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His eyes met mine, and the rage in me fell away. Things were so much better when he was at home. Mama was calmer; even if she did still hit us both a lot, she didn’t hurt herself. But a cold, sick feeling came from a place deep down that wondered if maybe, just maybe, he was being honest with me.
To Hell with it. I missed him, and it wasn’t until he was standing before me that I realized it.
“You should leave.” Papa turned away, flicking the cigarette butt into the gutter. “I gotta collect my boss.”
“Let me come with you,” I replied. “We gotta talk. I came all this way to see you.”
“There are things you don’t need in your head.” My father opened the driver’s door. “You can’t be around me. No good can come of it. Go home to your mother.”
I thrust my hands into my pockets, feeling the cool steel against my palm. It would have been no effort to close the few feet of distance between us and plunge my knife into his chest, yet somehow, I’d known I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye and murder him. Like my Mama always said, I didn’t have the stomach for it. Luckily, I had some insurance.
I turned my back on my father and walked away, crossing the street and turning a corner so I couldn’t see the car anymore.
He had his chance. It was his fault. All he had to do was agree to talk it over, and I would have bricked the device. The remote detonator was right there in my other pocket, and I smoothed my thumb over the abort button.
If I pressed it, my father would have lived. I could have gone home and told Mama I’d killed him, just as she demanded. She wouldn’t have found out otherwise by then; drugs and madness ate her up.
Something within me changed at that moment, and my heart calcified into a murderous resolve. I took my hand out of my pocket and turned to face the vehicle as my father turned the key in the ignition.
It was my first ever homemade bomb, so seeing the limo engulfed in a fireball was quite a shock. A pillar of flame licked up the buildings, heat flashing off the facade, and several nearby alarms went off at once, activated by the shockwave. People screamed as they came running to help, but no one noticed me walking in the opposite direction, laughing even as tears rolled down my face.
Arman is my half-brother, and I never knew he existed.
The math works out. I’m five years older than Arman, and Papa left Mama when I was five.
In the joint, Arman said his mother vanished when he was a baby. We fucking bonded over it. I recall my mother’s last letter to me before she died; in it, she confessed that she’d killed someone once, many years ago. A woman who had been sleeping with my father.
I didn’t believe her—she gave no specifics and talked a lot of shit in general—but when I look back now, I should have taken it more seriously.
I drive around the city, weaving mindlessly through the traffic, taking risks. The coke has my mind running a mile a minute, and part of me hopes I die in a wreck just to stop the poisonous chatter in my head.
It’s not difficult to put two and two together. Mama drove Papa into another woman’s arms with her abuse and insanity. When he left, my mother took the ultimate revenge.
Mama can’t have found out about Papa’s secret child, or she’d have told me. I guess my father didn’t want to take the risk. God knows how my mother got her hands on Arman’s man-stealing slut of a mom, but Papa must have figured out what happened and felt he had no choice but to take his infant son and flee. Why didn’t he take me with him?
Deep down, I understand. My Mama didn’t want me, but she sure as shit wouldn’t have wanted Papa to have me either. She’d have clawed his eyes out before she’d be left alone. Maybe she believed my father would return and we’d be a happy little family? She was crazy enough.
I can’t hate her. She’s all I had, all I knew. If I burn her memory, there will be nothing but a yawning void where my childhood used to be. Who am I if not her righteous avenging angel? Without that one shining success, I’d be everything else she called me.
Useless. Ugly. Worthless.
Arman Nechayev stole my fucking life. Our father chose him over me. As far as I’m concerned, his whore mother got her comeuppance; I just wish I’d been the one to do it.
Well, I say fuck Sissi and his amateur machinations. I have a better idea. Why should I hope to be given my dues when I could just take them?
By the time I reach the Kislev mansion, I'm strung out to Hell, but I'm ready, and this time, there's no plan B.
It won’t take long for me to manipulate the evidence to suit my new purpose. I did it for the made-up Moretti stuff, and I can do it again, but no amount of clever forgery will fool Vlad Kislev. He won’t believe the lie I need to sell in a million years, and he’s the head of the komissiya. I can’t make this work without bringing him on board, and that’s impossible.
There’s one other way through this, but I have to remove a significant roadblock, and once I cross this line, I’m committed.
Five minutes turns into thirty, then an hour. Where the fuck is he? I’m out of my depth; it’s one thing to eliminate Sissi’s enemies on his orders, but this is something else entirely. If I get caught, I’m dead.
There he is. Vlad Kislev gets out of his car, and I level my silenced rifle on the open window’s sill, lining him up in the sight.
Morgana is opening the front door. She’s got the kid in her arms. Vlad walks up the steps as she starts down to meet him, their daughter reaching for her father.
Now. It has to be now. There will be no other opportunity. Timur, you cunt, just take the shot before it’s too—
