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Manya
“ASorokin marry a Koalistia, how? How do you lie with the man whose father killed your mother?”
Those words pounded within my skull like an injury that refused to heal.God, how did I sleep with the man whose father killed my mother? My grip on Dmitry’s hand had been icier than Russia’s coldest winter as he led me from the party, the ladies’ laughter fading behind us.
That question was all that I could hear as he tried explaining our situation in the car on the way to the airport, his voice tight with worry. But I couldn’t focus on what he was saying. Something about being targeted…but the idea of being shot at paled in comparison to the news that had been so freely dropped into my lap. The ladies had all laughed over it, and my own apparent apathy had only spurred them on.
I wasn’t apathetic though.
Even if I did appear so on the entire way to the airport and the plane journey home. Dmitry hadn’t made an effort to occupy my mind like he had on the way there, busy in his own mind with the potential threats to us.Or maybe he had tried, but I’d just missed it. I had stared out of the window of the plane as it left for America, my hands folded in my lap and my legs crossed at the ankle.
I’d watched the sky change from blue with sticky-sweet clouds hanging in the air to the darkening blue black of night, and all I had been able to think about was that question.“A Sorokin marry a Koalistia, how? How do you lie with the man whose father killed your mother?”Over and over and over. The words gradually imprinted themselves into my skull until all I could hear was the whirring of the plane, Dmitry’s faint voice on his phone, and that question.
I’d told him about my mother, sparingly, because discussing her even all these years later felt like scraping a raw wound with a sharp scalpel. I’d told him about how I missed her and how much she had meant to me. I’d hissed at our wedding that I had known his family had been the one to kill her, because that much I had known.
But what I had known had been conjecture and rumor only. ‘The Koalistia’s killed your mother’ had been my father’s grief-stricken grouse any time their name came up or she was mentioned. I’d always assumed that it had been some deal gone wrong—wrong place, wrong time. I’d assumed that she had just wandered upon a transaction that she shouldn’t have and been shot.
A contract kill was different.
A contract kill carried out by my now father-in-law even more so.
I hadn’t been able to give voice to the tumultuous tangle of emotions that had been planted within me—neither on the plane ride home nor on the drive to the expansive-ass grounds we were now pulling up to. I had previously been awed by his father’s house, but now the very sight of it soured my stomach like milk left out on a too-hot summer’s day. I wanted to tell him to turn the car around, to drop me off back at home, anything. Instead, I sat silent and stoic as I watching the mansion come into view.
Its extravagant exterior was as cold and unwelcoming as the marble halls I knew to be inside. My lips thinned, and I unwittingly pulled my hand from the warm grasp of Dmitry’s as we drew closer to Papa Koalistia’s estate.
How could I tell my husband that the very thought of seeing his father filled me with a loathing so intense that it hurt my teeth?
“Manya,” Dmitry muttered from beside me, pulling me back from my remote depths. “Are you here?” The words were careful, and his gaze studied me intensely as if trying to look down through my very skin.
“Da,” I breathed, tucking a long pale strand of hair back behind my ear where it belonged. “Where else would I be?” I joked, the line falling flat even to my own ears.
Dmitry snorted, pulling up into the horseshoe-shaped driveway and putting the car into park. “Back in the motherland,” he returned without sarcasm. He finally turned to face me once more. “Your head . . . it’s like you are still there, instead of here with me.” His hand reached across the center console to take mine.
“We left so quickly,” I demurred, dropping my gaze. It felt dishonest for me to look at him while he worried over me like this. The acidic words berating his father were right in the base of my throat, but my stomach clenched even at the thought of uttering them.
“Da,” Dmitry breathed gruffly. He looked to those huge double doors, his expression tensing even further before reorienting back to me once more. “We left quickly; we leave here even quicker, hopefully. I have to protect my father. With the infighting. . .”
I steeled my expression at the mention of Papa Koalistia, swallowing down the bitterness. “Do you really think it will be so bad, even back here?” I asked softly, pressing my hand into the palm of his, trying to offer what comfort I could.
Again, his eyes slid to those large doors that shielded the hub of activity behind. His lips tautened as he shook his head. “Here? Da, if anything it is worse. At the airport, there were men from all sides patrolling, trying to get their hit. Not just ours, or Italian. . . . Means the infighting here has to be even worse. If the Scandinavians are even sniffing about. . .” His fingers flexed around mine, and I noticed the blue in his eyes was gleaming.
“I don’t understand, shouldn’t we be safe here at your father’s?” He kept checking the windows like he was expecting an attack, or for someone to be next to the car with their ear pressed against the glass. It made me uneasy.
And so did the handgun he pulled from beneath the seat.
It was matte black, the serial numbers long since rubbed off the metal, the barrel imposing and filling the vehicle with a very real, very present threat. I knew he didn’t mean it to be one. He offered it to me, his shuttered gaze just as serious as before. Where I had felt guilty for hiding from him what I knew, I now felt outright disgusting. He was handing me that gun as if he could trust me with it.
My fingers closed carefully around the handle. I swallowed heavily against the sudden dryness of my mouth.He shouldn’t trust me. He had no idea how much I actually wanted to be holding this gun right now, and not with the safety trigger engaged like it was. I wanted to take the gun into the giant mansion and take out my bone-shaking fury on the man who had caused it all.
Papa Koalistia.
I wanted him to pay.
“Just in case,” Dmitry said solemnly, releasing his fingers from the gun. “I don’t want to end up in another situation like the last time we were here, da? I know you won’t run . . . and if you won’t run, you have to be prepared to shoot. You understand?” He eyed me appraisingly as if looking for any hint of hesitation, and my nod was exactly that: hesitant.
He was asking me to shoot, but not the man that I wanted dead so badly. I could feel that tangle inside me, extending its roots and knotting further as I shifted my weight closer to the door and further from the husband who, only hours before, I had stuck to like Velcro.
