“I can’t see you with him.” Nikolai’s voice is calm, somehow sounding forgiving as he watches me pace in my father’s office.
I stare past him at the pictures on my father’s wall. There’s a picture of my mother and father, with my uncle between them. I never met him. In the photo he’s holding them close, his arms wrapped around their shoulders. It’s a black-and-white snapshot, taken just before my uncle was murdered. It’s only one of nearly a dozen pictures on the wall to the right of my father’s desk. But only that photo, and one other hold any of my attention.
I breathe in and out slowly as I stare at the second picture, trying to stand upright and not let on that anything’s wrong.
It’s Carter’s house. The Cross brothers’ home. The same photograph that’s in Carter’s foyer. An icy prick spreads over my skin and all I can hear are my shallow breaths.
I swear it’s the same. I knew when I first saw it that the picture was familiar. I thought maybe I’d been there before, but this is why it was so familiar.
My father has a picture of Carter’s old house, the house he destroyed, hung up in his office. Is it a fucking trophy? A reminder of something? My stomach roils as I cross my arms tighter, feeling more and more like a trapped animal. I wish my father were here so I could ask him. So I could face him after everything that’s happened. If he were though… I can’t even imagine where we’d begin. A lifetime has come and gone. I’m not the same person I was when I last stepped foot in this home.
It doesn’t matter though. He’s not here, and I doubt he’ll come for me until he has the time. Business has always come first.
“What did he do to you, Ria?” Nik asks me and I turn to him. Seated in the whiskey-colored leather wingback chair in the corner of the room, I see Nikolai in a different light than I ever have before.
Not as my friend or former lover, not as the boy who needed me. But as a man in pain and on edge, reckless and wanting change, needing it and ready to take it.
I see him as a danger.
“Nikolai, you’re scaring me,” I whisper with a quietness that begs for them to stay silent, but somehow the words find him. The corner of his lips drag down as his eyes flick with a light of recognition.
“I don’t mean to, I just don’t think you realize what has to happen,” he tells me and then swallows with a look of anguish in his features.
“What has to happen?” I ask him, feeling my hands go cold as I stand aimlessly in the room. Knowing I’m once again at the mercy of men who find me lacking.
“Today men will die.”
“Men die every day,” I’m quick to respond and he gives me a sad smirk with his huff, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He stares at the floor and not at me. His eyes close as I whip around to the door of the office, hearing shouts echo down the halls. The feeds are down. Nik’s cell phone goes off, but only for a second before he silences it and his gaze moves from it to me.
“It’s all right. You had to know he’d come for you,” he tells me, his eyes begging me to deny it, but he already knows the truth.
The pounding in my chest intensifies, and a warmth spreads through me but not nearly enough to stop frigidness that clings to me.
“Will you hate me if I made it easier?” Nik asks me, shifting his weight and reaching behind him for the gun tucked in the back of his pants. “If I killed him, would you hate me?” he asks me but shakes his head before I can even answer. My lips are parted and the words are there, yes, I’ll hate you forever if you kill him. The pleas not to are the same I’ve heard before, spoken from my own mouth.
“You know that I love you,” he tells me and then he adds, “And you know he’s no good for you.” I watch the muscles in his neck tense as he swallows. He stands and pulls a drawer open in my father’s desk, taking another gun, checking that it’s loaded and placing it on the desk before closing the door.
“You ran from him… But still, you want him to live.”
“I can’t explain it,” I tell Nikolai, watching every small movement.
He peeks up at me, hearing the trace of fear in my words and lowers his head. “I’d never hurt you, Ria. Stop looking at me like I would.”
“There are different kinds of pain. And I’ve recently come to accept that some people, some men very close to me, can’t help but to cause me the worst kinds of pain.”
“Don’t compare me to him,” he retorts, and the menace in his voice is as chilling as the sharpness in his eyes when he looks at me.
The sarcastic and flat response comes from a place of pain deep inside of me. “How dare I do such a thing.”
“You’re just sick.” Nikolai speaks more to himself than to me. “You’ll see. When this is all over, you’ll see.”
