He goes on, and now there is something rawer in his voice than I have ever heard from him. “I thought I could control it. I thought I could wound the men who needed wounding and keep the damage in its proper place. I was wrong.”
“Lev died.”
“I know.”
“You let me carry it.”
His face changes at that. “Yes,” he says.
I look away from him, toward the dark window, because hearing him say it like that feels worse than all the years of silence did.
“I let you hate me for the wrong reason because it was convenient,” he says. “And then because too much time had passed, and I no longer knew how to tell the truth without making everything worse.”
That drags my gaze back to him.
“You didn’t know how?”
“No.”
I shake my head, and regret it instantly when pain rips through the back of it again. “You always knew how. You just preferred the version where everyone else paid.”
That, finally, makes him look old.
Not weak. Just old.
The car slows.
“Would it help if I say I never wanted Lev dead?” I say. “I’m not saying that to escape my fate. It’s the truth. You killed my mother, but I never wanted your son dead.”
“I’m a monster,” Andrei replies, looking away. Do I catch a hint of guilt on his face? No, that can’t be. “Would it help if I say regret what happened every day? I can’t take back what I did, but I can do something else.”
His hand goes inside his coat.
Every part of my body tightens. I think,This is it.He’s going to shoot me in the backseat like a dog and call it mercy or necessity or some other word men like him use when they’re tired of looking at what they made.
Instead, he pulls the gun and looks past me, out the window.
The car rolls to a stop.
He opens the door and gets out without another word.
For a second, I just sit there, stunned enough that the pain goes distant.
Then a shot cracks outside.
Not close to me. Ahead of the car.
Then another.
And a scream.
I twist as far as the cuff will let me and hear him say, sharp and furious, “I told her to take them home.”
Another sound. Not quite a sob, not quite a shout.
Then his voice again, harder now, carrying through the open door. “Whether they are Lev’s or Roman’s, they are still my grandchildren.”
The words hit me like another blow.
