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RONAN
I’m the big brother.I’m supposed to fix this. I’m supposed to do something, anything, to make this better. No. Better sounds wrong.
It’s been four days since our world crumbled. Annika hasn’t left our bedroom, has barely spoken, barely eaten.
Katya and I started making arrangements. We’ve tried to track down Hanna’s family, but it turns out that Annika is all she had. There are some distant relatives out there, but none who were part of her life—she was adopted. I had no idea…
How could I? I never even fucking bothered to ask her about her life. I don’t even know if Finn was aware; I couldn’t ask him.
He can’t even bear to look at me.
Guilt eats at me every time I head toward my side of the penthouse to check on Annika. I know what he’s thinking, and it’s impossible to ignore. When I enter our bedroom, where she lies under the covers, silent, her soft breaths the only sound in the room, her empty, broken gaze tells me that she’s thinking the exact same thing too.
Such a cruel twist of fate.
She’s been borderline catatonic since she woke up in the hospital after the brief surgery on her sliced thigh muscles. I haven’t pushed. I’ve just taken care of her in silence, giving her what little comfort I have to offer.
I had to fight the hospital staff to tell me of her condition, since I’m not family. Apart from the two stab wounds, she has a broken rib, bruising, and a few cuts. They haven’t said if she was sexually assaulted. I don’t have the heart to ask her yet. She’s broken, no matter what her body shows.
Then there’s the thick bruise around her neck… I’ve built so many scenarios in my head around it and each is worse than the last. I know it’s from a rope. I pulled it off of her when I found her in that concrete box, whaling as she held the lifeless body of her best friend. Did they hang her? Was she dying when I burst through that goddamn door? What the fuck was happening in there?! If I would have been a few minutes late… would I be organizing two funerals right now?
That mark around her throat is a constant reminder of how badly I fucked up. I’m a failure… and I don’t think there’s anything I can do to fix this for her and my brother.
Finn is barely recognizable and he’s not transitioning through the stages of grief. I thought he was about to… but then we got Hanna’s autopsy report. We saw her body, we thought we knew what to expect written on those papers. We were wrong. Parts of it made bile rise to my throat. We’re no angels; we’ve done some terrible shit in thiscareerof ours, but I could never justify this kind of mindless, pointless torture and sexual assault on a person. I tried to keep the report away from Finn. I didn’t want him to see what they did to her, but he forced it from me.
I guess he had a right to know, but I would have done anything to protect him from another wave of pain. It piled up on top of everything else that burdens him, like the sense of failure we both share. He read that report with a straight face, but his staggered breathing betrayed that composure. I thought he would break, lash out, but he said nothing. Did nothing. Finn swallowed every devastating feeling, absorbed it all within himself, then he left. I didn’t see him until the next day. I have no idea where he went and, even if I asked, he wouldn’t have told me anyway.
He’ll never look at me the same again.
Not when I have Annika back.
I’m supposed to grieve too. But… she’s here. MyAnnika is still here. The happiness I feel is overwhelming. And sickening.
I still hear that harrowing bellow when I drift off. It shook the basement of that house, where we found them. It made me sick to my stomach, and I almost blacked out as I killed the rest of the men that stood in my way. When we finally burst in, in that dim light, I couldn’t tell who was lying on the floor and who was crying over who.
There is no way I’ll ever forget how my heart sank. It was at that moment I realized just how much I love her. Just how much my soul depends on her.
Funny… what love does to a person. It alters our chemistry, making us dependent on them like it’s the oxygen in the air and we would never be able to breathe without them ever again. Annika is my oxygen, running through my veins, and keeping my heart beating.
When I realized it was Hanna lying there… unmoving, through relief and guilt, I wondered if my brother felt the same about her as I do about Annika.
I never asked… Talking about our feelings in such detail has never been a thing of ours.
Probably because neither of us has ever feltthis.
Death is not new to us, not in our profession. But violent deaths of the people we love… those we’re not familiar with.
I’m standing midway between the door and the bed, hoping for a sparkle from her eyes that seems to look right through me. A hint of recognition. Something… anything.
Nothing comes.
So I do what I’ve been doing every day since I brought her home—I wash her, help her to the bathroom, re-dress her wounds, brush her hair, and try to feed her, then slide into bed next to her, drifting in a restless sleep. She functions, she walks, she sits, she does everything she’s supposed to, but she’s just existing here… going through the motions.
I don’t push. As much as I crave her comfort… she’s the most important thing right now. I’ll be here for her, for as long as she needs me.
* * *
I open the door to our bedroom with one hand, carrying a tray in the other, with tea and buttered toast lathered in her favorite plum jam, but I’m stopped dead in my tracks. For the first time since I brought her here six days ago… she turns to me.
