We drove home slowly through downtown Hade Harbor. The main street was filled with overflowing flower boxes and tiny, busy independent stores. It was discreetly wealthy, and also felt safe in a way I’d never experienced before. Not that it didn’t have its darker elements, it certainly did. Just the other week, there had been arrests during a fight between two rival gang members. Drugs flowed through Maine from Canada and down into Boston and New York, and where there was drug money, there were people who wanted a piece.
Still, the darkness of my former life had never touched Leo’s. No matter what else happened in a day, as long as I had kept him from that, I’d achieved something.
“Okay, little lion, let’s get dinner started.”
My house sat on the outskirts of town, overlooking the water. It was isolated and small, but I loved being between the woods and the ocean. Leo jumped out of the car almost as soon as I’d stopped and raced for the door.
I followed behind him. Inside the house was a mix of old, and even older. I’d done what I could to repaint, repair, and upcycle the furniture that the aging house was stuffed with. It might not be picture-perfect, but it was made with love. Leo kicked his dinosaur sneakers off and went upstairs. I headed to the kitchen.
It was quiet. Outside, I watched the little boat that Leo liked to play around on bobbing in its tether to a small dock. I turned the tap, and cool, fresh water flowed into the sink. The tattoo on my wrist called my attention.
A little bird, in a cage, with the door open. The bird hovered by the edge, unsure whether to fly free. It was my only tattoo. An homage to the man I’d lost. Nikolai wasn’t dead to the world, only to me. I couldn’t visit his grave, and I didn’t have any pictures of him to frame and show Leo. Instead, in his memory, and in recognition of the way he’d changed my life, I had this tattoo. It might be only skin deep, but the mark he’d left on my heart was deeper. I could never get him out. The only man who’d ever risked everything for me. The one who had never let me fall.
As always, when thoughts of Nikolai crowded my head, I stuffed the heartache and guilt into a tiny box inside myself and turned my mind to other things.
I poured a glass of water and sipped it, looking out at the view of the ramshackle garden that sloped toward the water. Mist hung heavily over the water. The sky was a churned gray, a shade that never failed to make my chest ache. The pain was like an old injury that flared up in certain conditions. The sea when it reflected that gray was one of the triggers. The sight of an innocent roll of duct tape sitting on a counter at the post office. A tourist group walking past, speaking in a rapid torrent of Russian. Leo’s eyes. Those were always the most precious and most painful reminders of the past.
The news about the donor swirled in my head. It changed everything.
Leo had been born eight months after Nikolai got sent to prison. I’d already been in Maine. I’d just run away from Casa Nera, with my father’s threats still fresh in my ears. I’d been dirt-poor, with only a burner phone to call my own. My brother, Renato, had pressed it into my hand as I’d fled on a bus. Antonio De Sanctis hadn’t only wanted his only daughter to run away and lose everything she’d ever known. He’d wanted me to crawl away, and suffer a hard life, as the ungrateful child who’d defied him.
Since that night, I’d spoken to my brother only a handful of times. I’d called him to ask him to get tested for compatibility with Leo. At this stage of his illness, only a kidney donation would drastically change his quality of life. No more hospital visits. No more dialysis. No more missing school.
Renato hadn’t been a match. He’d gotten the tests in secret. My father was as hell-bent on revenge as ever, and my older brother hadn’t dared to let him know that I’d reached out. I was supposed to be dead, after all, and my father wouldn’t allow anything that might reveal the ruse. Antonio De Sanctis was determined to control my life, even if I never saw him again.
Personally, I wasn’t a match, and neither were Chiara or Angelo. As Leo’s renal failure had progressed, a rare genetic defect that hadn’t become apparent until he was four years old, I’d considered the only other person who could be tested.
His father.
Of course, testing his father involved a lot of obstacles that I had no idea how to overcome. First of all, it would risk all our lives. Still, despite the danger and the pain of reaching out to Nikolai, I had been considering it. Maybe his brother, Kirill, and his brutal bratva could protect us, until Nikolai got out of prison? The thoughts had plagued me, keeping me up at night, rehashing the past again and again. The very real factor that I had no idea how to predict, was how Nikolai would react to knowing it had all been a lie, and not only that, but I’d hidden his son from him, too. It was unforgivable, and yet, there had been no choice. Protecting Leo meant accepting his father’s hate, if he should ever find out. The paradox hurt my heart, every single day since I’d run from Casa Nera.
