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Oddly enough, it isn’t the absurdity of everything else that has happened to me or my own near brush with death, but her single act of kindness that breaks me.
Without warning, I collapse into her, crying like I’ve never cried before. Deep, choking gasps are dragged from the depths of my soul as tears blind my vision. My body shakes against hers as I cling to her. She holds me like the mother I never knew, combing her fingers through my hair as she lets me cry.
The gentle touch surprises me, but it also awakens a new resentment inside of me that I never knew I had. Is this everything that I never knew throughout my life? Dad loves me, I know that. But he was never someone who gave me a chance to wallow in my own emotions like this.
And in his refusal to marry, he denied me the touches of a mother.
The touches that I didn’t realize I’d been craving until now.
“It’s not fair!” I hiccup like a brat into Dominika’s shoulder and she pats my head gently, saying nothing as I repeat myself again and again and again.
I don’t know how long I cry in her embrace. But she never once lets me go. Finally, as exhaustion takes over, I disentangle myself from her. I look over and see that I’ve managed to smear my eyeshadow all over the front of her uniform.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter as I dab at my eyes.
“For what,koshka?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t change, and—most importantly—doesn’t hold a hint of judgment. I wonder how many others she’s comforted like this in this penthouse.
“I got your clothes dirty.”
“This?” She glances down and gives her head a quick shake. “Don’t be silly, littlekoshka. I’ve washed out worse.” When she looks back at me, her expression falls. “But I want to know what happened toyou.”
I open my mouth, but just as the words are about to escape my lips, I can hear Mercy’s voice whispering vehemently in the back of my mind.You gotta have some backbone in this city. Otherwise, someone’s bound to take advantage of you.I remind myself that Dominika isn’t my friend. She isn’t my mother. She’s still Nikolai’s employee, and if I had to take a guess, she’s probably here on his orders in an attempt to squeeze information out of me.
“If you don’t want to tell me,” she says, “you don’t have to. But I’m old enough to know that this isn’t a tantrum.” She pauses for a moment when I don’t say anything. “And no, Nikolai Gennadyevich didn’t send me. Nor will what you tell me make it to his ear.”
“Do you promise?” I ask in a small voice, feeling like a naive child in doing so. But I desperately want someone to tell me thatthings will be okay. I just want someone to tell me that I will be all right.
“I promise,koshka,” she replies. “Upon my life.”
I take a shuddering breath. “I found something,” I say. “A room that I don’t think I was supposed to be in.”
The expression on Dominika’s face shifts. A shadow passes over her face briefly before it disappears. Her eyes are full of understanding, and when I look a little closer, I see something else in them—a sadness that lingers at the edges.
“The one downstairs?” she asks quietly.
“Yes,” I reply. “What is that place?”
“A place filled with ghosts,” she replies. “And a reminder of everything that could have been.”
I don’t understand what she’s talking about. Ghosts? Whose ghosts? Why can’t she just tell me these things up front? Why does everything have to be a riddle?
“There is a great deal about Nikolai Gennadyevich that you do not know,” she says. “And these are things that I cannot tell you.”
“But you clearly know what that room is!” I cross my arms and stand up. “Why can’t you tell me that?”
“Because it’s not my secret to share,” she replies. “Just as I have promised to keep your secrets from him, he has sworn me to keep his secrets from you.”
“So that’s it?” I ask. “You won’t tell me?”
“I can tell you that he allows no one in that room,” she replies. “Not me, not the rest of the household staff. Not even LarissaGennadyevna. It has been the rule ever since he made this place his home.”
Wait … what?“What do you mean ever since he made this place his home?” I ask. “Hasn’t this always been his home?”
“The Starukhin mansion was where he was born and raised,” she replies. “But this penthouse is where he once knew happiness.”
Have you ever seen a body that hits the ground from this height?Her voice from my first terrifying night here haunts the back of my mind.It’s gruesome.
The world underneath my feet seems to shift at the memory. I stare at Dominika, waiting for her to say more. But she doesn’t. Those words suddenly take on a new meaning. She wasn’t speaking of a hypothetical. She was speaking from experience.
