“I can’t,” I whimper on a sob. “She’s my mother.”
“She’s a kidnapper and a murderer. She deserves to die!” After dragging my mother to within an inch of my feet, Dimitri screams in her face. “Tell her what you told me.” When the quick shake of her head grates on his last nerve, he backhands her so hard, my teeth feel the collision. “Tell her what you told me!”
I stare at my mother, begging for her to do as asked. If she wants to live, she must jump on cue, and even then, it may not be enough. Her death certificate was signed the instant she went against a man more powerful than she’ll ever be, and no, I’m not solely referencing Dimitri.
While scratching at fresh needle marks in her arms, my mother stutters out, “We had to give them someone. W-w-we couldn’t arrive empty-handed. We owed them money.Lotsof money.”
“So, instead of selling them your daughter as arranged, you convinced your husband to take my wife instead!” Even if we weren’t in a small, concrete room, I’d still hear Dimitri’s roar twice. That’s how loud he’s shouting.
“They wanted someone who could have children. They didn’t care who they got. As long as she was fertile, they’d take anyone.” My mother’s cracked lips quiver as she locks her eyes with mine. “I just couldn’t give themmychild.”
Dimitri is as unbelieving of the remorse in her tone as me. She was never overly motherly, so why would she start years after she abandoned me? “So, you gave them mine insteadaftercutting her out of my wife’s stomach!”
“No.” She adds to her denial of Dimitri’s claim by shaking her head. “That was never the plan. They were only supposed to take your wife. T-t-they weren’t supposed to take your daughter. I didn’t know Ian’s plan. He kept me in the dark.” Against her better judgment, she slants her head to the side so she can peer at me past Dimitri’s brimming-with-anger frame. “That’s why I ended our call so fast that night. I heard screaming. I tried to stop him, Roxie, but I couldn’t. You know what your father was like. He didn’t listen to anyone, not even me.”
She speaks about her husband as if his corpse isn’t in the room with us, her disrespect as telling as the expression on her face. She once loved the man bound lifeless to the chair, however that was a very long time ago.
“Nothing I could have done would have changed anything. Once they realized who Audrey was, they were never going to listen to me.”
I unconsciously shake my head, my body choosing its own response to the lies I see in her eyes. Audrey was eight months along. Her pregnancy was noticeable, so although she’s pledging she had no part in what happened to Fien, sheisresponsible for her captivity—even more than me.
I try to make sense of the mess. “Why didn’t you call the police? Or reach out for help? You can’t live with a secret like this and not expect it to eventually come out, so why not come clean when it could have done some good?”
“I couldn’t.” When she shuffles closer to me, Dimitri raises his hand back into the air. It stops both the scuttles of my mother’s knees and my heart. A slap is almost caring compared to how he could handle her stupidity, but I’d rather not witness her torture. She may not be the woman I once remembered, but she’s still my mother.
With her hands clutched a mere inch from my bare feet, she locks her eyes with mine. “I haven’t seen the sun in months. I don’t even know what month it is, so how could I have sought help? Why do you think I didn’t call you back that night, Roxie?”
I want to say because she abandoned me like she did when I was ten, but since that would swing the pendulum in Dimitri’s favor, I keep my mouth shut. My stomach won’t quit flipping from the smell emitting off my father. I don’t want to see my mother killed the same way. I hate what she did, but turning into a monster to kill a monster won’t stop the vicious cycle. It will continue circling until everyone is extinct—even the good monsters.
My queasiness takes on an entirely new meaning when Dimitri strikes my mother for the second time. “I told you to tell the truth, not the shit you tried to spurt earlier.”
“Don’t!” I shout when Dimitri raises his hand for the third time. His second hit split my mother’s cheek. She won’t come out of a third one without irreparable damage. Although she deserves his anger, a small part of me wonders if she’s telling the truth. It’s minute but undeniable.
When my words don’t get through to Dimitri, I use the weapon he forced on me to my advantage. I fire one shot into the roof, squealing when it takes out the light hanging above my head.
It rains shards of glass down on me and has Dimitri’s face the maddest I’ve ever seen. “You’re going to shoot atme, the man who lost everything soyoucould continue livingyourmiserable existence? They swappedmywife foryou! They made her take your place!”
He grips the barrel of his gun like it isn’t scorching hot from its recent firing, but instead of yanking it out of my grasp, he uses it to pull me in front of him.
With his hands curled around mine and his front squashed to my back, I can’t garner the strength to stop him from aiming his gun at the pinched skin between my mother’s brows. He isn’t just stronger than me, his closeness has more hold on my wickedness than my morality.
“For once, give your daughter the decency she deserves. Tell. Her. The. Truth.”
The reason for the extra thump in Dimitri’s pulse is exposed when the quickest gleam darts through my mother’s eyes when she spots the ring I inherited from my grandmother. For the first time tonight, I feel like siding with my family will place me on the wrong team.
Family members are supposed to be your go-to support network. They usually back you up in ways strangers can’t.
I’m not getting that vibe from my mother.
All I’m feeling is devastation.
I’ve seen her wear this look before. It was when she raced out of my grandfather’s barn, stating her eldest brother had been in an accident. When Nanna and I tried to race to Uncle Mike’s side to offer assistance, my mother and father held us back, declaring it was too late. He was already gone.
That was mere days before my grandfather cut my parents out of his will. He didn’t care about the tension it caused at Uncle Mike’s funeral. He wanted it documented that in the event of his death, every possession he owned was to go to my grandmother. When she passed, it was to come to me. My parents were to get nothing.
That’s how I inherited the antique Celtic ring Dimitri glared at earlier. Anything in my grandmother’s possession at the time of her death was classified as mine—including the ring she gifted my mother when she birthed her first child.
My God, how could I not have put two and two together until now? My mother inherited my ring first. She never took it off, so why was it in the wreckage of my Nanna’s accident?