“I’ve thought long and hard about that. About whether or not I was sick,” I tell him as he rounds the desk and leans against the front of it. “I think maybe for a moment I was. Maybe when I wasn’t well, and I know I wasn’t well because of him. But I can see clearly now. And I’m thinking more about myself these days.” My fingers itch to touch my lower belly, but I don’t. I don’t want him to know or anyone else. I’ll bide my time and then I’ll run far, far away. I’ll be someone else. And leave all traces of Aria Talvery and this world behind.
“Don’t you think if you were sick, you wouldn’t know it?”
I nod once, feeling a strength rise inside of me. “You’re not wrong, but the thing is, even if I am sick, I like who I am more now than I did before. I see the world for what it is, and I’m stronger for it.” I don’t tell Nikolai, but deep inside I know I can be whoever I choose. I can do whatever I choose to do.
At this moment, running is what I choose, because I want this child to live a life surrounded by love. And I don’t know if it’s possible to have that with Carter. No matter how much I love him or how much he thinks he loves me. He doesn’t know how to love. And I won’t allow that life for my child.
At that thought, it feels as if a jagged nail runs down the length of my chest from the inside. Tearing at me. It’s not right and it’s not fair, but nothing about this tale has been.
“You’re strong, Aria, but I can give you a world where you don’t have to be,” Nikolai tells me. His voice caresses the pain that cascades over me. Three scenarios play in my mind, warring within.
One where Nikolai holds me like he used to. Where I look at him with the love and desire that used to be, and then I look down to a small child in my arms, one who doesn’t belong to him. A baby who will forever remind me that I don’t love Nikolai nearly as much as I once loved another. Nikolai would take care of me, he’d love me and provide for not just me, but also this baby. And I would use him; I know deep in my heart that’s all it would ever be.
Another version of the fucked-up fairytale has me back on Carter’s bed, cross-legged with an infant nestled and bundled in my lap while I peek up at the man I love, sitting across the room in a chair, watching me from a distance he chooses.
The father of my child.
The beast of a man.
If things were different, I’d never leave his side. But wishes and hopes do nothing. Things aren’t different, and I won’t raise a child with the venom and tension that comes with standing by Carter’s side.
And in the third vision, the one I choose, I’m alone on a quiet porch, rocking an infant in my arms. I see the small home set back in the distance off a dirt road. Away from it all. Maybe a boy or maybe a girl, but either way, there will be no hate, no vengeance that lingers around us. The wind will whisper lullabies and although this baby won’t have a father, I’ll give him or her everything I have and protect them from what I once was and this vicious world I came from.
One day I’ll tell him a story so raw and so true that he won’t believe it. It will only be a fairytale gone wrong. More importantly, that child will be stronger and better than I ever will be. I can’t choose a better life for myself. But I can give one to this little life.
“I love you, Nikolai,” I whisper as I open my eyes and then I make sure he sees me, really sees me before I tell him, “but it’s not the love you have for me. And I love another more than you.”
“You left him,” Nikolai reminds me and I nod my head, feeling the rawness scratch up my throat.
“If he would have shown me the love I needed, I would still be with him.” I let my hand travel to my stomach, where I know Nikolai sees as I tell him, “Right now I can’t risk anything.”
The door to the office swings open without notice, bringing with it the sound of my father’s voice. “Still be with who?” The words sound cautious. My heart races as he slowly closes the door behind him and the lights go out, darkness taking over until the backup power comes on.
My father stares behind me, sharing a look with Nikolai before looking back at me. My breaths come in quick pants.
“Father,” I breathe out, and I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. In many ways I feel like his enemy. Simply because I’ve fallen into bed, but also in love with the man who longs to see my father take his last breath.
“Still be with Carter?” my father questions, walking closer to me, each step feeling intimidating.
I can only swallow until he lets out a deep breath and looks down at me with sympathy. “I didn’t hear everything,” he says, his eyes flicking to Nikolai before finding my gaze again and continuing, “but child, this isn’t your fault, and I’m sorry.” A sudden wave of relief flows through me. My lungs are still and refuse to move, even with the reassurance. “It’s all right, Aria.” My father’s voice is calm and gives nothing but comfort. I can’t help but to move to him and as I do, he opens his arms.
To be loved unconditionally is something so rare. But from a parent to a child, there is forgiveness in every moment. The guarded walls crumble even though I’m so aware of Nikolai behind me and my father in front of me, coming forward to pull me in close. He whispers it isn’t my fault. His words are apologetic.
