“Things have changed,” she offers weakly, wiping the tears from her eyes although they don’t stop flowing.
“How can you still defend him? After all this?” The pain won’t fucking stop. I’m bleeding out the pain.
“The odds of me allowing your father to live are slim to none. Even if I want you to be happy, you know why he has to die. I bet you even think he deserves it,” I tell her. “A small part of you has to think he deserves it.”
“You said you’ll kill them all, but all of them don’t deserve it,” she continues to plead with me, not offering me any comfort as I try not to break down remembering the soot and ash that stood in place of the home I’d grown up in. “It’s not just my father who will die. Nikolai was my only friend. And my family will stand with my father. You can’t kill everyone I’ve ever loved.”
“If they stand against me, they deserve to die.”
“Not all of them-”
“Like who? Nikolai,” I sneer his name with disdain and she flinches.
“Please?” she begs me, but the loss is already clear in her eyes.
I turn my back on her, feeling lonelier than I’ve felt since she came into this house as I say, “You can make new friends.”
Chapter 17
Aria
It’s my birthday, but it wasn’t until I saw Carter’s phone that I knew what the date was.
No one here knows it’s my birthday; why would they? They also don’t know that yesterday was the anniversary of my mother’s death. The day before my birthday.
And for the first time, I didn’t go to her grave.
I start to cry again, and I don’t know if I’m crying for my mother, for my family, or for Carter and the boy he used to be. I could cry forever, and it wouldn’t be enough for the tragedy our families combined have suffered.
My back leans against the wall of the bathroom. To my left, the door is shut and in front of me, the shower is running to drown out the sounds of me crying. I wanted a shower to wash it all away. A hot, scalding shower.
Instead, I’m crouched on the floor by the door. I can barely stand, I’m so lightheaded and exhausted. I don’t trust myself in the shower. I don’t trust myself or anyone else anymore.
I know my father is a horrible man. A godawful man condemned to hell. I didn’t know what he did to Carter. I had no idea. “I didn’t know,” I whisper to no one. I was so blind for so long and I wish I could go back. I hate all of this. I hate all the pain. I hate that there’s no way to go backward.
I can already accept my father’s death, as cruel as it sounds. For what he’s done, there’s no mercy in his death. More than that, he lived when my mother died. And he knows I’m here, yet he’s done nothing. Nothing was ever done for my mother’s murder. I’m sure my father would do nothing to honor my death.
Flames along the side of the house I’ve drawn flash before my eyes. I can’t forgive him. I can’t forgive my father, and I don’t even want to know when he’s gone. I don’t want to give him the honor of mourning him.
But it’s not just him.
It’s Nikolai too. Why hasn’t he come for me? Please, he can’t be the same man my father is. A staggering breath leaves me. I know he’s not, and I can’t accept it.
I won’t.
I’ve never felt so torn—no, so ripped apart.
But I’m sick of crying. I’m sick of dealing with death, time and time again. I’m my father’s daughter. I live in a world where attachments are limited and mourning only fuels hatred. I’ve stayed hidden and quiet, attempting to go unnoticed for years and stay out of the way, and therefore, out of the sights of men who would see me as a bargaining chip. Yet, here I am, in the hands of a man hellbent on murder and vengeance.
But as I thought about how every anniversary of my mother’s death, Nikolai brought me to her grave, I started to despair. How every birthday, I woke up finding a text from him and a note that he would take me wherever I wanted to go.
And how that didn’t happen this time.
And how it never will again, and there was no way I could stop it.
There’s no way I can save him.
I mourned the death of a man who still breathes. Not being able to hear him today or talk to him and let him know how I miss him and wish I could do something to stop it all, is a death in and of itself. And in its place is what I’ve been taught to hold my entire life. Hate.