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And only when she finally nods and smiles, do I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Okay. We’ll stay.” She falls against my chest and I wrap my arms around her, my gut knotting as one question loops through my mind.
Will she feel the same way when she finds out the truth, that I lied to her about what really happened when she was passed out in my bed at the Fairmont?
Chapter30
Larysa
Danil clutches the gear shift in his hand, his teeth gritted so tight, his jaw might seriously snap from the pressure. I place my hand over his. Tiny sparks of electricity dance over my palm despite the cloud of misery hovering over us. “I know today was really hard for you…for all of you. But she’s at peace now.”
He swings the steering wheel to the left, narrowly avoiding a slow-moving Honda Accord in the lane we just slid into. The old lady he just cut off leans on her horn but Danil ignores the blaring sound. “In Russian culture, she suffered a bad death.”
“Aren’t all deaths bad?”
“No, a bad death is when someone dies before their time.” He glares out the windshield. “She wasn’t sick or old. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
With the wrong family, too. But I keep that addition to myself.
“So what does that mean for her?”
“It means that her soul still lingers here on Earth. That she has things left to do.”
“Like?”
He shrugs, cutting off another car. I dig my fingers into the side of the leather bucket seat and peek over my shoulder. Daniela waves to me with a silly grin on her face.
“Look, I get that you’re upset and preoccupied, but please slow the hell down. Don’t drive like a lunatic with your daughter in the car.”
“Maybe that’s part of it.” He drums his fingertips on the steering wheel. “She was always begging me to settle down, to have a family. I told her what she wanted to hear before she died, said I’d let her set me up. But I didn’t mean it.”
“So she could be hanging around until you actually listen and make her wish come true?”
“If you knew my mother, it’d make a lot of sense. She always needed to be heard, and she’d constantly harp on shit until someone listened.”
“She knows what’s best for you more than you do.”
He gives me side-eye. “You said she’s at peace, but she’s definitely not. Maybe it’s not because she wants me to settle down. It’s possible she won’t rest until we find the person who did this to her. She wants to know as badly as we do. And she’ll be here until we get answers.”
A slight chill whispers against my skin, like a presence.
Great, now I’m feeling ghosts swirl around me like wispy clouds.
I bite down on my lower lip before glancing back at Daniela again. She slumps over in her seat, fast asleep and still clutching her teddy bear from the Emergency Room.
Hades, where the heck were you that night? And what did you do?
A cool whoosh of air blows out from the air conditioning vent, jarring me.
It’s like she’s here…like she knows what I’m thinking.
Dammit, I liked it better when I thought she was just floating around waiting for her son to realize what he has in front of him, and what kind of future he could have if he opened his damn eyes wide enough to see it.
Danil takes the exit toward his building and slows at a red light a few blocks away. He picks up his phone, stabs something onto the screen, then drops it into the center console, a frustrated sigh escaping his lips.
We pull into the parking garage of the building minutes later. Luka sent over some bodyguards to stand watch after the firefight at the funeral home. A couple park nearby, and the others stand guard outside the building to keep watch over us and anyone who is stupid enough to run into battle with them.
When Tato was alive, security swarmed us everywhere we went. But after he died, nobody bothered with us again.