He holds me close to him, he holds me like he has before, but back when I was a child. Back when I let him.
“I’m so sorry, Aria,” he says and holds me tight, although his voice is tense.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him, because it’s true. This is the life we lead and breed. No one is to blame for the hate and havoc it brings. It simply exists.
“I’m scared,” I confess against his chest. The smell of soft leather and spiced cologne wraps around me just as his arms do.
“You think you love him, and considering what he did, I understand.” It’s almost shocking to hear his words, but then he whispers, “I’m not sorry that I have to kill him.”
My body stiffens in his embrace but if my father realizes that, he doesn’t let on. A single breath leaves me and my eyes open, staring at the wall across from my father’s desk where the pictures stare back at me. “I should have done it long ago,” he says as I pull back slightly, wanting nothing more than to run once again. Run far, far away, I think as my fingers drift past my belly and I back away from my father. Pulling back from my father, I see his eyes are as cold and dark as they ever were.
One step, then two.
The second step comes with the shaking of the ground. A rumble at first, but then a movement so sharp, I nearly lose my step.
Bombs. One after another and seemingly all around us. Harsh intakes of air. A spike of fear and adrenaline.
We’re under attack. And I don’t know if it’s Romano…. or if it’s Carter coming for me.
Men scream, but not the two I’m with though. They’re silent as I fall to the ground on my ass and move to the edge of the room. To hide in the corner and brace myself there. The explosions are close, but not close enough to hit us. Still, they keep coming. Each one sounding closer than the last.
Nikolai and my father don’t seek cover like I do. They act like they expected it as they simply brace against the wall of the room, letting each rocking blow hit without a difference in their expression.
The ground shakes and the sounds of explosions reverberate through the room. The bombs must be close, because the shelves jostle and with it, books fall. I watch the gun as it rattles on the desk, the metal skimming along the edge as it finds its way closer to falling, but somehow manages to hang on, even as the monitor crashes to the floor, cracking the frame and forcing a scream from me with the next loud explosion.
That makes seven.
The lamp’s shifted to the edge of the desk, where it topples in slow motion at the last blast. It hits the gun Nikolai left there on the corner, and my father’s gaze lingers on the steel.
“Boss.” Nik’s voice is stern, direct, almost a statement rather than a question and the hard gaze between two men verifies my father recognizes that too.
“What can I do to help?” Nik’s question is casual, at ease this time.
“Seven,” I whisper the word, daring to go against the wishes of my frozen body. The only thing I can feel is the numbing tingle of fear. But I counted seven. “Seven explosions.” My father’s eyes stay on mine and only when he turns his attention to Nikolai am I able to breathe again. He doesn’t answer me, he doesn’t say a damn word to me as I stay where I am, hunkered down and counting each second from now until another bomb will hit. But the next one never comes.
The heavy footsteps carry through the room and in time with my quickened pulse as my father walks around his desk, kicking his fallen computer as he does. My shoulders hunch forward and my eyes slam shut at the cracking sound of the screen.
I shudder again when Nikolai lays a hand on my back, splayed and meant to comfort. I can’t help but to let out a short cry and back away until I see it’s him.
“Fuck,” I gasp out and try to calm my racing heart. It’s too much. This world is too much.
“You’re all right here,” Nik tells me and the moment he does, my father commands him away.
“Get down to the west wing. Get Connor and the rest of them. Block anyone who comes in.” I’ve never seen my father look the way he does now. With both of his hands lightly placed on his desk as he stands at its head, everything on top of the sleek black surface is in disarray and even the paintings behind him are crooked.
The room reflects nothing of the controlled, powerful man who’s ruled from that very spot for years. And neither does the look in his eyes. There’s a sadness wrapped around the dark swirls of his gaze. And a sense of acceptance, plus a tiredness I’ve never seen.
“Dad?” I dare to speak up, and he dares to ignore me.
“Block off the hall and kill anyone who enters.” He doesn’t speak to me. Only to Nikolai.
A crease lines the center of Nik’s forehead as he gestures to the phone in his hand, the screen of it brightening with notifications every few seconds. “There’s no sign of anyone-”
“I know! You don’t think I saw the messages?” my father screams at him with hurried words. Anger and fear lace his expression, but this time, Nik doesn’t object. All I see is his back as his determined stride leads him away from me and out of the room.
