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Any great Pakhan would feel accomplished. Though fear and respect are far from the same things, they can often be paired for the right response. I’m capable of many things. Should Liya respect that? Absolutely.
Do I want her to be afraid of that?
I lift my head and swipe my drink from the desk. Fingers twitch around the glass, movements hazy and weighed by alcohol. As I take a sip, the answer swells inside me.
No.
While my head lolls slightly to the right, my left hand locates the desk. My palm runs over the polished wood. My fingers bump into all sorts of objects that I don’t have the capacity to identify. I’m sure one of them is my phone by how hard it clatters to the ground.
This was my father’s desk. This was his office. That was his office door, his lobby, his penthouse, his staff.
All of it was his.
Upon his death, I inherited the world he created, an empire teeming with possibilities. I never dreamed of having such a glorious kingdom, yet I can’t imagine having it any other way. It’s a great responsibility.
And with it come challenging decisions.
What would my father do with Liya?I consider the thought as seriously as the vodka will allow. A couple of more sips send my forehead back into my hand.Would he slap her? Berated her? Lock her up in her room?
The more I try to think like him, the worse I feel. Any of those things would have come easily with any other woman. Hell, I wouldn’t mind smacking Zoya once or twice just for her gold-digging nature.
But I didn’t marry Zoya.
I married Liya.
And that changeseverything.
The depth of my memories produces a faded image of me and Karina at lunch. Hundreds of afternoon conversations on that porch, but the one that comes to mind is the one—so recently—about Josh Torres.
My hand shakes as I dump vodka down my throat.That kid didn’t stand a chance with my father.
Tiny rivers of alcohol trickle from my mouth. The cold liquid tickles my throat, soaking into the collar of my shirt. I drop my head back and blink languidly at the ceiling.
Is this what you wanted me to be?My expression hardens.Is this whatIwanted me to be?
Somewhere in the distance, an object thuds to the ground and then rolls against my foot. The smell of vodka stings my nostrils and sends me spiraling into the darkest parts of my mind. My eyelids flutter closed, my chest heaves, my body slumps.
And then I disappear.
***
I’m not in my office anymore. I’m not even in the same body. Everything feels surreal, shadowy auras embedded around the furniture in the room—the work table, the weapons on it, the iron bars on the right, the chair in the center of the room. There’s a man tied to the chair.
Wispy black smoke dances from his bare skin like worms wiggling in the muddy earth. Sharp pain pricks my right arm, drawing my attention. A young girl with eyes like mine clutches me.
“Please don’t do it, Daddy,” she begs. “Don’t kill him. I love him.Pleasedon’t kill him.”
Her voice sounds garbled like a speaker submerged in water. It doesn’t occur to me to listen to her, to give her more than a passing glance. I shrug her off, march toward the man in the chair, and press a blade to his shoulder.
Glossy black blood pours from the wound. Fists pummel my back as my daughter pleads with me to stop, to see reason, to let her have something good in her life for once.
For once.
I’m strikingly aware of the way my teeth grind together, how it makes my jaw ache. My throat clenches as the blade slices through his flesh like a hot knife through a stick of butter. White bone flashes briefly before blood pours from the wound.
“Daddy, stop.”
I slash his chest.
