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But still. I was horrified.
So, it’s good I’m learning this stuff. I just have to use it at the right time and place.
What worries me most is that I was glad I avoided the kiss, and that when I made contact with his chest,it felt so good. I only admitted this to myself later. I’m not proud of it, but when it comes down to it, I just don’t want anyone touching me. For any reason. I pray that in time, these feelings will pass. I can’t say for sure they will. But right now, I have no interest in being intimate. None.
Niko tells me I need to get out of my head or my training will falter. That could mean no revenge against Dimitri, which has pretty much become my sole reason for living. He told me that after my training sessions, he sees the life drain right out of my eyes, like the only way I feel alive is when I’m practicing, throwing punches, and thinking about hurting someone.
He may be right.
I am fueled by anger on my part, my sister’s part, and Stacey’s part. I’m overrun, polluted with rage, to the point I’m afraid it seeps out my pores with a noxious odor that will keep everyone I love away from me for the rest of my life. I am ugly on the inside like a rotten piece of fruit and can’t find a single redeeming thing about myself except that I’ve sort-of gotten my sister on a new and better track for her life.
If that’s all I manage to pull off right now, maybe that’s enough. Maybe I should be thankful. I’m all about survival. I have to be. There’s no room for the intimacy that soothed me before. There’s no enjoying the special meals Chef has been making. It’s like someone stole the heart right out of my chest and the tastebuds out of my mouth. I’m not happy about it. But it’s my new reality.
I have little or nothing to say, having lost the art of conversation, and the scent of the flowers around me is sickening. I can’t enjoy music, as I’m afflicted with a nonstop ringing in my ears. I can still see, thank God, but I feel like I’m looking down a long tunnel where revenge against Dimitri is at the end of it, very, very far away. Like so far away that I don’t know I’ll ever reach it, yet it’s all I can think about, driven as I am by hatred—dark, ugly hatred that has pilfered my light. I know it and I know the guys know it.
I am trying to survive each day. It’s not easy and there’s room for nothing else. Will I get out of this abyss of misery and all-consuming anger?
Maybe. Maybe not.
* * *
CHAPTERFIVE
Vadik
“Guys, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but I’ve just put together some interesting facts, and I think we may have a bigger problem than we originally thought,” Kir says.
Fuck all. As if there isn’t already enough shit going down in our world. The attack on Charleigh and then the crash with Stacey has taken us away from all the other things we should be focused on. Sure, we have people working for us to keep things moving forward, but we can stay away for only so long. We need to get back to it, but dammit, with all this shit swirling around us, it’s near impossible.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Kir paces the room, snapping the elastic band on his wrist that he normally uses on his too-long hair.
He takes a moment, like he’s gathering his thoughts. “I haven’t had the chance to tell you. The man who crashed into Stacey, the guy driving the big rig. Well, he looked familiar.”
“He did?” I ask.
Kir rubs his hand over his face and looks vacantly around the room. “I’m… pretty sure he’s the same truck driver who T-boned Clara and me a few years back.”
No fucking way.
Impossible. Simply impossible. Too much of a coincidence.
Unless it’s not.
Kir looks like he can hardly believe it himself, and yet, if I know my brother, he’s checked his facts before making such an accusation.
“I did some digging. I had the guy grabbed when he was leaving the police station after giving his statement about Stacey’s accident. Right now, he’s being held at one of our facilities,” he says.
“Are you serious? Are you really sure it’s him?” Niko asks.
“Not one hundred percent, which is why he’s still alive.”
If this is true, if Kir is right, in spite of all these years believing his accident with Clara was just that—an accident, not deliberate or planned—how will he take it? Is he going to head back to that spiral of despair that almost killed him the first time around?
When Clara died, she took a big chunk of him with her.
We’re quiet for a minute, digesting the implications.