Leaving me alone with my father.
I’m still on the ground, waiting for another sign of what’s to come when my father tosses something across the room. It lands hard in front of me, maybe a foot away and again, I’m scared shitless. My stupid heart won’t quit trying to escape my chest.
This is what war is, but I don’t know how much more of it I can take.
“Your journal,” my father says. “You should take it while you still can.” I can hardly make out his words, let alone what the item is with the adrenaline and fear spiking through me. My sketch notebook I’ve long lost, the notebook that started all of this.
I’m still struck with betrayal at the knowledge that it was Nikolai. That all this shit started with him luring me out and letting me believe it was someone I loathed, someone who would have damaged it just to get a rise out of me, or worse, burned it or thrown it away, simply because he could. Knowing it wasn’t Mika, and that it was Nikolai makes me hold the sketchbook tighter. I believe in fate and that everything happens for a reason.
The front cover is nothing special. Merely an array of wildflowers painted in watercolors. It came that way. But inside its pages are sketches of the world I used to live in. The one kept safe in the confines of my bedroom on the other side of the estate. Fantasies I dared to dream. And lives I’ve never lived.
As I stare at the journal, I realize how much has changed so quickly. But one thing never has. It will never change.
“I thought there would be clues as to where you’d gone,” my father tells me, explaining why he has it. Nikolai stole it from me. As I crawl closer to it, clutching it close, I’m still reeling from his confession.
“Is Mom’s picture still inside?” I somehow get the courage to ask him.
My father only stares at me, a hard gaze that I can’t place. It’s almost shame, almost hate that comes from him and I don’t know why. He doesn’t answer me, forcing me to swallow with a dry mouth and throat as I scoot closer to the notebook and let the pages flick by my fingers until they land on the same spot I’d last seen. The one where I drew her, but the picture isn’t there.
Just as the sharp gouge in my chest seems to deepen, the edges of the pages fall from the pad of my thumb until they stop, revealing the picture tucked tightly just behind the front cover.
The kind eyes of my mother gaze at me, in black and white, and the memories of her dance in the back of my mind. When the days were not as long and filled with the terror they bear today.
Back when I knew I was safe and loved and nothing bad would happen, and yet it was all a lie.
With a small, sad smile, I swallow the dryness in my throat and pick up the picture to show my father, while whispering a ragged, “Thank you.”
A cold prick sweeps over my shoulders, causing a shudder to run down my spine until I tuck the photo back away. It’s an odd feeling. One that reminds me of how I felt in the bathroom this morning in Carter’s room. A feeling like someone else is here.
“She was always so beautiful.” My father’s statement is hard. Not an ounce of emotion given to the words. Again my eyes find her photo on the wall, a younger version of my mother, hung beside the photo of Carter’s home.
“She was,” I speak without consent and then nod my chin toward the wall, and as I do, someone yells from down the hall. It sounds more like a command than anything else, somewhere off in the distance, but it’s all I’ve heard since the ground stopped shaking.
I wait a moment, my body still, wanting to know more of what’s going on, but my father doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t seem to react at all to what’s going on outside of this room, and I don’t understand why.
“That’s not the photo you keep looking at,” he says and the chill comes back to me, like the edge of an ice cube running down the back of my neck. “Did he show you a picture too? The picture of his house?”
My stomach churns as I nod once, forcing my gaze to meet my father’s. “Yes,” I breathe the word, drawing strength from the truth and feeling an edge of defiance I didn’t know I had. “Why do you have it?” I ask him evenly, slowly standing, and gripping the notebook tightly in my right hand.
“The same reason I’ve hung all these photos here. They’re the failures that led to my demise,” he tells me, turning to look at the pictures and ignoring me. “Each one of them, my mistakes.”
I can feel the agony rip through me as I look back to my mother. To the picture of her with my uncle and my father. Swallowing thickly, I try to speak but I can’t.
His finger taps on the glass of the picture frame, the one of Carter’s house that was destroyed. “I should have made sure they’d all died that night. When I hung this, I thought they’d be the ones to kill me. They still may be. Maybe tonight even.”
A part of me wishes to console my father, to assure him that it’s going to be all right. But it would only be lies, and he knows better than that.
