Confident he heard the threat in my tone, I pivot on my heels and exit the room. I’ve got names to pluck from drunken idiots unaware I’m priming them for a reason, and whores to fuck. I don’t have time for this shit. There’s just one stop I need to make first: my room. I need a new shirt.
Just before I exit my father’s makeshift hospital room, a person steps into my path, blocking my exit. My first thought is to retaliate, but I hold back the urge when my eyes land on a pair as equally icy as mine. They are the concerned eyes of my mother.
“I need to talk to you about Zariah. It’s time you learned the truth.”
Chapter 15
Zariah
Two weeks later. . .
My heart skips a beat when, in the corner of my eye, I spot a large package sitting on my bed. It’s a plain box, nothing like you’d expect to find at a high-end fashion store, but it has a fancy ribbon wrapped around it. When the gold flecks in the ribbon catch the flame of the candle I’ve just lit, hues of gold flicker around my prison-like room. It adds so much sparkle to the usually bland space, if I weren’t so curious as to what is inside the box, I wouldn’t touch it.
The past two weeks already have my head jumbled with confusion. I can’t fit in any more. Asher has been. . .well, Asher. Just in a less confusing way. Nothing major has changed between us, but when you stack up all the little things, it seems like so much more. He hands me his plate every night instead of waiting for me to collect it; he gave me permission to shower in his bathroom so I don’t have to wake super early to beat other staff members to the only guest bathroom on this floor, and we’ve talked. Not full conversations, but it’s certainly more than we exchanged my first month here.
He still tells me to jump, and I still ask him how high, but the fear that kept me in order the past six weeks is gone. It is as if I’ve been granted special privileges for good behavior. Nothing will reduce my sentence, but following his rules has made it more tolerable.
Incapable of harnessing my curiosity for a second longer, I blow out the match-head, place it inside the almost empty box, then pace to my bed. Since my room is so small, it doesn’t take me many strides. I check the box for a gift tag. Of course there isn’t one. I don’t need one to know who it’s from, though. Except for the one time Asher and I argued in here, no one but me enters this room. It must be from him. I’m just a little unsure why he has gifted me something.
My pulse flutters in my neck when I carefully unknot the bow then flip off the lid. There is a heap of tissue paper folded over the treasure hiding beneath, but not enough to keep my eyes from growing misty. There are hundreds upon hundreds of photos inside the dowdy box. They range in size and shape. Some are Polaroids, others look recently printed. The ages of the people photographed also differ. They extend from newborn babies in diapers to fresh-faced teens.
Asher is in many of them, making me wonder if he is my gift donor. There’s nothing risqué about the pictures, but they’re very personal, so I doubt a man with a reputation as fierce as Asher’s would want them circulated. Not that I ever would, but we don’t have that level of trust—yet.
The longer I inspect the bundles of photos, the more I conclude that Asher must not be my gift giver. Perhaps it was his mother? The photos do show a timeline of her friendship with my mother. They’re a perfect reminder of the strong bond our families once had before we became mortal enemies.
The hate generated between our families the past decade is too inconceivable to explain. I myself have often wondered what caused such a mammoth rift between two once indestructible allies. I’ve yet to find a morsel of evidence or a person willing to answer my many questions.
The already frantic beat of my heart pumps out a new tune when I remove enough of the photos to unearth another treasure. There’s a film projector nestled in the bottom of the box beneath a dozen loaded film spools. Although I’m not overly crafty, I do know how to operate projectors like this. My mom had a make and model similar to this one. She loved the feel she got from film and never went digital. I’m the same—and still have a Polaroid camera.
Well, I did before Asher confiscated it from my luggage.
After rearranging my room for an impromptu feature film, I load the first cylinder onto the projector, snag the generous serving ofsharlotkathe head chef gifted me, then settle in for a night of reminiscing.
* * *
I moan as I swallow down the last of the crumbs on my plate while sinking deeper into my mattress. Eda was right: thissharlotkawas even better than the one we devoured like piggies last week. It filled my tummy with as much hearty goodness as the gift Farah snuck into my room has filled my heart with mucky sentiment.
Over the last forty minutes, I’ve watched three clips my mom filmed with an ancient video recorder. It’s funny reflecting back as if I wasn’t part of the memories. The hundreds of photographs stored inside the box reveal I was very much a part of the picture back then, but my mind is a little blurry on the facts. I know Farah was a close acquaintance of my mother’s, and that their friendship was formed during their shipment from the US West Coast to Moscow, where they were to wed strangers, but the months around my mother’s death are hazy to say the least.
Like the video jutting across my paint-peeled wall this very instant. It shows a teenage Asher wrangling an overzealous Vaughn from his neck. He has the same killer glare and nasty sneer, but there’s a twinkle in his eyes that could never be denied no matter how hard he scowled. He may not like Vaughn hanging off him like a monkey, but he’s loving the attention.
Me. . . not so much.
I’m in the corner of the frame. I have my arms folded in front of my chest, and my lips are perched high on my face. If I wanted to play it off, I could pretend I’m hating that Asher was hogging my little brother’s affection, but that isn’t what shows on my twelve-year-old face. I look angry. I might even go as far as saying jealous. Seems absurd looking back at it now, but the longer I watch the tape, the more I’m convinced that is what it is.
No one is guaranteed a long life in this industry. You either grow up fast, or accept that once you’ve reached your teens, you’ve most likely lived half your life. Once upon a time, I would have said the odds didn’t matter to me. Now I’m just striving to make it to next week.
My thoughts launch from the negative void my reminiscing put them in when a deep voice rumbles through the padded-cell silence surrounding me. “There wasn’t a day that went by without her shoving her video camera in our face, was there?”
With my heart beeping in my neck, I leap to my feet and spin to face Asher. He’s standing in the doorframe of my room/prison cell. His favorite jeans and plain white t-shirt have been replaced with a pair of fancy slacks. He’s holding a recently laundered dress shirt in his hand, and his hair is wet as if he recently showered.
“Who gave you these?” He points his free hand to the old projector and bundles of photos stacked on my rickety drawers.
“Umm. . .” I nearly lie until I realize it will do me no good. “I don’t know. A box was on my bed when I returned from the kitchen. Since it had no name on it, I opened it. I’ll turn it off. I didn’t realize you were coming back here before going out, or I would have waited to watch it.”
Rumors around the compound are that Asher has organized a glitzy one-off event at his nightclub tonight. Those with an invitation are buzzing with excitement; the guest list is one of the most impressive seen on this side of the continent in the past decade. Those without are wallowing in self-pity while downing reverse-engineered apple cakes to make themselves feel better. Can you tell which group I belong in?
It isn’t that I expected an invite to his event; we’re just balancing on the line that separates friends from foes, but I would have happily catered for it if it meant I got to be a part of it. Everyone who is anyone in the Russian cartel is going to be there, meaning I would have had a great chance of bumping into someone I know, hopefully someone with the same blood as mine. Alas, my invitation seemed to have been misplaced.