Now, though, there was a donor on the horizon. It changed everything. If this worked out, there was no reason to endanger Nikolai, Leo, and myself, by telling the truth to the one man I’d ever loved.
I could continue my quiet half-life, dreaming of a man who had once tried to burn the world down to save me, and he’d never know I was alive. We would all live, free of my father’s threats.
I could leave all of it in the past, now that there was a donor.
I should be relieved. I should just be grateful. There shouldn’t be any part of me that dreamed of finding Nikolai, dropping to my knees in front of him and confessing my sins, every single one, and taking any punishment he gave me.
It was too dangerous. It was selfish.
I should let go of the past, as no doubt, he already had.
I would try to do it.
Any day now… or maybe tomorrow.
One day, for sure.
7 years earlier
“Don’t touch me,” I snarled at my father’s goon, who had dragged me through the house and dropped me in his office like I was a bag of rocks.
“Basta!” Ren shouted, his face contorting. He’d only been back from Italy a few days, when all the shit with Zio Franco had gone down. I’d been right. Franco and Silvio had been planning a coup, but their plans had gone to hell when Ren got home, Silvio died, and the police had descended on the house.
Now, it was a few weeks later, and my father, making miraculous progress, was still cleaning his brother’s blood from under his fingernails as he stared at down at me with disgust. His influence had swept away all the problems with that bloody day, the last time I’d seen Nikolai. Except for Silvio’s murder. My father had no intention of getting Nikolai out of jail. He wanted him to rot in there.
I’d been more of a prisoner in Casa Nera than ever before. I had no phone I could access, no laptop. I wasn’t allowed to see anyone, and Antonio was angry that I wouldn’t answer questions about Angelo and Chiara.
Worst of all, my condition had become obvious. I was the kind of person who was going to suffer from morning sickness, clearly, as I’d been throwing up nonstop for weeks, so long the doctor was called. I’d had no choice but to endure his tests.
Pregnant.
I was pregnant with Nikolai’s baby. Despite taking my contraceptive religiously, except for those three days on the run. It seemed that was enough to do it. I still hadn’t gotten over the shock of it.
“So, Sofia. What do you have to say for yourself?” My father’s voice was silky with threat.
I pulled myself into a chair and glanced at Ren. He was standing beside me, his hands curled into fists.
“Did he force you?” Antonio continued.
I shook my head.
“Are you sure?” My father pressed.
“He didn’t force me,” I mumbled, with as much dignity as I could manage. My face was flaming with embarrassment, and I wished the ground would swallow me up. Discussing my sex life with my father and brother wasn’t something I’d ever wanted to do.
I felt Ren’s hand land on my shoulder, reassuring me. He was there, at my back. I wasn’t alone.
“You stupid whore. Even after I tried to teach you to be respectable, you run off at the first chance and fuck our enemy,” Antonio sneered at me.
His word bounced off of me. I didn’t care what he thought. He didn’t know anything, least of all what love was.
“You’re just like Leonora, your mother. She was stupid, too,” he said, turning to stare out the window. His hands looked like gnarled old tree roots, balled up on his lap. “So, here’s what’s going to happen.”
As he turned back, there was a look in his eyes I recognized well. It was the look he gave me when he was about to dispense his discipline, but now he wasn’t able to smack me around. I was stronger than him. Instead, he looked satisfied enough with whatever he’d dreamed up to torture me.
“You get rid of the bastard as soon as possible, quietly. We don’t speak of it again. You marry Moroni, as planned, someone who understands the code and our way of life. This way, you might still be of use and fulfill part of your role to the family, instead of being completely useless.”
“No.” The word left me with quiet conviction.
“No?” Antonio repeated, his neck turning red.
At this rate, I’d give him another heart attack, and not be the least bit sorry.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I won’t have an abortion, and you can’t make me.”
“We’ll see about that,” he suddenly shouted.
“Father, she said no,” Renato interjected.
He was still standing right there behind me, and his weight behind my refusal gave it weight. I might not be able to do a damned thing on my own, but Ren was the heir, and if he disagreed with Antonio, then he could protect me.
Antonio sneered at both of us, disdain dripping from his words when he spoke. “How weak my children have become. Weak and softhearted. No heads for business, or survival either, for that matter.”
He looked out the window for a long moment, his mind working so furiously I could practically hear it.
“I won’t have my daughter bear an illegitimate Chernov son,” he said finally. “If you do that, it means you are no longer my daughter.”
