I didn’t understand anything. My body was screaming for sleep but I fought it.
“We ordered pizza. You can have some.”
I nodded. Then my eyes darted to the TV attached to the wall across from the bed. Remo headed toward the nightstand and took the remote before handing it to me. I immediately turned it on and raised the volume. It was late so all movies were for adults. I stopped when I saw a familiar scene from the movie Alien.
A woman came in with a pizza carton and put it down beside me on the bed. “You’re going to have nightmares if you watch something like that,” she said to me.
“I like those nightmares,” I whispered.
“Become the nightmare even your worst nightmare fears, Ekaterina,” Remo said before he and the woman left. I turned the volume even higher and took a slice of pizza. I wasn’t really hungry but I stuffed it into my mouth.
My eyes burned with exhaustion but I forced them open, focused on the TV.
A knock sounded. I didn’t look away from the second Alien movie. They were doing an Alien movie marathon, and I felt like only if I kept my eyes on the screen would the voices and images stay away.
“Katinka,” Dad said softly.
I tore my eyes from the screen, my heart beating faster as I spotted Dad in the doorway, dressed in a black suit and light-blue tie. His face was edged with sorrow. Behind him stood Remo and Nino.
“Katinka?” The name he always used for me sounded wrong. He said it different. It felt different. I didn’t know the girl it belonged to anymore. I wasn’t her.
Dad came closer. He looked at me different too, as if he thought I was scared of him. Mom had said Dad was a bad man, that he hurt people, killed them, that he’d eventually do the same to her and me. But Dad had never hurt me, not like the men that Mom had brought home so I’d be nice to them.
I dropped the remote on the floor and stormed toward him. The air whooshed out of my lungs as I flung myself against him. He still wore the same Cologne I remembered and his clothes smelled faintly of cigars. He stiffened and didn’t hug me back. “I was bad,” I gasped out, hoping admitting it would make Dad forgive me.
“Katinka, no,” he murmured and then his arms wrapped tightly around me and he lifted me off the ground, clutching me against him. I buried my face against his throat. I felt like crying but I’d stopped crying a while ago. Now I couldn’t do it anymore, no matter how sad I was. He cupped the back of my head and rocked me like he’d done when I was really little.
He didn’t know what I’d done. If he knew, he’d be mad. Mom had told me over and over again, that Dad would be mad at me, not just at her. He would think I was dirty and bad for what I had to do.
He turned with me on his arms and carried me out of the bar. A black car with Dad’s men waited in front of it. Before he walked toward them, he turned to Remo who had accompanied us. “You better keep your promise,” Dad said in a voice that held violence.
Remo smiled. Men never smiled when Dad used that voice. “It’s not a promise I made to you, Grigory. That promise is for Ekaterina.”
I peered at him, wondering what he was talking about.
Dad shook his head. “My daughter won’t ever set foot on Vegas ground again. I’ll make sure of it. Eventually, you’ll have to let me dish out my revenge.”
“Dish out revenge on that scum in your trunk. The rest will have to wait for her.”
“She won’t ever be touched by violence or darkness again, Falcone. I’ll protect her from it until my last breath.”
“You can’t protect her from something that’s festering inside of her. Tell her what’s waiting for her. Let it be her choice.”
Dad didn’t say anything, only held me tighter. He turned and headed toward the car. Dad’s men didn’t look at me. They’d always tried to make me laugh in the past. I hunched on the backseat and Dad took the seat beside me, helping me buckle up before he wrapped an arm around me. He gave me a look that reminded me of the one time I’d broken my favorite porcelain doll. Our housekeeper had fixed her but after that she was too fragile to take her out of the shelf ever again. Eventually I couldn’t look at her anymore because when I did, I was only reminded that I couldn’t play with her. She made me sad.
“What happened to Mom?”
“She’s dead and so are the men who hurt you.”
I ducked my head. He knew.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Katinka. I’ll never let you out of my sight again. Nothing will ever touch you again.” He kissed my head. “Soon we’ll be home and then everything will be how it used to be. You’ll forget what happened.”
I never forgot. And things didn’t return to how they used to be. I’d become the fragile porcelain doll. Now, back at home in Chicago for a brief visit between races, I felt that way all the more.
I ran my fingertips over the edge of the shelf that held my Fabergé eggs. There were twenty-one of them. Dad had bought one for my birthday every year, even when Mom had taken me with her. He’d given me that egg the day I returned home with him and I’d put it in my shelf to all the others. Everything had been how I remembered it. Only I had changed. Surrounded by the prettiness of my past, I felt out of place, like an intruder in a life I didn’t belong anymore.
“Katinka,” I tested the word. It still felt as if I were talking about someone else. Tolstoy, our cat, a gorgeous Russian Blue, brushed up to my calf, maybe sensing my distress. I patted his head, causing him to purr.
Dad had tried to make me forget, had moved back to Russia with me for a little while, thinking we could leave the horrors behind, but they followed me.
Eventually, he, too, realized that I wouldn’t become the Katinka I’d once been. Every time he’d looked at me with pity or sadness in his eyes, I’d been reminded too. Now he didn’t give me that look anymore. I was stronger than I used to be. I didn’t need anyone’s pity.
I wondered if Adamo would look at me differently, too, once he found out what had happened.
My ride back to Vegas was accompanied by a sense of foreboding. Dinara’s past obviously held horrors. Possibly created by my brothers. She was worried I’d see her in a different light once I found out but I worried that old resentments for my brothers, especially Remo would rip open. Remo had done too much for me to lose my loyalty, but maybe the truth would destroy our relationship or at the very least set it back to the grudging tolerance I’d felt toward him in my teenage years.
I’d sent Remo and Nino a message that I would be visiting again this weekend before I’d set off from camp but not the reason why. Maybe Remo had an inkling. His messages over the last couple of weeks had revealed his suspicion about Dinara’s and my relationship. My brother had always had a sort of sixth sense when it came to sniffing out people’s secrets.
I drove toward the Sugar Trap because Remo had asked me to meet him and Nino there. Usually I avoided that place because it reeked of too much despair for my taste. That Remo considered it the best place to discuss whatever he suspected to be my visit about didn’t bode well. Stepping into the gloomy light of the whorehouse corridor always gave me a sense of entering a sort of limbo.