by Tillie Cole
Kisa dipped her eyes, not saying anything for a while, but then she smiled shyly and murmured, “Whatever our souls are made of—”
“His and mine are the same.” I finished off, the words coming from some locked-away memory in my mind. My eyebrows pulled down, and I watched happiness flood Kisa’s face. “What … what is that? Why do I know it?”
“It’s Wuthering Heights, a book I used to read to you before you were taken away. It’s a line from that, one my mama used to say applied to us. We used to like it.”
“Where is your mama?”
Kisa sighed a shaky sigh and her eyes glistened. “She died, Luka. She died when I was fifteen.”
Death. It was everywhere.
Neither of us said anything for a while, but as the night drew on, I pulled Kisa to my chest. “Kisa?” I said.
“Mmm?” she murmured sleepily against my chest.
“I will kill Durov tomorrow night.”
Kisa stiffened, and I held my breath. She never talked about how she felt about him, just told me he couldn’t live without her and he needed her. But I needed her too, and the difference between Alik and me was that she needed me by her side, keeping her safe.
“I know,” Kisa finally whispered back, but I could hear the pain in her voice. A flashback from when I was a kid suddenly came to me, and my body jerked upright, Kisa falling to the sand.
I gripped my temples as the memory came quick, the pain piercing my skull almost too strong to endure …
* * *
“You killed him, Alik!” I shouted, covered in my best friend’s blood as Rodion turned cold in my arms.
Alik held out the knife he’d stabbed him with, his eyes were wild and a crazy smile spread on his lips.
“No, Luka, I didn’t kill him.” I watched as Alik drove the knife into his own stomach and he dropped to the floor. “You did! You argued. You fought, and you pulled out a knife and killed him.”
“What … what the fuck are you talking about? You’re insane!” I shouted, but Alik was already screaming for help.
“He’s gone,” Alik said, looking to me and gripped his stomach. His blood poured out as he pointed to Rodion’s body. “The Volkov heir’s no more. I did just what my papa commanded. Now, one day, I’ll be the Pakhan. Rodion was too weak to lead, too nice. Me, I was born to be ruthless, to kill anyone in my way.”
My blood turned to ice when I heard he’d killed Rodion for power. His father had ordered him dead so his son would be next in line.
Jesus Christ!
“And me?” I whispered, numbly. “Why the fuck are you setting me up?”
Footsteps approached and our fathers’ voices called our names. Alik shouted back, flopping back onto the ground, but not before he smiled at me and said, “Because I needed someone to blame and I want what you have.”
I shook my head in confusion. “What—”
“She was always meant for me, not you. I need her. She’s the only one who calms me down. She’s the only one who stops the voices in my head that tell me to hurt people. And her being obsessed with you is getting in the way of making her mine.”
I stumbled back as what he said registered in my mind.
Kisa.
He killed Rodion for power and was framing me for … Kisa? Before I knew it, I was on top of him, ignoring the blood pouring from his stomach, punching at his face.
“You won’t hurt her, you sick fuck! You’ll leave her alone! You’re insane! You should be locked up!”
Alik smiled at me as I beat his face, like he wasn’t feeling the blows. I stilled in shock and he slipped the dagger in my hand.
A man came bursting through the trees, and seeing his son dead on the ground, he dropped to his knees. All I could do was watch as he tried to bring him back to life, then scream into the air when the CPR didn’t work.
Another man came through next.
The men saw me on Alik, my fists coated with blood, my mouth tight with anger. I got to my feet and stumbled back until my ass hit the ground. My legs wouldn’t move as I took in the scene. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t speak to explain … my best friend was dead.
One of the men rushed forward and ran to Alik on the ground, then I noticed the men’s eyes slam to me, then to my side.
Turning my head slowly, I glanced down at what they were all staring at and saw the bloodied dagger under my splayed hand.
I opened my mouth to try and explain what happened, but just as I did, Rodion’s papa got to his feet, blood covering his coat, the move pulling my attention.
