“Do you agree?” Abby asked curiously. “You don’t want to at least check it out?”
“My babushka never told me the secret location,” I chuckled. “Nina seems obsessed with money and status, so she might be desperate enough to try,” I shrugged. “I guess Richard is probably one of the closest things to an aristocrat as you can get in America.”
“So that’s it?” Abby prodded.
I tried to shrug, but it just threw me off balance. “Nina might just want to sponge off him for the rest of her life, or she might be trying to use him as a stepping stone to something else. I don’t know or care. I have no intention of ever seeing or speaking to her ever again after I turn eighteen.”
“Don’t you want money?” Abby asked. “Would you really be able to give up this lifestyle?”
I looked her right in the eyes. “I would leave for New York right now if Richard hadn’t threatened to have me arrested as a runaway and have the Logans prosecuted as kidnappers. I would love to go back to living with Ryan and take back my place at one of the best ballet schools in the country.”
“What about your dad? Have you ever met him?”
I shook my head. “Nina would never tell anyone who had gotten her pregnant. Babulya said she had a short list of suspects, but she didn’t want to risk one of them stepping in and taking me away from her.” I smiled wryly. “I think she was also afraid that he might not be Russian.”
“You don’t want to know?”
“No. I’ve lived my whole life not knowing, and I think it’s better that way. I guarantee you that it would just be a disappointment.”
“You mean because you don’t think he’s rich or anything?”
I snorted. “No, because I doubt he’s a good person.”
I wasn’t sure if Nina was ashamed of whoever had gotten her pregnant, or if she had just wanted to put the entire situation behind her. Either way, I doubted I would ever be able to get the truth out of her.
“I don’t want to find out that I’m descended from two evil people,” I admitted. “I want to think that it’s possible for me to be good. I want to believe that a part of me is good.”
“Your parents might give you DNA, but they don’t make you good or bad. You decide that,” Abby said gently.
I gave a sad sigh. “I loved my babushka, but she wasn’t a nice person. I knew she loved me deep down, but she rarely showed it. I think she might have been afraid of spoiling me and having me end up like Nina. She always said that she’d wished she had been tougher on my mother.”
Abby made a sympathetic sound, but I kept going. “I think that’s a part of the reason why I got so into ballet as a kid. Ballerinas are respected in Russia. When my teachers told my babushka how talented I was, I saw a gleam of approval in her eyes that I’d never seen before. I wanted more of that from her. I pushed myself harder and harder, thinking she might love me more if I was better.”
I looked up at Abby. “My babushka always said that she didn’t think my father was ‘anyone of consequence’ because Nina would have bragged about it. But how can the person who literally created me not be of consequence?”
“So you do want to know who he is.”
“I’m afraid to know. But Nina will never tell me, so it doesn’t matter what I want.”
“Is that why you hate your mom so much?” Abby asked softly.
I just shook my head, suddenly feeling tired. It seemed like too much effort to go through the whole spiel about how she abandoned me in search of fame and money.
“She’s mean,” I said simply.
I flung myself backward and closed my eyes.
“Hey, Katya,” Abby said as she shook my arm. “Don’t pass out yet. Are you here to try to hurt the Wilders? Do you have any bad intentions towards them?”
“No,” I mumbled. “But they have bad intentions towards me.” I let out a sigh. “I’m pretty sure that Maverik would murder me if he thought he could get away with it.” I rolled over to get away from her. “I just want to dance.”
I let myself sink into the comfortable darkness that rose up to cradle me. I heard Abby talking on the phone in a low voice, but I was too out of it to follow the conversation. Eventually, even that disappeared from my awareness, and there was only the darkness. The sweet, comforting darkness.
Chapter 25
Katya
I woke up with a pounding headache, and my mouth was so dry I thought my tongue might be glued to the roof of my mouth. I staggered to the bathroom and used a handful of water to try to rinse out my mouth. I looked up at myself in the mirror and saw bleary, bloodshot eyes with dark bags underneath. I took another handful of water from the faucet, but this time I tried to swallow it. Nausea hit, and I barely made it to the toilet in time. I went through this cycle several times before I was finally able to keep down some water and brush my teeth.
When I hobbled back into my room on my sore legs, the sun coming through the windows was so bright that it shot a spear of pain right into my eyes and through my brain. I squinted as I made my way over to the windows to fling the curtains closed. Once the room was a little more comfortable, I sat back down on my
