What I don’t like is his tone holds no semblance of sympathy for asking me to do this. That this isn’t the Aaron, I grew up with anymore. The boy I used to kick in the shins and take off running when we’d play tag.
To anyone else outside our circle, he’s about to become a boss, a leader. To me, he’s just Aaron, and I’m having a hard time dealing with him giving me an order.
Silence bleeds between us. One second, then two. But then Aarons blows out a sigh, his attention entirely on me as if he’s taken back to the simpler times in our lives.
One of his hands lifts to cup my face in a brotherly way, and I lean into it. “You can do this, Victoria. Whatever conclusion you come up with, I will take your word for it.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel worse. I’ll never be able to live with myself if Karina is innocent and dies because I can’t see past my vengeance. This is asking a lot from me.”
“I know it is. Maybe Karina knows where Maxim is, and we can take him out tonight.”
He’s right. We’re closer to vengeance than we’ve ever been. So close, I can almost taste it.
“You are evil for asking me to do this. I might never forgive you.”
“You will once everyone involved is dead. I’m walking away now. She’s securely tied down, so you don’t have to worry about her trying anything with you. I’ll be in my office with my father if you need me.” He drops his hand, turns, and makes for the staircase.
Leaning back against the wall, I blink quickly to stop the tears that sting my eyes. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m under the same roof as someone who could hold the key to finally getting justice. Or maybe she is the enemy, and I’m about to stand in a room with someone who pretends to be such a goody-two shoe.
Well, we will just see which one of us is better at pretending.
Several minutes later, a heavy sigh pours from my lips as I push my feet to move down the hall. A nerve-wracking blast of air rips out of my lungs when I stop in front of the door, turning the knob slowly and pushing it open, closing it with a hard slam behind me. I lean against it. My heart slamming into my ribcage with a painful thump when I see the disheveled state she’s in.
Karina is handcuffed and sitting on the floor in front of the bed like a dog. A long chain that’s attached to the frame lays heavy around her neck. She’s wearing a pair of bright yellow pair of silk pajamas. Her legs are tucked off to the side. Even though there’s a swollen purple bruise on her left cheek, dry, cracked lips, black mascara streaks running down her face, and her light brown hair is matted and tangled. She is drop-dead gorgeous. The pictures I’ve seen don’t do her beauty justice.
Immediately I want to apologize. But I have to remember who she is and, more importantly, the reason I’m here.
I swallow, shoving the turmoil down, and my entire body shakes as I hold her eyes to gauge the reaction of my presence.
She’s giving me a glacial glare—a look of pure and utter hatred. I suppose if I were in the predicament, she’s in, I’d be giving one too. But there’s a skittish frightened look behind her eyes, reminding me of a deer caught in the crosshairs. Whether it’s fear of what happened tonight, of Maxim, or fake, I’m unsure.
I’m playing off of it and hoping like hell I can get her to crack.
“Do you know your brother Mikhail is dead? My family caught and killed him,” I ask, trying to get a flinch, a blink, anything to show me she cares he’s no longer breathing.
All I get is silence.
An unbearable silence that I can’t make heads or tails of. It stokes flames of anger, raging to drench my skin and burn through my veins.
I’ll use every verbal weapon I can come up with to get some kind of sign out of her whether it kills me on the inside or not.
“Do you know who I am?” More silence follows. It’s only been a couple of minutes, and it’s choking me as I fight to squash the bubbles of fury rising higher inside. I can’t seem to kill her with kindness. Not until I’m convinced she’s innocent.
“Fuck you, Karina Kozlov.” I spit the last name out like the poison it is, and I watch with a sneering smile on my face as she reels sideways at the sound of her birth name. Still, those eyes don’t change. They just move across my face. I want to gouge them out of her head.
“I don’t want to be in a room looking at a murderer any more than you want to be with a survivor of your horrendous crimes. If you want to continue playing dumb by giving me the silent treatment, then I’ll lay out how this is going to go for you at your feet. My name is Victoria Hughes. So, please don’t sit there and pretend you don’t know who I am. I’m the daughter, the sister, the aunt of the people you and your brothers brutally murdered.”
I have an instant, excruciatingly painful reaction to my words. It spreads out like a slow, tormenting virus through every cell in my body.
Lifting my chin, to try and display as much strength as I can, to pretend as if I’m not on the verge of tears, I keep on.
“You can ignore me all you want. Sit there and pretend I don’t
