the door and scramble out of it. I run to him, but he’s already halfway to me, wrapping me in his arms so fiercely he takes me off my feet.
I break. The tears I’ve kept in until now spill down my cheeks. My shoulders shake, wracked with sobs I can’t voice.
But Mischa holds me tight, crushed against his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he says, his mouth buried in my hair. “I’ve got you. You’re home now. You’re home. I’ve got you...”
14
Don
The girl isn’t at Havienna when I arrive, Fabio in tow—but someone was. Someone strong enough to break through the front door. In the dust, several sets of footsteps allude to the presence of more than one person. All men, judging from the size. They primarily lead into the study with individual groups advancing further into the house. But fairly quickly, they must have left.
Taking the girl with them.
“She might have called her employer,” I suggest out loud.
Fabio doesn’t seem convinced. “There are at least five sets of tracks here,” he deduces. “That’s more than enough for a private team. Like one of the many Mischa has in his employ. I need to confer with my contacts, but if he’s miraculously found his daughter within the past few hours, then we know.”
Know what? That the little tigre who tried to kill me was really the daughter of a Russian mobster. The Russian mobster. A literal princess in her own right with no reason to want me dead.
At least none I dare entertain. Swallowing hard, I direct a question toward Fabio, “You said she’s a mute?”
He nods absently, manipulating his cell phone. “Much isn’t known about why. The man isn’t exactly known for his openness when it comes to his family. She is a musician, so I guess she can hear.”
Like Safiya, stricken as an infant with an infection that left her hearing intact but prevented her from ever speaking. In all other aspects, she was no different than any other girl. She could read. Write. Draw. Play.
It was easy to forget her silence, when she was more than boisterous enough to make up for her lack of speech. The barrier was never a hindrance between us—I only had to look at her face and know exactly what was on her mischievous little mind.
And her final expression is all I see whenever I close my eyes. The features have faded with time, but that tormented stare remains. The pain. The anguish. The betrayal.
“I can’t get a signal out in this fucking godforsaken…” Hissing, Fabio heads for the foyer. “I’m going to go see if I can get better service out by the car. Though honestly, we should be heading back. Even if you didn’t take the Stepanova girl, someone did. And someone tried to kill you as well.” Wincing, he stoops to stroke his thigh and sighs. “My knee is acting up the way it does before shit hits the fan.”
He storms from the house, and I should follow him. I don’t know what keeps me here, standing motionless in the center of this study.
I left this place the day I sold Safiya. I couldn’t bear to step one foot through the door and wander these halls without hearing her echoing footsteps. I couldn’t imagine sitting at this desk without having her sneak in to curl onto the floor beside me. Living here without her was out of the question.
After all this time, it’s still the damn same, stocked with what furniture I didn’t bother to salvage or sell. Books still line the shelves, old business tomes mainly, but even now, a few titles catch my eye. Her old favorites.
I’m drawn to one in particular, and my hand shakes as I wrench it from a thick layer of dust and observe the cover in the fading daylight.
Pollyanna. It was her favorite. I think she strove to fashion herself in the same way, hopeful and optimistic in the face of strife. My happy girl.
The pain of her memory feels sharper now more than ever. A constant throbbing in my gut, made worse by the marks I spy scraped into the dust on the floor. The rough outline of a small body is visible over by the chair. Someone bigger than Safiya but still diminutive and slight.
A woman too feisty, too fierce to be even a mafiya Pahkan’s daughter.
“Donatello.”
I turn to find Fabio standing in the doorway once more. One look at his face and my heart stops.
“Willow Stepanova was returned to her family earlier today,” he says hoarsely.
“Thank god,” I say, laughing with genuine relief.
But Fab isn’t smiling.
“What’s wrong?”
“She was found half-naked, covered in blood,” he croaks, his expression a cross between disbelief and horror. “Her clothes ripped from her body. Her underwear in pieces. I shouldn’t have to tell you where, should I?”