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“And while you’re busy planning, what do you suppose is happening to those fucking kids? You think it’s okay just to leave them there?” she asks me.
I don’t know the answer to these questions. “All I know is if you charged in there, you could’ve been killed before you got to them.”
“Yeah, way to support me as if you don’t know me better,” she says in angry sobs.
“You’re not invincible, Julissa. And if we both ran in there, we could’ve been killed and what doyouthink could’ve happened to those kids then, huh?” I ask her.
She doesn’t respond for a while. She’s just crying. And as if she thought about it, she sighs. “Well, at least I’m trying to do something about it. At least I’m taking the risk. And if I didn’t die, at least I would’ve been able to save them. Instead of the alternative, which isthis,apparently, leaving them in the lion's den in order for them to be mauled to death while we fucking ‘plan’.”
“You have a right to be angry,” I affirm. “You do. And I wish I knew what the fuck to do.”
We’re back at my bike and I throw her on it and even as she struggles to get away, I climb on behind her, trying to lock her in with my body. I start the bike as soon as possible, not giving her a chance to jump off. None of us are wearing a helmet at the moment. I don’t even know where the fucking helmet is. I might have to fucking come back for that afterward, but right now, we’re getting the fuck out of here.
Julissa tries to hit the break on the bike, struggling to take control of steering it as we swerve in and out constantly on our way home. I hold my breath thankful this isn’t the city with a street filled with cars. And I hope no kid or pets wander into the road at this very moment because with the way this bike is being flung around by both of us trying to maintain control of it, we’ll be lucky if we make it home in one piece.
Chapter 22
Julissa
Wepulluptoour damn fucking house when Mikhail finally releases me. I jump off the bike so fast, I nearly fall to my fucking face. That infuriates me even more, so I kick him and the bike as he’s about to get off and they both fall to the ground. I turn around and storm inside the house, slamming the fucking door. I’m so fucking pissed, I can’t see anything around me.
Mikhail comes running in soon after. “Julissa, let’s talk about this,” he says. I’ve had enough talking about shit with him. At this point, I can believe he would do this again. What I’m having trouble believing is that I let him.
“Julissa, please, try to see why I did what I did. We were unarmed. We showed up there and maybe you had a plan but I for fucking sure didn’t know what that plan was. I just saw the possibility of you throwing yourself in a burning pit. And the same way you feel about those kids is the way I feel about you,” he pleads.
Oh, he tried it. “That doesn’t add up to me. I’m a fucking adult, I can take care of myself. Children rely on adults to take care of them. That’s the difference. I can defend myself. They need someone to defend them. And we just left them there, in a place where the people who are supposed to be looking out for them are their worst enemies. So I’m sorry, I’m not fucking flattered because I would’ve rather you’d have chosen them than me. At least I have fucking autonomy but the world has robbed them of theirs.” I start walking away.
“You think this is about flattery? I only made the comparison so you can understand why it was so difficult for me to just watch you jump into potential harm, regardless of who you are or what you’ve done, you’re still the woman I love. So as much as I know you’re a badass bitch, you’re still the woman I love. Do you understand me?”
I roll my eyes. He continues. “And let me try to paint you the picture that I’ve imagined. Hopefully, you can see where I’m coming from. Say you did jump forward and you weren’t as slick as you thought you were and they shot you. Then they fucking dragged your body into the forest and buried your ass. Or they dumped you at the bottom of the fucking lake. No one hears from you ever again. You’re gone, not remembered, and guess what? You didn’t even get a chance to go after the kids. And what? I was just supposed to stand there and watch it all go down and do nothing?”
Obviously, I would’ve wanted you to do something,I think.What kind of a stupid ass question was that?
And like he’s reading my mind, he adds. “Or what would you have preferred I’d done, watch you about to be murdered and then I charge in after you, so now we’re both dead in the woods or at the bottom of the lake, and guess what, the kids are watching all traumatized. They still haven’t gotten away. All we’ve done now is spooked them. Who knows if they’re going to take out their paranoia on the kids? Thinking they told someone and they punish them for it. Or perhaps even, let’s try to see it from your point of view. You don’t care about your life, right? So you sacrifice yourself as the distraction, they kill you and the kids run.”
“So now I’m supposed to be like the creeper in the woods, luring the kids to follow me and on the off chance that they do and don’t take off in another direction, getting lost in the fucking woods and risk either dying or being caught by the fuckwads again who would punish them if they found them because they tried to escapeby the way,”he says pointedly at me before continuing his speech, “…and I throw them on my bike, while I also try to fit on it. We all get back to the house on this bike, right? And I go get the guns, and you’re dead so we protect the kids and attempt to avenge your death.”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll be dumbass motherfuckers and come after us by themselves, easy kill, right? We’ve saved the day. Kids are safe. The young woman can escape. Boom. Everything’s gone according to your plan, right? Or maybe we’d get lucky and they wouldn’t come after us, they’d call the kids a loss. What happens to the young woman, then? Do they get rid of her or just run off with her? Or what if they did come but they didn’t come by themselves? Then they probably wouldn’t come right away and we’d just be left waiting and wondering or thinking stupidly that we got away when it’s possible they’ll have a whole fucking operation like in Vegas and they’ll all come after us so now we have to run, right? And where do the kids go? On the run with us? Or we just drop them off at some shelter and be on our way?” he says and I hear Calder gasp behind me, alerting me to his presence.
