By his own admission, the man in front of me killed his father.
“What happened? Why—” My voice cracks. “Why did you do it?”
He doesn’t respond for another long, nerve-racking moment. His face is that of a stranger, dark and closed-off. “Because he deserved it.” His words fall like a hammer, heavy and brutal. “Because he was a Molotov. Like me.”
I dampen my dry lips. “I don’t understand.” My heart pounds against my ribcage, each beat echoing in my ears. A part of me wants to shut this down and run away screaming, while another, infinitely more foolish part longs to curve my palm over the harsh, uncompromising line of his jaw, offering comfort with my touch.
Because hidden underneath that hard, emotionless façade is pain.
There has to be.
He opens his mouth to reply when someone knocks on the door. The sound is quiet, tentative, but it kills the moment as surely as a gunshot.
Springing to his feet, Nikolai strides over to the door to open it.
“Konstantin is on the phone,” Alina says from the doorway. “His team has found something.”
4
Chloe
My stomach is in knots by the time Nikolai returns, the toast I’ve eaten sitting inside like a rock. I know Konstantin is his older brother, the tech genius of the family, and I strongly suspect that the “something” his team has found relates to my situation.
Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, Konstantin is probably how Nikolai had known all those things about me from the beginning—like the fact that I hadn’t posted on my highly private social media during my month on the run. And he’s also how Nikolai got access to the police files and discovered that they’d been altered to make my mom’s murder look even more like a suicide.
Konstantin and his team must be the “resources” Nikolai mentioned during the car ride here, the advantage he has over Bransford.
Sure enough, Nikolai’s face is grim as he takes a seat on the edge of my bed and clasps my left hand in his strong palm. His touch both warms and chills me. “Chloe, zaychik…” His tone is worrisomely gentle. “There’s something you should know.”
My heart, which was already galloping in my chest, does a backflip. His gaze is no longer that of a stranger; instead, there’s pity in his golden tiger stare.
Whatever he’s about to say is awful, I can tell.
“How much do you know about the circumstances of your conception?” he asks in that same gentle tone. “Did your mother ever talk about it?”
It’s as if an icy wind sweeps through my insides, freezing every cell on the way. “My conception?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from some other part of the room, some other person.
He can’t mean what I think he’s saying. There’s no way Bransford is—
“Twenty-four years ago, your mother lived in California,” Nikolai says quietly. “In San Diego.”
I nod on autopilot. Mom had told me that much. She’d lived all over southern California, in fact. After the missionary couple who’d adopted her from Cambodia were killed in a car accident, she’d gone from one foster home to another until she emancipated herself at seventeen—the same year she’d given birth to me.
“She wasn’t the only one who lived in San Diego at the time,” Nikolai continues. “So did a certain brilliant young politician whose local campaign she volunteered at to get extra credit for her American History class.”
The icy wind inside me turns into a winter gale. “Bransford.” My voice is barely a whisper, but Nikolai hears it and nods, squeezing my hand gently.
“The one and only.”
I stare at him, simultaneously boiling over with emotions and numb. “What are you saying?”
“Your mother tried to commit suicide when she was sixteen. Did you know about that?”
My head nods of its accord. When I was a child, Mom had always worn bracelets and bangles around her wrists, even at home, even while cooking and cleaning and bathing me. It wasn’t until I was almost ten that I walked in on her changing and discovered the faint white lines on her wrists. She sat me down then and explained that when she’d been a teenager, she’d gone through a difficult time that had culminated in her trying to take her own life.
“She said it had been a mistake.” My throat is so tight each word scrapes it on the way out. “She told me she was glad she’d failed because soon after, she learned she was pregnant. With me.”
His eyes turn opaque. “I see.”
He sees? Sees what? Suddenly enraged, I yank my hand out of his grasp and sit up all the way, ignoring the accompanying wave of dizziness and pain. “What exactly are you trying to tell me? What does her suicide attempt have to do with Bransford? Did he try to kill her that time too? Is that his freaking MO?”
“No, zaychik.” Nikolai’s gaze fills with that disconcerting pity again. “I’m afraid that attempt wasn’t staged. But there’s reason to believe that Bransford was responsible. According to the hospital records my brother’s team dug up, your mother had been to the ER twice that year: once for the suicide attempt, and two months earlier as a rape victim.”
A rape victim? I stare at him, black flecks dotting the edges of my vision. “Are you saying Bransford raped her?”
“She never filed any charges nor named her attacker, so we can’t know for sure, but her first ER visit coincided with the last day of her volunteering at the campaign. She never went back after that—and nine months later, almost to the day, she gave birth to a baby girl. You.”
The black dots multiply, taking over more of my vision. “No. No, that’s not… No.” I sway as the room blurs in my vision.
Nikolai’s strong arms are already around me. “Here, lean back.” I’m guided back onto the mound of pillows. “Take a few deep breaths.” His warm palm smooths my hair back from my clammy forehead. “That’s right, just like that,” he murmurs as I attempt to obey, dragging shallow inhales into my unnaturally stiff lungs. “It’s okay, zaychik. Just breathe…”
The dizziness recedes, slowly but surely, and by the time Nikolai pulls back, my brain is functioning again—and beginning to process what he’s told me.
Mom had been raped.
Nine months later, I was born.
I want to throw up.
I want to scrub my skin raw and boil my DNA in bleach.
“She never…” My voice falters. “She never talked about my father. Not even once. And I asked, repeatedly.”
Nikolai nods, watching me with that same unsettling pity.
The words keep coming out of my mouth, like water leaking from a faulty pipe. “She told me it had been a difficult time in her life. She dropped out of high school. Got a job as a waitress and applied for legal emancipation, on account of the pregnancy and all.”
He nods again, letting me work it out on my own—and I do. Because for the first time, so much about my mom makes sense. It had always puzzled me how she’d gotten pregnant because as far as I knew, she’d been the polar opposite of a wild teen. Though Mom had rarely talked about herself, I’d gleaned enough to know she’d been a straight-A student prior to dropping out, too quiet and introverted to go out to parties and flirt with boys. Nor had she displayed any interest in dating as an adult; she’d never brought home a single boyfriend, never left me with a babysitter to go out and have fun. As a kid, I thought that was normal, but as I got older, I realized just how strange it was for a beautiful young woman to close herself off like that.