My hand falls from my head when I detect another presence in the room. Lenin is standing in the doorway of my childhood room. I must look like a total wreck because instead of walking over the manila folder he is clutching, he slides it across the floor.
In the time it takes Asher to flip open the folder, he’s vanished from the door. “Do you remember any of this?”
Asher shows me a set of photos. They’re of the same thing, just different angles. Me in a hospital bed. My eyes are shut, and I’m on a ventilator.
I shake my head so fiercely it rattles in my skull. I recognize myself, but I have no clue why I’m in the hospital.
“What about the date; do you remember that?”
Through misty eyes, I scan the date stamp on the bottom of the photos. It is April twenty-eighth.
“It’s the day after your birthday.”
Asher smiles a blistering grin, proud I remembered his birthday. It’s not hard. It is exactly two months after mine.
“Tell her the rest.” Asher’s demand isn’t for me. It’s for Vaughn.
Vaughn’s throat works hard to swallow before he dispels some of the terror thickening my veins. “I didn’t go back to my room like Uncle Nestirequested. I followed Asher instead.”
That’s not unusual. Vaughn was Asher’s shadow any time he was over.
“He walked into your room just as Uncle Nesti lifted your nightie.” I swallow down excessively, doing anything to soothe the bile burning the back of my throat. “Uncle Nestishouted at him to go away. They got into a tussle—”
“He pinned you to the wall by your throat,” I murmur to Asher. I don’t know where that memory came from. It just popped into my head.
Asher nods. “You were groggy, but more alert than the rest of the partygoers. Your mother’s overdose must have startled Bear so much, he gave you less than the rest of us.”
“The rest?”
He hands me a stack of admission forms. Many of the names I recognize. They were mutual friends of ours a long time ago. They were all treated for symptoms that mimic a drug overdose the morning after Asher’s birthday.
“Why didn’t you overdose?”
Shame floods Asher’s eyes. “Because your uncle forgot he had me dabbling in drugs months earlier. His concoction took longer to hit me than it did the others.”
My heart pangs for him, but at the same time, I’m grateful. This truly shows everyone’s life travels a different path for a reason. If he hadn’t sampled drugs in his teen years, he would have never walked into my room that night, and I would have been assaulted by my uncle.
“Is that why I can’t remember anything? Because I overdosed?”
Asher shakes his head while Vaughn answers me with words. “No. When Uncle Nesti wouldn’t let go of Asher, you charged for him. Because your footing was unsteady, you tripped over the mat. I tried to save you, but you crashed through the railing too fast. There was so much blood. I thought you were dead.” Vaughn shudders as if he’s recalling the memory in photographic detail.
The pain in Asher’s voice can’t be denied when he murmurs, “You fractured your skull.” He licks his lips, hoping a bit of moisture will help ease out his next set of words. “Your uncle told your father I pushed you when you wouldn’t give me what I wanted. Since Vaughn corroborated his story, he believed them.” He drags his hand down his face before chuckling a pained laugh. “And here I was the whole time thinking you were avoiding me. I had no clue you were injured—no one knew.”
Asher’s laughter isn’t genuine, but it drags me part of the way out of the darkness surrounding me. “You tried to talk to me, didn’t you?”
I’ve had the same recurring dream the past two weeks, except now I’m wondering if it’s a dream or a memory. It only goes for a few seconds, but the pain on Asher’s face when he fought to get out of my father’s goons’ clutches seemed real.
“Yes. Multiple times.” He runs his finger down my nose in a way that’s familiar, yet foreign. “When I couldn’t get through to you, my mother took it upon herself to take up my campaign. She went on the warpath—literally, but not even she could get through to your father. Within weeks, our families became mortal enemies. . . all for a decade-long obsession.”
He hands me two photos. The first one I recognize in an instant. It is a photo Vaughn carries of Dominique in his wallet. It’s usually stored next to the love letter she wrote him the day of her death. The second registers as familiar, but she’s younger than I remember, and her hair is dyed red. She looks different than the memories in my head. It is my mother.
“Dominique was ordered by a V. Volkov three years ago. I assumed it was Vaughn. I was wrong.” Asher trails his finger across a birth certificate for Vyesniy Volkov. I don’t recognize the name, but I do recognize the date of birth. It is the day my Uncle Nestiwas born.
Spotting my confusion, Asher does his best to relieve it. “Bear was given his nickname long before any of us were born. We’ve never known him by any other name.” I’d give anything to soothe the painful glint in his eyes when he murmurs, “Your uncle has been obsessed with your mother for years. When she died, his unhealthy obsession switched to you, but your father protected you so fiercely, not even blood could get to you. After years of trying, he went for the next best thing.” He taps the photo of Dominique. “He killed Dominique because she did the same thing as your mother. She fell in love with the wrong Volkov.”
I nuzzle as close to his chest as possible before returning my eyes to the screen of his phone. My connection with Vaughn is still active; he’s just pale and quiet. I lost my mother and a few months of memories, but he lost so much more than me. . . as did Asher. I’d give anything to take away their pain, but I’m at a loss on how I can do that. Instead, I offer them silent comfort. Asher’s is in a physical sense; Vaughn’s is mental.
After several long minutes of silence, I murmur the question that’s clutching my heart even more than all the information I’ve been hit with today. “Do you really own me?”
