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“Still … I should’ve been here,” she sighs.
Scrutinizing her face, I feel a tingle of suspicion. “What were you doing?”
Audrey balks like I’ve caught her in the middle of something she doesn’t want me to see. Eyeing the door, then me again, her shoulders slump. “I got some bad news. I didn’t want to tell you before you got some good news instead.”
I sit up sharply. “What happened?”
She rubs the back of her neck while rocking on her heels. “Promise me you won’t flip out.”
My mother edges closer to my friend. “What is it?” she demands.
Pulling her hands down her cheeks, Audrey groans in anguish. “Your dance studio.”
I’m out of the bed, advancing on her with my heart punching inside my ribs. “What about the studio?”
She recoils with a wince. “Someone set it on fire.”
“What?” Mom’s face drains of all color.
Audrey puts her hands up like she expects to be attacked. “God, Katya, I am so, so sorry. I don’t know the details. I just saw it on the news. I guess it happened really early this morning.”
I wish I was back in bed—I’m afraid I’m about to collapse on weak knees. “Our studio? Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yes … Galina, I’m really—Katya!”
My mother begins to sway. I move first, but Audrey is quick to join me as we cradle her before she topples to the floor. “Mom! Are you all right?”
“The studio …” she moans. “Izvini, Styopa. Mne ochen zhal …”
She’s apologizing to Dad’s memory, I realize.
“Let’s get her on the bed,” I say. Audrey helps me maneuver my mother onto the mattress, the same spot I was lying just recently as we rejoiced in hearing my child’s heartbeat. How quickly the mood can change.
Once my mother settled, I pull Audrey out of the bedroom and into the living room. “Do you need to sit down too?” she asks cautiously.
I hold up my hand. “I’m fine. I just want to know what’s going on. Josh has asked us to stay off the internet while things settle down, so I can’t look anything up myself.”
Audrey fidgets with her phone. “You’re sure you want to see this?”
“Yes,” I say flatly.
With a resigned sigh, she hands me her phone. In seconds I’ve pulled up the photos on the news. The screenshots of flames eating away at the remains of my childhood memories break my heart. But underneath the sadness is a fire of my own—a brutal, rising lust for revenge.
“It was him,” I mutter. “Yevgeniy did this.”
“Galina, you can’t be sure.”
“Yes! I can.” It was him. I know it in my gut. My thumb scrolls over the news articles, pausing over a single video. In it, I can hear the scream of sirens. Smoke billows thickly in great black waves. I can’t recognize the dance studio. It looks nothing like it used to. The roof smolders while firefighters blast the front with streams of water.
At the bottom of the website is a photo from only an hour ago. What’s left of the building is a crooked shell. Some of the wall-length mirrors can be seen, their surfaces darkened by soot. Everything will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Picturing Arsen’s rage-filled face as he gets this news, my neck tightens painfully. He’ll want him dead more than ever. I try to visualize Yevgeniy—to imagine him cowering in a bloody mess on the pavement—but I don’t even know what he looks like.
“Galina.” Audrey lays her hand gently on my arm. “If I can do anything, tell me.”
A laundry list of wishes rocks my skull. Help Josh get rid of the Bratva. Find Yevgeniy and throw him at my feet so I can choke the life out of him. Let me leave this house!
But I say none of those things as I hand her back her phone. “There’s nothing you can do.”
