by A. E. King
Shaking sobs tear through my body. The security guard rushes over to help, but the old man waves him away.
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you.” He pats my hand. “But since you and I have this new arrangement, I didn’t feel it was right to hide things from you. The truth can be hard, but a friend gives you honesty, even when it stings. Everyone deserves to know their options. If there’s one thing I respect about my old friend Vladimir, it’s his willingness to protect the Organizatsaya at all costs. So, my dear, consider this a friendly warning. I’ve danced in enough blood. Do this old man a favor and help us preserve yours.”
He waves to my security guard, who helps me to my feet.
I am broken, lost, devastated.
My father shot my mother in the head and danced in her blood. I cannot live another minute in a world like this.
My security guard practically drags me out of the room as my sobs echo through the glass train car. I can feel the stares, but I can’t control the sounds rolling out of my body any more than I can bring her back.
My useless guard ushers me toward the golden door. Who did he protect tonight? Not me, not the thousands of people that will die, and not my beautiful mother. I’m constantly surrounded by men who are sworn to protect me, and yet no one is safe while the Organizatsaya is in power. My only recourse is the Myatezhniki. I must find them, no matter the cost, and put an end to this evil.
When we enter the smoke-filled room in the casino, I can’t make out anyone’s face through my tears. But I’m clear that each of these men must die.
“What have you done to her?” Dimitri thunders and wraps me in his arms.
The old man returns to his cards. “I simply solved the problem. Gentleman, Yulia and I have had a very level-headed conversation. Cool heads are always better. Remember that next time you decide to waste my time with your pissing match.”
“Tell me what you did!” Dimitri demands.
“I reviewed some simple family history. Now that she knows how Yelena died, she’s more informed and can make better decisions. Please report back to Vladimir that I’ve spoken with Yulia, and she won’t cause us trouble.”
“Mudak!” Dimitri curses at him.
Any hope I had that my father didn’t murder my beloved mother drips across the floor just like her blood. Will these men dance in my dying hope?
“Well, Dimitri, we didn’t have time to cover everything.” The old man turns toward me. “Maybe next time, dear, I’ll tell you more about your brother.”
Dimitri’s hand stops rubbing my back, and I feel him tense as though ready to strike. What did they do to Sasha? And how long before I become the next casualty in the family line?
Chapter 18: Moscow, Новая Россия
Even darkness has abandoned me. The blinds are drawn, and the lights are off in my suite at the Bogataya Gostinitza Hotel in Moscow, but the morning sun peeks around the blinds, mocking me. The world carries on even though I’ve lost my mother and brother a second time. And my father along with them.
Last night, Zhenya rubbed my back while grief ripped holes in my chest and tears fell like tributes to the lives I loved. Eventually, she succumbed to fatigue and went to sleep in her room. Dimitri paced the living room, checking on me throughout the night. I didn’t sleep at all.
In the morning light, the tears are gone and my mind clears. As long as my father lives, I will never be safe. If he could murder my mother, he’s capable of killing anyone. I lie on the bed, wishing the covers were my coffin so I could join my family in death to leave all this behind.
But responsibility anchors me to this life. Like Dimitri said, no outsider can bring my father down. I have to do it.
I should act quickly before those chemical weapons reach their intended targets. But the thought is too big, and my brain is too filled with grief for me to even put my feet on the floor. It can be tomorrow’s problem. Today I have to remember how to breathe.
I hear movement in the living room followed by angry whispers.
“We won’t make a single public appearance today.” Dimitri is insistent.
“Tell her to get out of bed and put on a smile. It’s her duty.” I hear my father, and I curl deeper into my blankets. When did he get here? I won’t face him today. I don’t know how I’ll ever face him again.
“She’s grieving. She’ll break down in front of the cameras. Then you’ll have more questions, not less,” Dimitri argues.
“The press is waiting for her in the fashion district. What am I supposed to tell them?” I shouldn’t be surprised by my father’s callousness. After all, he kissed his wife and then shot her.
“Tell them that you killed your wife and your daughter just found out,” Dimitri growls.
“You’re hilarious.” My father is not amused.
“Tell them whatever you want. But you saw the film from the Skytram. She’s in no state to see anyone.” Dimitri lowers his voice even more until I have to strain to make it out. “I don’t like this any more than you do. But look on the bright side. Andrei Steponovich just solved a big problem, I was getting nowhere with negotiations. Now, if you’ll just give her some time, I think I can convince her to pull out of this.”
“You have one day, Dimitri. Then you either bring her home or get her back to work. There’s a host of people that saw you carrying your sobbing fiance through a train. And now you’re holed up in a hotel room. You need to get back out to stop the talk,” my father says.
“I’ll do my best.” Dimitri sighs.
“Check in regularly. These privacy blocks are inconvenient. I don’t like being left in the dark, especially when she’s so unstable,” my father replies. So he’s not here. It’s just his hologram. I feel only slight relief. “Your insistence on privacy blocks is becoming suspicious.”
“If you want to see your daughter crying in her bed, you already have plenty of that footage. Let her grieve, and she’ll recover faster.” My brain recognizes I should be grateful to Dimitri for defending me, but I feel nothing.
