And now, Mom is pouting—literally, arms crossed, eyes downcast, food-ignored pouting. “How can you be so cold when you know how I suffer worrying about her?” It’s true, she does suffer—to anyone who will listen. Daily.
I pick up my sandwich and take a bite. I could argue, but it’s going to be a while before she’s finished dressing me down, so eating while I endure makes sense. At some point today, I still have to get back to work.
“All I’m asking is that you ask Mr. Zinon to use his influence to help find your sister. The same sister who let you borrow her silver earrings—the earrings I bought her for her sixteenth birthday—then forgave you when you lost them.”
I nod. Lila lost the earrings while getting frisky in Robby Wright’s back seat and blamed it on me.
“You were always doing things like that,” she continues. “Remember the dent in her front fender?”
Of course I remember it. She hit a parked car, then told Mom she was teaching me, her twelve-year-old sister, how to drive.
I remember the hundred other times she lied, and I covered for her and took the parental heat.
And then I remember the most important thing of all—Mom won’t care about any of that. Her story is her story, and there’s nothing I can do to change her mind about a single detail.
“You’re absolutely right, Mom. I am being selfish. I’ll ask Kostya today.”
Mhmm. I’ll also take a ride on his lap while sipping champagne and eating caviar off his pecs.
Mom smiles as genuinely as she ever does and pats my hand. “That’s my girl. You know, I think when we find Lila, we should all take another trip. Just us girls.”
Maybe we can do that. Just as soon as I’m done killing Lila for making me suffer Mom alone.
3
Kostya
“It’s done.”
I curl my fist tighter in my lap. “I’m on my way.” Then I hang up the phone and start the car.
The engine purrs smoothly to life. I grip the steering wheel tightly. It feels solid, comforting. I need the tether to reality. Because none of this feels real. Nothing has felt real, actually, since the moment Yelisey dropped this whole fucking disaster in my lap. I feel like I’m floating, watching myself go through the motions.
I’ve kept everything close to the chest. It’s how I was raised, how I was taught, and it’s how I have achieved the things I have achieved. The broken glass and roar in the car after the gala were rare slipups.
But there are emotions burbling in my chest now, threatening to break through my barriers. If I let them out, they will overwhelm me. I have spent a lifetime keeping those kinds of things far from daylight. The task has never been as hard as it is now.
I pull up outside the courthouse. Geoffrey is waiting for me outside of an identical black SUV. I park and get out, leaving the car running. “Keep it here,” I order him. “I won’t be long.”
He nods curtly without saying a word. Good man.
I turn and walk up the marble steps. The columns of the grand building stretch around me, holding up the roof. I see one crack spiderwebbing its way down to the base. I can relate—I, too, feel like crumbling under the weight of the world on my shoulders.
But I will not crumble. I will not snap. I will not fucking yield.
I move inside, through the metal detector. I can hear my footsteps echoing in the atrium, along with the hushed voices of lawyers and defendants and hapless jurors swirling around me. My eyes are locked on my destination. Courtroom 4, Yelisey informed me on the call.
I see the sign I am looking for and stride towards it. Seize the door handle. Pull it open.
Then, I pause, just for the briefest of moments, so slight that anyone watching me might not even notice.
But I notice. I know what it means: hesitation. Uncertainty. And fear, or something akin to it, as close to fear as a man like me can ever feel. Whatever awaits me on the other side of this door is something that will change my life irrevocably.
Natasha’s final trick.
I swallow back the bile in my throat and go inside.
The counselor and the court representative have been babbling for long minutes, but I have barely paid attention. Yelisey, seated to my left, earns his keep by doing that for me. I just sign when they tell me to sign, stamp my thumbprints as instructed, and then get to my feet. Sitting with my back to the door makes me uncomfortable, especially in an unsecured room. My enemies are everywhere—even in the courthouse. Only a fool thinks he is safe in a place like this.
Finally, the counselor exits the room through a small wooden side door. My heartbeat is all I can hear, pounding like a drum in my ears.
The door swings open again. The counselor walks back through.
Followed by a little girl.
She is blonde, small, with bright blue eyes. Eyes like mine. Her hands are clasped in front of her timidly, and her gaze is etched with fear. Her jaw, though, is thrust forward proudly, like she doesn’t want a single person in this room to know she is afraid.
She truly is my daughter.
And at the sight of her, everything I have been holding back ignites at once.
I drop to one knee, so that I can look in her eyes at her level. She stares back at me, as uncertain as I am.
“Hello, Tiana,” I rasp.
She says nothing. The counselor urges her forward. Tiana takes two hesitant steps towards me, then stops again and looks up at the woman.
“Tiana, this is your father,” the counselor whispers. “Do you want to say hello?”
She tilts her head, considering me. “Hi,” she says finally.
I feel the strangest clenching of my