“Are they the ones who are here?” I manage to ask him, hiding my desperation to know and why I want to know. Anxiety whispers along every inch of my skin.
My father’s smirk makes his eyes wrinkle and the rough chuckle is accompanied with the telltale cough that comes from a smoker’s lungs. While I was away, praying he’d come save me, I forgot how old my father’s become in the past few years.
“Yes, of course they are.” His answer is what I’d hoped, although I know I shouldn’t. My heart hammers and my pulse quickens, but I don’t show my father anything. I give him no indication of how that knowledge makes me feel.
At my lack of shock, my lack of emotion, not knowing how to react as thoughts race through my mind, my father offers me a small smile and then points to the photo of my mother, tapping his finger once again, but this time on the very edge of it. Almost like he’s afraid to touch it.
“You know that I love you,” my father says and it’s then that his voice cracks and his expression crumples. “I was never a good father, but I chose you and I thought it counted for something.”
“You are a good father,” I say, pushing out the words in a shallow breath, trying to contain the guilt and fear of what’s to come. I could drown in my emotions as I take a shaky step closer to him, needing to hold him as he’s held me before. “I know you were hard on me, but this life is hard and I needed it.” I get it now, why he always made me stand on my own. Maybe he knew this day would come sooner than I did. The day someone would take it all away from him.
“No, no, Aria,” my father says as he shakes his head. His eyes search mine, not giving away any secrets but hiding every one of them.
Another yell is heard, this time farther away and it takes my attention but only for a split second until I hear my father say, “Your mother didn’t belong to me. She was supposed to marry my brother.”
One beat of my heart, ragged and jagged.
“She loved him and his money… his power. He was supposed to inherit everything. He was the one meant to rule.”
Another beat of my heart and my father takes down the photo, the frame making an awful cracking noise as he does, the frame splintering, from being so old perhaps. I know my uncle was supposed to be the don, the head of the family. He was older than my father, but he was killed before he could take charge.
What I didn’t know, is that my mother was involved with my uncle. I’ve never been told such a thing.
“She fell in love with you after he died?” I assume out loud.
“She was pregnant and afraid,” my father says, not looking at me at all, or the slow realization that comes to form on my face. “She needed someone to protect her after her quick affair with him, and I loved her. I wanted her.”
I can’t breathe, I swear to it. An unseen hand seems to strangle me as my father slowly raises his gaze to mine.
“What?” The disbelief cloaks the whisper.
“They were only together for a short time and most people had no idea. But when he was murdered, she was pregnant, alone, and with a price on her head.”
“Mom?” I don’t know how her name escapes me, my breath strangling me as it refuses to leave.
“I told her no one would ever know, and she accepted.” The thumb of his left hand runs along the place a wedding ring would hug his ring finger. “I always wanted you. I always loved you as my own.”
My head shakes on its own and my eyes go wide. Wide with shock, wide with fear in the way my father’s speaking.
“I tried to love you and show you how much you were loved. Yes, I was hard on you. I was hard on you because this life is hard, but also … you look just like your mother.”
I reach behind me for something to steady me, but there’s nothing.
“She never loved me.” As he speaks, the soft reminiscence is instantly replaced by hate. “Until she decided she wanted more. She wanted someone else and would do anything to get away from me. She was a rat. I’m not sure how many mistakes I truly made because of your mother. Taking her in, not killing her sooner, or having her murdered.”
Everything in my body is cold, the numbing kind that makes me feel like I can’t be here. Like this can’t be real. He didn’t. He didn’t have Mom killed.
“No.” The word comes unbidden as fear settles deep into my bones.
“You were never a mistake, Aria. Even when I’m gone, I want you to know that. I know I was hard and cold, but it wasn’t because of you. I loved you.”
I can see it in his eyes, he’s telling me the truth. Every bit of it. Dark and callous.
“You couldn’t have,” I say, but my words are weak and desperate.
The sad smile carved into his expression is riddled with agony. “She was going to have me killed, Ria. It was either her or me.”
“No.” My memory is warped and twisted. My reality even more so.
“I do know she was a mistake, your mother was. One that’s stayed with me and still lingers in this house.”
I almost call him Dad; I almost beg him to stop. To tell me everything he just said was a lie. But I can’t speak a damn word. I can’t even move.
“I always had to see you, though. You were a constant reminder.”