“Clean this up. The faster the better. End communication.”
The bedroom door opens quietly, and I close my eyes, wanting to block everyone out. I half expect that Dimitri will try to convince me to get out of this bed. Instead, he slides in next to me, wraps his arms around me, and pulls me against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat against my cheek, and his arms somehow make me feel safe enough to fall apart again. After all, these were the arms that held me the first time. My tears wet his T-shirt until I finally drift into lonely sleep.
I don’t know when Dimitri finally fell asleep. I woke several times, and he rubbed my back and urged me to return to my unconscious escape. The last time I woke, he was sleeping.
I snuck out of bed, needing to be alone. Hours later, I stand in front of the window, looking at the colorful domes of St. Basil’s cathedral, piecing together the truth out of the pile of lies I’ve been given. I can’t change the way she died. I can’t bring her back. But how I respond defines me. I cannot align my wedding date with chemical genocide and sit quietly while these gruesome men destroy my country. I may not know how to fight, but I’m dying for a battle right about now. Because from where I stand, everyone looks guilty.
I hear movement behind me, then I feel Dimitri’s gentle hands on my shoulders. I don’t move.
“When did you wake up?”
I shrug.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“No.” It’s the first I’ve spoken in nearly a day. And that single word becomes the key that unlocks my anger, freeing it to destroy anything in its path.
“How long have you known?” I ask him.
“I found out about a year after she died,” he whispers.
The truth feels like another knife to my heart. We were together then. He kissed me with a liar’s lips.
“And Sasha? Did you lie to me about his death as well?” I turn to face him.
He nods slowly, giving me the devastating con
firmation. He lied to me about all of it. I’m stung by a level of treachery I would never have imagined him capable of. “Then get your hands off me, and don’t touch me ever again.” I slap his hands away.
“Let me explain.” He steps closer.
I take a step back, maintaining the distance between us. The sight of his sad eyes makes me want to claw them out.
“There is absolutely nothing you can say that would excuse this betrayal,” I tell him. “I want you to leave. The wedding is off, and I’ll take my consequences.” I slide the rings off my finger and throw them at him. Anger is delicious, and I relish the sight of his face sagging with pain. He deserves it.
I love everything about this decision. I finally have a good excuse for canceling this sham of a wedding and denying Kostya the opportunity to commit mass murder. When the press conference comes to announce the breakup, I’ll tell the truth. They’ll cut the mic and the feed, but I can get in four or five words first. That’s all it will take. The whole world will know what my father did.
“Please don’t say that.” Pain weighs heavily across Dimitri’s features. He bends to pick up the rings, like maybe I dropped them by accident. Like getting them back on my finger can solve this conundrum.
“Why? Because you’ll have to include it in your next report about Yulia’s behavior? You can take your wedding and go to hell!” I scream. I mean every word. I’ve wanted to say the words for so long, but it took a horrible truth to release them.
“Please, let’s just talk about it,” he begs, his voice beginning to tremble.
“How could you?” I’m no longer surprised by the violent sound ripping from my throat, but Dimitri is. “You knew for years, and let me find out from a stranger who danced in her blood?” He looks terrified by my rage. I’m empowered by it. He will pay for his crimes in answers. And nothing will make me back down until I have every detail I need to hang them all.
“Sasha and I didn’t know how to tell you.” He looks around the room as though hoping he’ll find someone to calm me down.
“Sasha knew?” My brother, the only other person who loved my mother like I did, kept this from me. We placed flowers on her grave, and he knew? It hits me with such force that it feels like a physical blow.
“We found out at school. Sasha was being arrogant, and one of the other kids said, ‘At least my father didn’t kill my mother.’ We beat him until he was bleeding and crying. But when we were sent to the headmaster’s office, he didn’t try to convince us it was a lie. He was a good friend of your father’s. It took a year to get Zhenya to admit the truth.”
“Zhenya knew?” Every single person I have ever trusted has betrayed me. “So much for loyalty.” All my foundations are crumbling.
“Zhenya was in hysterics when we finally got the story out of her. Zhenya, who never shows weakness or emotion, couldn’t stand, talk, or breathe. Your father made her clean up the mess. She scrubbed your mother’s blood for days. Don’t judge her for not being able to talk about it.” He raises his voice. “And Sahsa? It broke him. He was so lost. I didn’t know how to help him. You were seventeen at the time. We were kids, Yulia. You can’t expect us to have known what to do with all of that horrible information.”
“I’m not seventeen anymore, Dima! You’ve had years to tell me, and you let me find out like this?” I cry out.
“Sasha planned to tell you. And then he was gone, and I didn’t know the right way to do it.”
“Tell me how it happened, and don’t you dare lie to me again!” My rage has broken down every defense he has, and I will squeeze every bit of truth out of him. “Did my father kill Sasha too?”
“He ordered it, but didn’t do it himself.” Dimitri’s voice is hoarse and shaky.
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there. Both when the order was given and later when . . .” Dima’s breathing is unsteady, like a runner who has just finished a race with lungs burning from exhaustion. What burns Dima? Lies, betrayal, murder?