“Luka, what have you done?”
* * *
“Luka! Luka!” Kisa’s panicked voice cut into the night. “Breathe, breathe … You’re not breathing. Try and calm down.”
I focused on Kisa’s face, on her hand stroking back my hair. Finally able to move, I lifted my hand and took hers in mine.
“What is it, lyubov moya? What did you remember?” Kisa asked, and I could hear the nerves in her voice. “You’re scaring me.”
“D-Durov,” I stuttered out. “Durov killed Rodion, stabbed himself, then pinned all the blame on me.”
18
RAZE
Kisa’s hand began shaking as she held mine, and I saw her face pale, the reality of that fact hitting home just as the dam of my blocked-out past broke and memories came flooding out, blindsiding me.
“Rodion,” I whispered, feeling like I’d just taken a punch to the kidney. “Rodion was my best friend, wasn’t he? We were like brothers. Yes? Is that—”
I watched tears fall from Kisa’s eyes. My eyes grew wider as I pictured Rodion’s features: light-brown hair, blue eyes. I dreamed of him sometimes. He was the boy in my dreams. His features had always been blurred, and I was unable to ever make out his identity. But now I could picture him with crystal clarity. I knew him. I—
Shit …
I looked at Kisa again. She was slumped over, her back shaking with the force of her tears. And then in my mind, I saw her and Rodion together: at church, at the beach, round a table, by their father’s side …
Lifting my hand and pressing it on her back, I swallowed hard. “He … Rodion was your brother, wasn’t he? Fuck, Kisa, Rodion was your blood.”
A sob slipped from Kisa’s mouth and she slumped onto the sand. Crawling forward, I covered Kisa with my body and wrapped my arms around her waist. She leaned into my arms and cried harder, her hands reaching out to grip onto my thighs while I tried to breathe through the memories of my past hitting me with the force of a truck.
“Kisa,” I murmured. “Durov killed him … He killed him…”
Another loud sob ripped from her throat and she began shaking. Pushing herself upright with her hands on my thighs, Kisa lifted her head. Her beautiful face was red and wet with her tears.
“No! I always thought his death must have been an accident. A misunderstanding. Some other explanation. I-I—” Reaching out, she gripped my biceps, desperation in her expression. “Why? Why did Alik kill him? What had Rodion ever done to him? I don’t understand! They were friends!”
I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath like I could force the memory.
“Please remember. Please remember,” Kisa begged.
The Volkov heir’s no more. I did what my papa commanded.
Dragging in a gasp, I looked at Kisa and suddenly saw a man’s face in my head. He was tall, dark, older, a fucking evil glint in his eyes. Just like the guards, I thought. He had that sadistic, controlling look in his eyes that the guards always wore.
“His papa,” I said, and Kisa could only blink. “His papa told him to take out the heir … so he would be next in line. So he could lead when he was old enough.”
“No,” Kisa said, shaking her head. “No! Abram wouldn’t do that. He loved Rodion!”
“Alik stabbed Rodion because his father told him to. That’s what Alik said!”
The shaking of Kisa’s head grew faster. “No, no, no, no!” She staggered to her feet and wrapped her arms arou
nd her waist. Her feet suddenly stopped in the sand, and she asked, “And Alik? Wh-why did Alik stab himself and blame you? Why take you from me too?”
Every muscle in me froze and my heart thundered in my chest. Kisa saw my reaction and her arms dropped to her sides. “What?” she asked, her voice laced with dread, fear … anxiousness.
Feeling a sudden rush of protectiveness, I lurched forward and crushed my mouth against hers, Kisa moaning in surprise. Her hands slammed to my hard pecs, but her mouth moved against mine like she couldn’t resist what we had, the spark that was between us.
Pulling back, breathless, I pressed my forehead against hers, gripping tightly onto her neck.
“Luka … please … tell me,” Kisa begged, her voice barely a whisper.
