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“Vadim asked me not to. He used his last breath to look me in the eye and tell me revenge was a fruitless battle that nobody wins.”
Her face is haunted when she looks up at me. “So you didn’t come for revenge…”
I laugh coldly. “I did, actually.” My mouth thins as my eyes lock with hers. “In the end, I didn’t listen to Vadim. I was planning to kill Declan the very night he died.That’sthe reason I was there, Eilish,” I say quietly. “At the meeting where he and Vasilis Drakos died. I was there to ambush your father and put a bullet through his head. And then…”
“And then he was shot anyways,” she finishes quietly.
I nod.
“Then I saw you, running out to pick up the casings, burning your finger on one that was still hot.”
“I…I was outside when the shooting happened,” she whispers. “And when I ran in…they were dead. My father…Vasilis…poor Jason Adamos, who was there alongside Vasilis.”
My hands take hers. “I saw what you did, you know. I saw you walk over to Declan’s body and spit on it.”
She swallows, her lips pursing. “He was such a bastard,” she chokes out.
“I know,solnishka.”
When her chokes turn to sobs, I pull her into me, cradling her in my arms as I lean back against the headboard.
I’d say it happens suddenly. But that would be a lie. The truth is, the dam began cracking and splintering the first time I ever laid eyes on her. Or the first time I touched her, and tasted her lips.
But it’s in this moment, holding her as she cries, after baring her soul to me, that the walls around the blackness in my heart finally tumble the rest of the way down, and I can tell her everything.
“It started when I was thirteen.”
It feels like a serrated knife is being twisted into my very soul. But I don’t stop.
“When Vadim came home with this random baby boy, and no mother, people had questions. There were rumors that I was actually Svetlana’s kid, that her big brother was doing her a solid and raising the bastard she never wanted as his own.”
Eilish goes still in my arms.
“Vadim didn’t confirm those rumors. But he honestly didn’t do much to deny them, either, because it told a plausible story.” My eyes close. “Svetlanahated mefor it. Hated me for being the reason people looked at her like she was a whore and a derelict mother. When I was a bit older, Vadim was traveling a lot, working for Konstantin’s dad. So I got dumped here in New York for most of middle and high school.”
Black rage and red mist swirl together inside me as I look away.
“I was thirteen the first time she told me how it was all going to…work.”
My eyes close.
“The first time she took me to her bed.”
Then I tell her. I fucking tell hereverything. About the abuse. About the nights I tried to block out. About the self-loathing, and the drinking and the drugs that started early because they numbed the pain and the shame of my day-to-day, hellish existence.
Eilish weeps, throwing her arms around me and holding me so tight that my own eyes finally bead with tears.
I’ve never told a single soul about any of this. Not Vadim. Not Konstantin.
Nobody.
But when I tell her, it’s like the fucking mountain that’s been sitting on my chest suddenly crumbles to dust. Eilish is crying when she cups my face in her hands and kisses my forehead, and my cheeks, and my nose, and my eyelids.
And I swallow back the lump in my throat, breathing deep with the mountain lying in ruins at my feet. Slowly, I reach up and take her hands in mine, looking into her red, swollen eyes.
“Why are you crying,solnishka?” I whisper.
“Because the idea of someone hurting you when you were so young breaks my heart.”
