I could have let him die.
Why didn’t I? Rather than come up with an answer, my brain is too busy scouring the past. A million lessons circle my mind, each one uttered in Mischa’s gruff baritone. “Never let your guard down,” he would insist until his voice grew hoarse. “Always aim to kill. Focus, Mouse! Focus! Focus!”
And yet, I failed. My quarry sits unharmed across from me in the back of a black armored car driven by his guard, and all I can do is stare at him.
At his chest.
While covered by his shirt now, the image of the bared, tanned flesh beneath is seared into my memory. Some of the scars I remember him sporting, even back then. The silvery straight line along his collar that he swore resulted from him being stabbed as a teenager. Those ropey, circular patches across his pecs he would always refuse to explain.
He’s gotten even more injuries since then—but one new set of scars startled me the most. It was a name, tattooed there in ink so scarlet it could have been blood.
The name of a girl he sold to a monster. His little Safy. His beloved adopted sister. It isn’t awe or sentiment that has rendered me speechless since I first glimpsed it. It’s rage. Anger so all-encompassing my brain cannot comprehend it.
My mind goes blank as my chest tightens with every breath I take. My eyes burn with the threat of tears that never fall—but I’m beyond sobbing.
The bastard had the nerve to mourn me. To act as if saying my name caused him pain. To act as though he cared. A different woman might be fooled, but I will never forget his face the day he led me to Nicolai Baryshnikov like a lamb to slaughter. I will never forget his steely, ice-cold expression, or the words he said to me before turning his back and leaving me to die.
“Do what you will with her. I don’t care…”
Years later, armed with the knowledge that living within Mischa’s orbit endowed me, I know now how dramatic a statement that was. How pathetic. How cowardly.
And now he mourns me as a martyr, a fallen innocent whose name he bears out of some twisted sense of guilt. But he has no right.
No amount of regret can bring that Safiya back.
And killing him won’t avenge what has been done to me. I know that now. He deserves more. A pain worse than death. Pain like that of a child sold to be a slave.
Some aspects of those early days in Nicolai’s care are too dark to relive even after all of these years. To survive, I had to suppress those memories and focus everything I had on survival. Time in Mischa’s family healed some of those wounds; I can’t deny that.
But just by being here, in Donatello’s orbit, all of those old injuries feel ripped open and raw. The pain distracts me from everything—like common sense.
Up close, he looks the same, as strange as it is to acknowledge. My imagination has transformed him, distorting his features, and making it easier to picture him as a creature befitting of his sins. However, his hair, though slightly longer, is still thick, neatly trimmed. His skin still clings to hues of gold and his eyes…
They’re the same eyes that have haunted me relentlessly all this time. Watchful, quickly shifting from charming to stern, to—whenever Vincenzo’s safety is called into question—terrifying.
Losing me didn’t change him. Didn’t humble or harden him. He just went on, the same old Donatello.
He lived without me.
But I’ve thrived without him.
You are a Stepanova, I tell myself, pinching a sliver of my wrist. You are the daughter of a lion. You are protected. You are loved...
“I know who you are,” Donatello growls. His sly grin glimpsed in the semi-darkness throws my reassurances into question. “Antonio Salvatore hired you,” he declares, his voice smug with conviction. I vaguely recognize the name from our shared past—the one he cursed to hell and back after Olivia died, sounding crazed as he did so. “The bastard dug into my past and told you how to act. How to look. You are convincing, tigre, but I am not fooled. Tell me your real name. Though, trust me when I say I would prefer to pry it out of you.”
I shiver, hating the raw note in his voice—stubbornly, my brain instantly defines it—pain and anguish. Like he cares. Like the little girl he referenced matters to him at all. When she doesn’t. I didn’t.
So, I meet his gaze and do nothing. Eye contact with him is a different animal from years ago, when I had to crane my neck back just to look at him adoringly. I had viewed him only as Don, then. My savior. My protector. In a violent world, neglected by my parents, I knew he would always be there for me. Save me.
Love me.
My love for him was easy to shed after barely a week in Nicolai’s custody. But the hate? That remains, festering inside me, coloring the way I sit, hunched away from him. The way I breathe, my nostrils flaring, chest heaving. I think the hate has permeated my entire being so thoroughly he can smell it on me.
He sits forward, inhaling audibly, his eyes narrowing and widening in quick succession. Cocking his head, he furrows his brows. “Are you Safiya?” The question comes in Italian, and I barely manage to keep my expression composed.
How long has it been since someone has spoken to me directly in my mother tongue? Too long to count, though I’ve
