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“I’m back. I’m rejoining the family.”
Panic flames through me. If he rejoins the family, someone might find out what happened between us tonight. Maybe it’s better that Uncle Kristian just stays gone. Dad probably won’t even let him come home after what he did.
I pin him with a glare. “Do you think you can decide to come back all on your own? Dad’s going to have something to say about this.”
“I don’t give a fuck what your father has to say.” There’s that anger simmering beneath the surface again. If anyone has the right to be angry, it’s Dad with Uncle Kristian.
Unless there’s something I don’t know about?
“Why now? What’s changed?” I ask.
Uncle Kristian pulls the seat belt across my body and buckles me in. With his face just inches from mine, he gives me a dark smile that makes me blush red to the roots of my hair.
“Everything. Happy birthday, princess.”
3
Zenya
Two years earlier
I loathe the smell of hospitals.
Cold, sharp disinfectant. The whiff of industrial strength bleach from the floors and bedsheets. Carts of bland, sad food on ugly plastic plates that look like they’re for overgrown toddlers but are really for despairing and trembling adults.
As I walk down a wide hallway tinged faintly green, I pick up on another scent.
Fear.
This place reeks of it.
Uncle Kristian is up ahead, his long, lean body propped against the wall as he stares into a hospital room. My eyes lock onto his strong, handsome profile to keep myself grounded. He has the face of an angel chiseled from cold, pale marble, but there’s nothing angelic about Uncle Kristian. I’ve witnessed him do things that would have Satan himself giving him a round of applause.
As I draw closer, I see that his black shirt is open at the throat, revealing the crossed guns tattoo on his chest and the silver chain he wears. His fine, platinum blond hair is falling into his eyes.
As I near his side, he turns his head and his pale, wintry eyes meet mine.
“Kak plokho…?”How bad…?My voice catches in my throat as I speak in Russian. The two of us often speak in the language of the Old Country when we don’t want people to understand what we’re saying. It keeps dangerous, violent, and secret things private from my seven younger siblings and random members of the public.
Asking about Dad is not dangerous, violent, or secret, but right now I crave the intimacy of our private language. Seeing Uncle Kristian and gnawing on my inner cheek are the only things keeping me from losing it and screaming the place down.
I can’t lose it right now. Or ever. I’m a Belyaev, the eldest of Dad’s children, and we have nerves of steel.
Uncle Kristian nods silently at the doorway, indicating I should go in and see for myself.
Ten months ago, Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He smoked heavily as a young man but he gave it up so long ago that I don’t remember ever seeing him hold a cigarette.
I have seen Dad in so many hospitals, clinics, and waiting rooms since then. Four months of chemotherapy only made him sicker, though I tried to be grateful for the powerful medications that were being pumped into Dad’s body week after week as they would hopefully mean I would be able to keep my father. Dad’s hair fell out, he lost a dramatic amount of weight, and he was so tired that he could barely form sentences.
But he’s survived, so far. In the six months since the chemotherapy ended, Dad’s regained a lot of his strength and vitality. His hair’s grown back and there’s life in his blue eyes once more. The cancer has remained localized to his lungs, which means his five-year survival rate is thirty percent.
Thirtypercent.
A heart-stopping, nail-biting, sweat-inducing number, though the doctor was smiling when he told us. As if the fact that there was a seventy percent chance that my father would be dead within five years was supposed to be amazing news for his family.
But today it’s not the cancer that’s landed him in a hospital bed. Today it’s a motorcycle accident.
A grin breaks over Dad’s face as he sees me standing in the doorway. His right leg is strapped up in a temporary cast, and there’s a bandage stuck to his forehead. “There’s my favorite girl.”
