Adamo’s expression shifted to absolute fury. “Are you asking Dinara for money?”
Eden took a step back. “If she wants me to live and not have my death on her conscience, I need some money to escape Grigory.”
New tears pressed against my eyeballs. “Just like you needed money last time but back then you couldn’t ask me for it, so you sold me to old men who molested me.”
I began to shake, anger and utter despair battling inside of me. I ripped the knife out of its holster and whirled around. With a hoarse cry, I smashed the blade into her chest. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in a silent cry. Then she crumpled to the ground, taking me with her because I was still clutching the knife. I landed on my knees beside her. I released the knife, gripped her shoulders and began to shake her.
“How could you do this to me? How? How?” I screamed. My tears blinded my vision and my throat was raw from screaming. “How? Why didn’t you love me enough to protect me? Why?” I kept shaking her and screaming but she couldn’t answer me, and no matter what she’d have said it would have never given me the answer I wished for.
I released her and curled up, my face buried in my hands, which were sticky with her blood. I sobbed and shuddered. “Why didn’t you love me?”
Adamo knelt down beside me and wrapped an arm around me, pulling me against him. “She was a monster and never deserved to be your mother. You are lovable and I love you.”
I froze against him, sucking in a shaky breath. I lifted my face. I must have looked a mess with blood, tears, and snot on my face but Adamo’s expression was full of love. “You love me?”
“Yes, even if I’m breaking our keeping it casual pact. I don’t care. I won’t hide my emotions. I fucking love you and you better deal with it.”
I let out a strangled laugh. “I love you, too.” I kissed Adamo but when I pulled back his lips were coated with blood. My eyes sought the corpse of my mother right beside us. Her blood was slowly spreading under her body and her lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling.
I sagged against Adamo, adrenaline fading and leaving a strange sensation of emptiness. I’d done it. We’d done it. Killed every single tormentor on my list. Even my mother. I’d expected euphoria and relief, and there was a flicker of relief but stronger was the uncertainty. What now? All my life, I’d thriven to uncover my past and then to punish those who’d abused me. Now that I’d succeeded, I had to focus on my future, on new goals and figure out what I really wanted.
I reached into my jean shorts, and took out the crumpled piece of paper, dotted with blood. I’d kept it in my pocket since we’d started our path of vengeance.
We were done with our list. It seemed forever ago that we’d killed the first man on the list. Every second of every day had been dominated by thoughts of revenge. It had occupied my every thought, my night and days, and now, that we’d reached the end, a feeling of “what now?” took hold of me.
Adamo stroked my back. Neither he nor I made a move to get up from the blood puddle gathering around us, soaking our clothes. It was still warm. “It’s over,” I whispered, almost awed.
Adamo kissed my temple. “Now you can move on.”
I searched his eyes, wondering what we would do now and if it would be as easy as he said.
I glanced at my mother. No, at the woman who had given birth to me. She wasn’t really a mother and had never been.
“The clean-up crew will deal with her. You can forget she ever existed,” Adamo said. “Let’s get out of here.” He got up and held out his hand to me.
I nodded, even if I still felt trapped in a daze, and allowed him to pull me to my feet. Adamo called the clean-up crew and led me toward the door. I chanced a last look at my mother before I left. I’d wanted her dead and I didn’t feel any regret over killing her, but the euphoria and sense of freedom didn’t come yet.
We returned to our hotel and entered the building through a back entrance because we looked rough covered in blood as we were. The staff turned a blind eye to our state. Las Vegas and especially our hotels were under our total control. Everybody who worked for us knew better than to show interest in suspicious behavior.
Dinara headed into the bathroom and I followed her. She hadn’t said anything since we’d left her mother’s place.
She sank down on the edge of the bathtub and kept looking at her blood-crusted fingers, flexing them as if she didn’t trust her eyes. After our last few killings, euphoria and excitement had been our dominating feelings. With every crossed-off name on our list, another weight seemed to have lifted off Dinara’s shoulder. Not today though. I perched beside her. “She deserved death.”
“By our standards, definitely,” Dinara said.
“Not just by our standards. I think many people would agree she deserved to die after what she did.” Social norms and average morals were something neither Dinara nor I had many experiences with, but child abuse was a crime most people wanted to see punished as harshly as possible. “Do you regret killing her?”
Dinara finally looked up from her hands, her brows puckering as she considered my question. “No. I don’t feel any remorse. I would have kept thinking about her if I’d known she was alive. I could have never really moved on. And not just that. If I’d kept her alive and suffered because of it, Dad would have taken matters into his own hands eventually. He would have moved heaven and earth to kill her in your brother’s territory and that would have only caused trouble. I don’t want our families to be at war.”
“It’s not like we’re at peace right now.”
“Not at war either. As long as we ignore each other, there’s a chance for us to be…” She trailed off, her expression shutting off.
I grabbed her hand. “For us to be together,” I finished. Dinara’s eyes bored into mine. A few tiny blood splatters dotted her cheeks and forehead, her hair was a mess, and her skin was pale, and yet she looked more beautiful than anyone I’d ever seen.
“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “What now? I feel as if there’s a void opening up before me right now where a purpose had been before.”
“Now we take a shower and get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow we return to camp.”
Surprise crossed Dinara’s expression as if she hadn’t even considered the option of returning to camp.
“You want to return to camp, right?”
A tired smile spread on her face. “It’s the only place I want to be right now.”
I woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed. Searching the room, I found Dinara in front of the panorama windows. She let her gaze stray over the flickering lights of the Strip below us. I got out of bed and joined her. A lost look lay in her eyes, as if she were looking for an anchor to hold on to. I touched her back and she gave me a tired smile over her shoulder.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmares?”
She shook her head with a small frown. “No, not really. I just feel a little lost. I’d thought I’d kill the past by killing my abusers, but it still lingers in the back of my mind, not as prominent as before but still there.”