“You were happy enough to marry me off to Kirill Chernov not too long ago,” I reminded him.
“Marrying the heir to a powerful family is one thing. Getting knocked up by the black sheep brother is another. I get nothing from this match, and that little fuck, Nikolai, gets everything. I won’t allow it. I’ll see him answer for it in prison. He won’t live to be released.”
I found myself on my feet. “You won’t go near him or pay anyone else to.”
“And what will you give me in return?” Antonio pounced, waiting for my calm to break.
“What do you want?”
“You’ll go away. You won’t speak to Nikolai again, or me. You’ll disappear, no, you’ll die. Since I don’t want Nikolai to know he has a child, you’re dead as far as anyone else knows. That will be my revenge on the man who blew my fucking house up and defiled my daughter. To everyone except me and Renato, you’re dead, including Nikolai. Talk to him, try to see him, or send him any kind of message, and I won’t just kill him… I’ll wait until you give birth and kill his bastard as well. Do you understand, Sofia? Don’t think your brother could stop me. This family is mine more than ever, after I put down Franco. Don’t test me.”
The room swirled with horror. Antonio loved a good vendetta, and he liked to plan the perfect retribution. He was exactly the spiteful sort of monster who’d die with a smile, knowing he had fucked up everyone else’s life. I had nothing to hold on to except my brother’s hand on my shoulder and the urge to vomit right there on my father’s desk. The hand that I’d pressed to my abdomen felt like an anchor. I wanted to scream and rage. I wanted to kill him, but Antonio had already expected that. I couldn’t afford to be emotional. I had something else to think about. Someone else. A new purpose.
I would lose Nikolai; he would think I was dead. Just that fact was so painful, breathing hurt. But I didn’t doubt my father. He was cruel and vengeful, and now I was on the receiving end.
“Tell me you agree, Sofia, or we have no understanding,” he started.
“I agree.” The words left me before I could consider them. Could I live without ever speaking to Nikolai again? It seemed utterly impossible, and yet, his life hung in the balance-his life, and his child’s. Our child. With my hand pressed to my abdomen, where a tiny bundle of cells was growing, part of him, part me, I knew I had no choice.
“I’ll do what I have to.”
Now
“Mom?” Leo’s voice called to me along the hall.
I was making my nightly rounds, where I wandered the house, locking up, picking up random socks and toys and returning them to their rightful places. These days, I valued the slow and predictable. There was comfort in numbing familiarity.
“Yes?” I poked my head into his room. “You are supposed to be sleeping,” I reminded him.
We’d done the bathroom and teeth; we’d even done our story.
“I just realized that we haven’t filled in that report about the book we read. It’s due tomorrow.” A little pinch of worry had settled between Leo’s eyebrows.
“It’s okay. Your teacher knows you had a doctor’s appointment today.”
“Maybe we can do it in the morning?” Leo wondered.
The things that other kids took for granted, or hated to do, like homework, Leo loved. It made him feel normal, just like the other kids.
I sat on the edge of his bed and stroked his silky hair. “Maybe. Let’s see if we have time. Now, I’m turning out the lights.”
“Okay. Turn off the lights and turn on the stars,” Leo said, his favorite sentence to say, as he snuggled in his comforter.
I turned out the light and looked up. After a moment, the ceiling illuminated with stars. They weren’t the stitched-on ones from my curtains at Casa Nera, and they weren’t the real ones from his father’s lonely childhood. This night sky was Leo’s, and I’d do anything I had to, to make sure he had a better life than either of his parents had ever had. A life with choices.
I lay down beside him and wrapped my arms around him. I should really finish tidying up and go to my room. I should really plan out what was going to happen with the hospital in the next few weeks. There were a lot of tests that had to be done to determine if this donor was a real possibility. Leo was going to have to stay in the hospital to do it. He was more than comfortable with the staff at St. Mary’s. He’d been there three times a week for dialysis for years. I couldn’t afford to take too much time off work. Over the operation and recovery, I’d need to be on hand to help, though, I could count on Chiara’s and Angelo’s help as well. My mind whirled, going over scheduling and the impossible task of balancing a single-parent income with a very sick child. Tomorrow, I had class. Then this weekend would involve getting Leo settled in hospital and taking the damn portrait to Edward Sloane’s house.
I closed my eyes, suddenly more tired than I could bear. For tonight, I let sleep carry me away. I’d figure out how to make it all work tomorrow. I always did.
After all, as a very precious person once told me, it’s better to die than do nothing.
