“About Allie.”
Vee’s mouth dropped into an almost frown. “What about her?”
“Is she alive?”
Vee glanced in my direction.
Bellatrix squeezed between the chairs to stand in front of me. “Is my sister a-fucking-live or not, Veera?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“So that’s a yes.” Bellatrix nodded once. I pulled her down to sit on my lap. She didn’t stop me. Probably because she was too shocked to notice. “Whose body was it?”
“No one you need to worry about.”
“Was she mentioned in the journal?”
Vee pursed her lips as she stepped around her desk to put distance between us. Or maybe just try to reclaim the position of power. Her son did that shit too. “Not specifically.”
“If you knew I had it, why didn’t you just take it then? Why chance me figuring it out?” Bellatrix pressed. I ran a hand up the inside of her thigh. She didn’t stop me from doing that either.
“It would have just made you more interested in it.”
“So you had no intention of telling me about Allie?”
“If she wanted you to know, she would have found you,” Vee replied.
Bellatrix shot to her feet, grabbed me by the wrist, and dragged me out of the office the way we came.
“Where are you going?” Vee called after us.
“To stay with someone who didn’t lie to me about my sister for most of my life,” Bellatrix called back.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I chimed in. “I’ll be sure to send ya a wedding invite.”
Bellatrix slapped me upside the head, but she didn’t let go of my hand, which was as good as ayesto me.
EPILOGUE
KAZIMIR: AGE 9 YEARS, 9 MONTHS
“Where’s the boy?” my father’s voice boomed through the house.
I popped my head up from where I was curled up under the table waiting for him to get home, and my mother immediately shook hers. She was trying to protect me again. I didn’t get why. It didn’t matter what he did to me. I wasn’t gonna feel it anyway.
That part just made him more mad. Which made him more violent. Which made him go harder with his fists or the belt or sometimes a hammer when he was hoping to do some real damage. Skin would bruise and bones would break, but none of it changed anything.
I never felt it, and he never got the satisfaction most other fathers got when they beat the shit out of their kids. He never got to see the fear in my eyes. And I was pretty certain that was the thing that bothered him the most. The fact I wasn’t afraid of him.
But she was. My mother was afraid for me. He didn’t hit her. But he didn’t need to. She seemed to feel everything I didn’t.
I glanced over to where her feet were bouncing in front of me. They bounced higher and faster the closer his footsteps got from the front door to the kitchen. He paused, and I knew he was looking around for me.
“Where is he?” he repeated. He wasn’t yelling anymore. He didn’t have to. It was the calm before the storm, all his energy stored up so he could use it on me later.
“Sit. Eat.” My mother pushed up from her chair and headed straight for where she had a pot of stew cooking on the stove. It was my aunt’s recipe and my father’s favorite.
I was assuming that was why we were having stew instead of leftovers tonight. She was trying to fill his belly so that he’d be too tired to chase after me. That only worked for a couple of hours, though. My father never forgot about a beating, and he never let me get away with anything neither.
