Page 157 of Lethal Obsession

“I don’t give a fuck about my scars.” My voice is as flat, hard, and unyielding as his moral judgment. “I never did. Every one of them just made me grateful it was no longer my sister lying beneath the blade—or my mother.”

I feel a savage satisfaction when he flinches at the final words.

“Alexei—”

“Throughout all the years after you left Miami,” I continue as if he hasn’t spoken, “no matter what the Orlovs did to me, I never stopped planning to overthrow them. Never once did I question the importance of guarding that vault or reclaiming the Naryshkin legacy inside it. I understood what was important to you, Papa. After all.” My mouth twists painfully. “You had already sacrificed one family for that legacy, back in Paris.”

His face seals like the door of that cursed vault.

“You know better than anyone that it isn’t our own pain that hurts the most.” I twist the emotional knife harder. “It is being forced to witness the suffering of those we love—and knowing that we caused it. That is the stuff of nightmares, Papa, wouldn’t you agree?”

“To speak of such things causes only pain,” he begins.

“You opened this door, Papa.” I cut him off coldly. “I would have left the ghosts behind it undisturbed forever, if you had not. Because although I have always lived with your ghosts, you have never been forced to face mine—or the nightmares they left behind.”

I pull off my leather eye patch. “Perhaps you thought this was the worst of them.”

To his credit, Papa doesn’t flinch.

“But the truth is that after Ofelia’s kidnapping, when Vilnus Orlov put a blade in my hand and sent me into her cell while he and his men watched, I wished he’d taken both of my eyes, and my hands with them.”

I pause long enough to see stark horror begin to dawn in his eyes.

“You call Ofelia a child.” I shake my head slowly. “But her childhood ended the day that Vilnus forced me to take a blade to her skin. Forced us both to pretend, for Masha’s sake, that her screams were just a game and the blood on my knife just for show.”

The color drains from my father’s face. I know I should stop, but it’s too late.

“That’s where my nightmares come from, Papa. From the cuts I made with surgical precision, in places I prayed would hide the scars. From inflicting atrocities convincing enough to satiate Orlov’s horde of sick spectators, while using every sadistic skill I’d acquired at his hands to minimize the harm.”

“I didn’t know.” My father’s voice is hoarse with pain and sadness, his gaze lingering on the crude scar where my eye once was.

“No, you didn’t.” The heat of my anger has faded, leaving behind a hollow sense of all that has never been said, and the futility of reopening those old wounds. “Because for years, and to spare everyone we both love from pain, neither Ofelia nor I ever spoke of it at all—not even to each other.

“But now that we have found happiness together, you will keep our secret, because I am not going to explain our story further. Not even to you. And the next time you accuse me of being selfish, I want you to remember that not only did Ofelia and I not choose the bloodstained legacy we both inherited, or the brutal manner in which we met, we also never blamed you, or anyone else, for either of those things.”

I lean forward, holding my father’s eyes. “But we did earn the right to choose each other, Papa. Without consideration for the judgment, opinions, or feelings of anyone else—particularly yours.”

Perhaps it is my own sadness that makes the lines in his face seem deeper, his brilliant blue eyes duller, but whether it is imagined or real, I suddenly find I can’t bear to see it.

“We will forget this,” I say abruptly. “And never speak of it again. I need to go now. Give my love to Rosa.” My mouth twists. “And Ofelia asked me to send her love to you.”

His eyes widen, but before whatever inadequate response he has to offer, I hit the button to end the call and push my chair away from the screen as if it threatens to swallow me.

I need to get out of this room.

And I need Ofelia.

I need her so badly it hurts.

When I come upstairs, Ofelia is drifting on her back in the water, eyes closed, beneath a cerulean sky. The early-morning sun turns her legs to gold, her hair rippling like a mermaid’s beneath the surface. I stand inside the cabin, watching her through the glass, savoring the relief of having her near, the exotic thrill of watching her supple limbs glide through the water.

“Your selfish actions have put an innocent girl directly in the path of mortal danger . . .”

My father’s words poison the day like oil in the ocean.

“And don’t tell me this was her choice . . . We both know there should never have been a choice to make.”

Every accusation is no less than what I’ve told myself. What I’ve been telling myself, for years now. I have no defense to give, no excuse to make.