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Listen to Clara.
“You handed him the poisoned coffee, didn’t you?” I draw in another deep breath.I’m going to keep a cool head… I’m going to keep a cool head… I’m going to keep a cool head…
Clara suddenly laughs. “Yes, Demyen. I’m going to go in front of a judge and court officials and police officers and tell them that I, as an eight year-old little girl, took what I knew from a kids’ book on plants and grew, cultivated, harvested, extracted from, and utilized what I knew to be an organic poison that would specifically mimic a heart attack in coffee I taught myself to brew—all so I could poison the only adult in my life who gave two fucks about me.”
I narrow my eyes at her. I’m not appreciating the sarcasm.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” She rests her head against the wall and glowers at me. “You don’t care what’s true or realistic. You just want me to take the fall for Uncle Mike’s murder.”
I kick the door close behind me and flick the light switch on. Then I fold my arms across my chest so I don’t start balling my hands into fists. She’s really pushing my fucking buttons. “That’s not what I want and you know it.”
She steadies her gaze on me. It’s just this side of unsettling. “But it’s what you’ll get.”
“I want my brother out of prison. That’s all. I want wrongs to be righted and Tolya freed.”
“Well, guess what?” Clara’s voice suddenly pierces the room with a ferocity I am not expecting at all. “You don’t get to have everything you want!”
“Careful—”
“Or what? You’ll what?!” She climbs to her feet, staring at me with a wildness in her eyes that came out of nowhere. “What will you do to me for telling the truth, Dem? Or is it onlyyourtruth I’m allowed to speak?”
How long has she been inside this room?
For fuck’s sake, she’s already coming unhinged.
“Because here’s the truth: you want me to kill myself and my daughter just so you can have your precious brother back. Fuck everyone else as long as you can have your happily-ever-after, right?”
“You know damn well that’s not?—”
“Yes, thefuckit is!”
I almost take a step back in shock.
Clara has never screamed at me like that before.
She takes a few heaving breaths, glaring at me as her fingers curl into her palms. “If you make me go to court, you will make me discredit my father and cast doubt upon his entire career. They willhaveto arrest me for murder after I basically confess to doing it. And what do you think happens to children when one parent gets arrested, hm?”
That nausea is back. I reach out to touch her arm, to calm her, but she flinches and quickly ducks away. My hand hovers awkwardly between us before I let it fall to my side again. “I told you, nothing will happen to Willow.”
“You don’t get a choice! There’s nothing you can do! The second you drag me to court, you might as well hand her over to Martin and forget either of us ever existed. Because if my father doesn’tkill me for turning on him, the convicts in prison who hate him definitely will.” Clara sniffles hard and shakes her head, looking away from me again. “And if Martin doesn’t kill her within a year, he’ll drain her of everything she is until she chooses to die on her own.”
The irritated side of me that just wants this all to be over thinks she’s being overdramatic. That this is just a ploy to delay the inevitable.
The side of me that might actually care for Clara and Willow is terrified that she might be right.
I despise the position she’s put me in. I’m not supposed to be questioning my own decisions. This is my house, my Bratva,my fucking rules, and I’m not going to let her or anyone tell me what to do.
“You’re the one who doesn’t get a choice,” I snarl at her. “You’ll pay for what you did, and what you refuse to do, one way or another.”
Clara shakes her head and looks at me with a sadness I can’t afford to pay attention to. “Go ahead,” she says, suddenly back to her weakened state. It’s like her thirty-second outburst drained what little energy she had left. She leans heavily against the wall and all but turns away from me. “What’s worse than hell?”
And just like that, I register it as a challenge.
She thinks she knows what hell is like? She thinks she’s already paid her dues?
I don’t tell her. I don’t give her the dignity of a response. I just leave her in that room and make my way back to the office, throwing out a few texts to get things prepared for this weekend.
She doesn’t want to go to court—fine. Fuckingfine.
