I swallowed against my dry throat. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” He passed me a plate. “Bread?”
I smacked it away. “No, I don’t want bread. I want to yell at you. What happened?”
Konstantin curled his lip, the beast inside him coming to the surface. He wore his mask well, better than most, but even he didn’t have infinite patience. If there was anything I was good at, it was riling up this man.
Back when I had first arrived, when I was twenty-three and more apathetic than the Devil, Danika had once mused how I was the only one who could get under Konstantin’s skin. He is so patient and diplomatic with everyone else, but somehow you really tick him off.
Thanks? I had said.
She laughed. It’s a compliment. You know how it’s a talent to make some people laugh? Yours is the opposite. Your talent is making Konstantin want to break his façade.
“The woman I loved left me,” he growled. “I offered my kingdom, my family. I even offered to give everything up for her.”
“You didn’t mean those things–”
“Yes, I did.” Konstantin’s tone was hard, but he wasn’t speaking to me the same way he had when we were in his office. Maybe I needed to piss him off some more.
God, I thought in the midst of my sad fury, is this how Roman feels every day? No wonder he’s on such a power trip.
“What was I meant to say, Konstantin? Thank you?”
“I don’t need your thanks,” he growled. “All I wanted was for you to stay.”
“It’s too late now.”
He huffed. “Indeed, it is.”
We stared at each other for a second, taking in the person opposite us in. My chest was rising sharply, and adrenaline warmed up in my veins as the promise of a fight lay on the horizon. Konstantin didn’t look much calmer.
“You’re angry at me,” I said. “I can tell.”
His eyes sharpened with his smile. “I was.” He took another sip of his wine. “I was furious with you. Sometimes, briefly, I still am.”
“What changed?”
“Two reasons.”
I had the sick feeling I knew what they were but I asked for clarification anyway.
“His name,” Konstantin replied. “Nikolai Konstantinovich Tarkhanov.”
In Kon’s accent, the name rolled off the tongue easily and beautifully. It sounded correct and fitting, the true way my son’s name was meant to be said. Like each syllable was an ode to his regal bloodline.
I clutched the glass in my hand. “Oh?”
“That is not a name a woman gives her son when she hates his father.”
He was right. I hated that he was right.
The word revealed blared like an alarm in my mind. Revealed, revealed, revealed. I was lucky there was nothing that could produce ink nearby or else I would’ve turned into a dictionary with the number of times I would’ve written the word on. I could almost picture it in my mind: revealed over my forehead, over my neck and hipbone and inner thigh. Revealed, revealed, revealed.
“The second reason is that you taught him Russian. Why would you teach him Russian…unless you planned to return to us all along?”
You planned to return to us all along.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb, Elena. It doesn’t look good on you.”
I dropped my glass a little harder than I needed to. Wine sloshed over the side. “What do you want me to say, Konstantin?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I want to know why you left.”
“I told you when I left why. Do I have to keep repeating myself?”
“Until you tell me the truth.” He folded up the napkin he had been using. “Yes, you do.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, donning my imaginary armour. You’ve lied to him before, I soothed myself. This is a walk in the park for you, Elena. “I am telling the truth. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t change anything.”
“The truth would change things, Elena, because it would explain the lies,” was his diplomatic response. He was good at controlling his temper–I’d give him that. “Why did you leave?”
“I told you.”
Konstantin dropped his fork with too much force. His anger was beginning to become more prominent. “Fine. Then what did Tatiana mean? Them or you?”
19
Elena Falcone
Them or you?
I had nightmares about that day. About Tatiana’s saccharine smile and her parting words. Even her little speech had a permanent spot in my brain, the words constantly on repeat like a bad song.
Oh, Elena, she had cooed. The stupidest thing you have ever done is cared about someone other than yourself. Not so smart, now, are you?
Sometimes, I thought she had a point.
When I was younger and intent on my own survival, I had never been in this much agony. My thoughts had been filled with my comfort and botany science breakthroughs, not the jumbled mess they were now. Is Nikolai happy? Is Konstantin angry with me? Is Danika healthy, is Roksana in pain, is Roman succeeding? What about Artyom, Dmitri and Anton? What about Evva and Natalia?
Hell, even Babushka reserved time in my head. Where is she? Is she okay? Are the birds in the surrounding areas safe from her?
My eyes snapped to Konstantin’s upper arm. I knew the names that were listed there–I had the same ones scrawled on my heart.
“How do you stand it?”
His brow furrowed. “That’s what Tatiana meant?”
“We’re not talking about her anymore. I asked you: how do you stand it? Loving all these people, keeping them safe and protecting them? I feel like I’m going to go fucking insane.”
Konstantin’s face softened. He looked younger as he smiled kindly, revealing the man that still lived in him, no matter how hard he tried to eat him alive.
“Isn’t that why we are all here, lyubimaya?” he asked. “To hold and be held in return? To love and be loved in return?”
“I don’t think that’s why I’m meant to be here,” I said, trying to keep my voice level but failing miserably. I didn’t know what it was about Konstantin that made my lips become so loose, that dissolved my filter. But before I knew it, I was spilling my deepest fears into the air between us.
“I think I’m meant to be tucked down in some lab and mixing chemicals all day. God made me to advance science and the world we live in. I wasn’t made to take care of people, to offer nurturing and comfort. What are Nikolai’s friends going to think when they come over? Or his teachers? Are they going to think he’s loved by the haughty creature standing in the kitchen?”
I gestured to my face, to the awkward features that contoured together. I had always been odd, never ugly or pretty, just difficult to draw. I had never been bothered by this; it had kept me safe from empty compliments.
In fact, I used to laugh to myself when my family would try to compliment me, always falling quiet before the word pretty, because it was never the correct word to describe me. Elena, you look so... Then they would trail off. Like the silence was better than the lie.
“I look like a branch with eyes,” I finished my rant with. “A branch with fucking eyes.”