Mikhail’s still talking but I’m not hearing him as I stare at Calder. What the fuck’s up with him? He doesn’t look well. He’s pacing back and forth like a mad man like he’s got a deep secret he doesn’t know if he can share. He looks pale and he looks disgusted with something.
“We don’t know anything about these people, Julissa. Not like we did in Vegas. That was fucking planned carefully so that we could manage to get away. So even if we were to do something to save those kids, we’d need to come up with a better plan. And that’s your issue, Julissa. You don’t think. You’re impulsive and you don’t realize the effects your actions have on people. You can’t see that I just couldn’t stand back and let you sacrifice yourself. I’d rather save you both if I can but in order to save them, we need more information.” I hear Mikhail finish.
This breaks my attention from Calder and back in focus with Mikhail. “My issue? And my actions and their effects on people? Look at the pot calling the kettle black! Your ‘issue’ is that you thinktoomuch! And if it were up to you, we’d leave things to the last minute. Your “issue” is you’re too afraid to die, Mikhail. Your “issue” is you still think you are a cop, trying to err on the right side of the law when you know the irony of law enforcement. Your fucking issue is that you dragged me out of a situation that you couldn’t possibly know the outcome of, where it was very possible that I could’ve helped to save those kids after all. Do you think I don’t know that I could’ve died? I could’ve died many times before I met you, still here I am. And I managed to accomplish a lot before I met you. So why do you think you need to be my fucking knight in shining fucking armor?” I say and I can tell that hit him hard. I can see his heart breaking in front of me. And a part of me wants to just follow through with shattering it so that we can be done with this whole charade for good. But the other part of me is shattering along with him and I hate seeing him in so much pain.
“Look, I know I couldn’t have brought down such a huge part of the city on my own, not without all of your guys’ help. And I know you helped me because you love me and you kind of got sucked into my beliefs and all that shit. So I know that what you guys did wasn’t a thing that you got a kick out of doing, necessarily. You didn’t enjoy it, per se. It was an act of love for me. And I get that. I appreciate that. I do.”
I add. “I value it, don’t get me wrong. But you see, the difference between you and I, Mikhail, is that I’m doing this for all the little kids like me. What I went through shaped me and created the monster I am today. I am who I am.”
I explain my reasons. “I was doing it for justice. I was doing it before I met you and meeting you didn’t change me. I still need justice and my idea of justice is just different from yours. The cherry on top is that I do get a kick out of causing pain to people who have caused that kind of pain to others, people who have stripped others of their freedom, enslaving them and trapping them so that they feel they have no escape. Doing whatever they want to their slaves. I do get a kick out of being the one they can’t outrun. I love literally giving them no escape, getting right up in their personal space being able to do whatever I want to them, and watching them become defenseless. It brings me great joy.”
I wrap up. “And the biggest difference between us is I’m willing to sacrifice my own life for the life of kids like me, people like me. And I don’t understand how to be with someone who doesn’t get that.”
He looks like he is holding his breath the whole time waiting to speak and now he speaks as if he’s releasing that breath in desperation to convey his truth. “Okay, maybe I think too much. And maybe I’m too cautious. And maybe I took “serve and protect” too literally and maybe I’m having a hard time letting go of that role. Yeah, sure. I could benefit from taking a chapter from your book. But I don’t think that because we’re not the same, we can’t balance each other out. You’re right. I’m trying not to think about leaving those kids in that house and I acted mostly on the basis that I didn’t want to see you hurt and I was thinking too logically, I forgot to include feelings. But you could also benefit from applying a bit of logic as well so that when you do something, you can do it and also protect the people around you.
And you’re wrong about one thing. I didn’t just do what I did in Vegas because I love you. It was one of the driving forces, yes, and meeting you did open my eyes to a lot of things which made it hard to turn a blind eye to. And yes, as an officer, I’ve seen a lot of things. You become desensitized after a while. I suppose it’s a kind of trauma where it becomes easier to turn a blind eye. But I’ve always been about justice and meeting you just made me realize that I wasn’t carrying out justice in a department that’s in league with the very thing you were fighting that we should all be fighting. So while, yes, loving you opened my eyes up, and loving you made me choose that particular avenue of justice, I also did it because I needed to see justice being served. And in that way, we are alike. You have no clue how much I wanted to march beside you and help you rip the fuckers to shreds.
But we were unarmed, Julissa and yes, I used my mind to assess the situation and get you to safety, even if I didn’t choose the best method to do so. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the safety of those kids. I just think this probably runs a lot deeper than just your father and that dude and if we acted without thinking in that situation, we could fuck things up in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. And I’m trying not to think about what could be happening to those kids, right now.”
