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Then he stood in the middle of the room and watched them all suffocate to death.
I came downstairs and joined my uncle, but it took him several minutes to notice me standing there.
He stared at me, his face spattered with gore, and raked me from the top of my head to my bare feet. “You’ve got blood on you, dandelion.”
“So do you.”
Uncle Kristian reached out his hand, and I took it. Our tangled fingers were red and sticky, and he rubbed his thumb over my knuckles.
“Did you find out who these people are?” I asked him.
“Oh, yeah. Hours ago.” He hunkered down on his heels until he was gazing into my eyes and searched them for a long time. “There is no justice for what happened here tonight. No police. No statements. No courtrooms. Belyaevs don’t call the cops. If you were hoping that it was going to be like TV and someone was going to be thrown in prison for what happened to you tonight, then I’m sorry, dandelion, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s only this.”
He gestured around the room at the four mangled corpses. His words were firm, but his eyes were filled with uncertainty. Had he made these men suffer enough for what they did to us tonight?
Had he given me every drop of vengeance that he possibly could?
I reached out and turned his face back to me and smiled. “Why would I need any of that when I have you?”
Uncle Kristian pulled me into his arms and squeezed me tight, and I could feel how much he needed to hear that. My words were everything to him. “You are a Belyaev through and through. Go take a shower. Your uncle will buy you a new dress this week, and we will forget all about thesemudaki.”
I hugged him back, both of us reeking of blood. My hero, who would protect me above all others.
When I was nearly out of the room, he called out to me.
“Zenya?” Uncle Kristian lifted the blood-soaked drill and smiled at me. “Nice work tonight. Be proud of yourself.”
I smiled at him from the stairs. “I am.”
“Good girl.”
He was different with me after that day. He bought me that dress, but he bought me a gun as well. He paid for self-defense classes and taught me more about how to fight with a knife, how to break into various buildings, when to stand my ground, and when to run. He told me more and more about the family business and the way we worked. I was hungry for everything he told me.
“You don’t have to choose this life, Zenya,” he often reminded me. “There are plenty of other options for someone clever and strong like you.”
On the morning of my fifteenth birthday, I broke into Uncle Kristian’s house—which he’d bragged to me was unbreachable—and he woke to find me sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed eating a bowl of cereal.
He sat up, bare-chested and rubbing his hand back and forth across his rumpled hair. There was a cut on his cheekbone, and he looked more dangerous than ever. “How the hell did you get in here?”
The moment he claimed I couldn’t get into his house, he knew I would either succeed, or my life would take me down a path very different to his.
I chased a marshmallow charm around my bowl with my spoon. “I’ve made my choice.”
I couldn’t change that I’d killed a man, and I didn’t want to. Going back to being a normal person after seeing what I’d seen and doing what I’d done?
Impossible. I wanted to walk on the wild side with Uncle Kristian forever.
He smiled at me. “Yes, you have. Happy birthday, princess.”
And now?
I’ve been walking for two years without him.
I lift my hand and stroke a finger down the silver chain around Uncle Kristian’s neck. “Where have you been all this time?”
Uncle Kristian touches my cheek. My hair. Trails his fingers down my arm as I gaze up at him. “Rebuilding my life.”
“But your life was here.”