“Say it, Dimitri. You can’t cover your guilt any longer. You knew his death was ordered, and you didn’t stop it? I wish you’d never come into our lives. You’re a terrible person, and you were never a friend to any of us.”
He shakes his head and presses his palm against his forehead. “I told Sasha. And we tried to figure out another way.”
“Well, you failed!” I wish it was Dimitri buried in the ground instead. “How did it happen?” He doesn’t answer. “Tell me!” I scream.
“I was there. And I heard him scream in pain. There was blood everywhere. Pieces of his body twitched on the ground. The knife was so...” Dimitri is convulsing now, wracked with the torment of the past.
“Stop!” I press my hands over my eyes, trying to push the image out of my head. I feel like I might be sick. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“It was the worst day of my life, and it’s haunted me every day since. But I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Of course, you didn’t. You were far too busy selling your soul for power and position.” I throw my words with the force of the blows I wish I could inflict on him.
“It wasn’t like that!” he shouts.
“You loved them! I know you did. And you betrayed us all!” I withhold amnesty, exoneration, and reprieve. He will have none of it. I’m determined to condemn him because he’s the only one here to stand trial for all the lies and atrocities.
“My life was hell from that moment on! I lost everyone I loved too.”
“But you chose it, Dimitri. Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you?” My wrath grows with every deflection. For once, I feel no sympathy for him. I don’t care that he lost them. I don’t care that he’s shaking. He earned every terrible moment he has created for himself.
“I promised your mother I would keep you safe! She made me swear it. So I made a choice to protect you. You don’t know what it was like for them. Your mother took the brunt of your father’s madness. After your mother died, your father set his sights on Sasha. And it was horrific abuse. I wouldn’t let that happen to you. So I stepped between you.”
“I didn’t want your protection. I wanted you. I was dying inside, and you abandoned me for my father!”
“I couldn’t love you anymore,” he chokes out. “I knew if he found out he would use you to break me even faster. But I never stopped loving you. And now he’s breaking me anyway.”
“Well, now you don’t get to love me ever again.” My eyes sting again with the tears I refuse to let fall. “That’s not love. Love is honesty and loyalty. You gave me nothing but took everything. My heart, my trust, even my future. You don’t deserve any of it.”
“Please, Yulia.” His eyes glisten, and he presses his fist against them, trying to push the tears back in place. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s done.” I fold my arms.
“You’ve got to listen.” His strength is cracking, and Dimitri is falling apart before me. But instead of catching him, like he would do for me, I let him crumble. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I was wrong to think that not telling you would protect you. We can’t survive if we don’t trust each other. And you have to survive.” He reaches out his hand, and I turn my face toward the door.
“I’ll tell you everything . . .” He gasps for air. “My father was part of the Myatezhniki. They killed him for it. The shop owner from Meer Fkoosna was also Myatezhniki. He hid me and kept me from the orphanage.”
Finally, a drop of honesty. And after years of lies, I’m hungry for something that tastes like the truth.
“That’s why your father took you there every Saturday? To communicate with other rebels?”
He nods. “Years later, when I was with your father at a meeting in Nizhny, he introduced me to an older gentleman. I shook his hand, and he said, ‘You look like your father before I blew his face off. Myatezhniki trash.’ He and Vladimir laughed like it was a hilarious inside joke.”
He sniffs. His knuckles whi
te, fists balled. “Meer Fkoosna was used to pass information, but it was also a waypoint for people who needed to disappear. My father knew he should go into hiding, but he pushed his luck, thinking he had more time. Another week and maybe we would have been shut away in some forgotten village where no one would waste time looking.” He wipes at his eyes again, but he isn’t keeping up. The tears are prisoners escaping from their cells faster than he can recapture them. Every muscle in his body is tense as he fights to hold himself together.
“Do you think I could ever be loyal to your father after that?” He reaches his hand out for mine, but I don’t let him touch me.
“The only way you could know that information is if you’re still in contact with the Myatezhniki.”
“Of course I have contacts. Fat load of good it does. They’re cowards who refuse to come out of hiding,” he shouts. Clearly he despises them.
“Your mother saved me to punish him. She wanted him to have a daily reminder of his carnage. And she wanted to pay public tribute to my father, a man who died with honor.”
“But if she knew, that means she was . . .” Now that I know, I can’t finish the sentence. This truth is too sacred to be uttered aloud.
“Yelena was Myatezhniki.”
“My father killed her because he found out she betrayed him,” I whisper.
“It took Sasha and me a year to uncover the story of her death and another year to uncover the connection to the Myatezhniki.” His cheeks glisten as he continues his rough attempts to wipe them dry.
“And now you’re the insider that’s going to take him down?” I ask as I try to process the truth I had begun to suspect but still struggle to believe.
“I don’t know how or when Vladimir will die, but I swear to you it will be by my hand. I have sworn on my parents’ lives.” He’s shaking now.
“Then why haven’t you killed him yet? You’ve had years and countless opportunities to end it.” My arms are still folded, waiting for the next blow. There have been so many tonight, I can’t imagine what else he could throw at me.