Inhaling a ragged breath, I closed my eyes and answered honestly, “Because of you.” I opened my eyes, and Kisa backed away, her gaze searching mine. She was shaking her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He needed someone to blame and he wanted you, Kisa-Anna. He wanted you away from me.”
“No!” Kisa turned her back to me and held on to a nearby rock. Her head shook back and forth, and all I could do was to stand there watching her, every muscle tensed with the unknown … the unknown of how to be with her … how to make her feel better.
I stood there like a mute and watched her fall apart. But when a pained scream ripped from her throat and she fell to her knees, my feet seemed to move of their own accord, and I dropped behind her, wrapping my arms around her slight body.
“He’s … he’s troubled. He’s always been troubled with voices in his head. Urges to hurt people. He needed me, even then, he needed me to stop the urges,” she whispered. “He’s always been so possessive of me. But I never thought … I couldn’t have imagined…” Kisa’s breath hitched and she began turning in my arms. I froze, unsure of what she was doing, when she crawled on my lap and laid her head on my shoulder. I fought to breathe quietly, her actions making something within me warm, like her touch her closeness thawing the thick ice in my blood.
Kisa’s bloodshot eyes traced the graphic demons I had tattooed on my chest—a gift from the guards who wanted me to look evil to the Gulag crowd—and her breath blew against my neck, sending shivers down my spine.
“I can’t … I can’t take that he blamed it on you, my beautiful Luka, my best friend, my soul’s other half … because of me … because he wanted me…”
She sucked in a shuddering breath and her hand dropped to trace round my stomach. “That he would injure himself so … so … brutally to create such an impressive lie against you.”
I closed my eyes, trying hard not to lose grip of my rage at the thought of Durov and what he had done.
But that was shot to hell when Kisa said, “He never even let me grieve your death. He just swooped in and took me for his own. I was only thirteen. But I was his. My father didn’t complain, he was lost, and then a couple of years later my mama died of a heart attack—the pain of losing my brother was too much for her to bear. Papa’s only child was now with the only heir—it was the perfect outcome from such a horrific situation. And I was so numbed by grief of losing everyone I loved, that I never fought him. In fact, I was glad someone was there for me.”
Kisa lifted her head and pressed three kisses on my rigid jaw. “I had lost you … I didn’t care much about anything after that … until you saved me in the alley and my heart began to beat again.” She sucked in a breath. “I hadn’t even realized it’d stopped.”
Not knowing how to respond, I gripped her tighter.
“Luka?” she asked. I grunted a reply. “Where did you go? What happened?”
I narrowed my eyes and concentrated on my past. “Your father took me to his office, along with Alik’s.” My eyebrows pulled down, my head aching. “Someone begged for my life. Another man was in the room with us, I think, but I can’t make out his face.”
Kisa stiffened in my arms. “You don’t know who that man is? What he looks like?”
The man was older and maybe had light hair, but that was all I could see. I tried to keep going while I still had this memory in my mind. I was afraid if I focused too much on the man trying to spare my life, the whole memory would come tumbling down.
“He pleaded with your father to not kill me, but Durov’s papa wanted me dead. I…” My heart started pumping hard and I could feel my blood rushing through my veins. “I remember feeling fear, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Durov’s father was so angry that he intimidated me … He stole my voice with his glare. Gestured to me that he would kill me if I spoke. I was mute with shock. The man who tried to defend me started arguing with him, and … and guns were pulled.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, parts of the memory becoming grainy. “The next thing I knew, your father told me there would be no cops involved in my crime, in my murder of Rodion, but that I was going to be sent to the motherland, to Russia to a contact he had there. He told me I would be punished. He told me I would be in a prison for kids, doing manual labor on a farm deep in the Russian countryside … He told me I would never come back to Brooklyn.”
Kisa came closer, almost melding herself into my chest like she wanted to crawl into my skin. “My God, Luka … I remember them taking you away. I was taken home … and all I remember is being numb as I lay in my bed.”
Kisa looked up at me and placed her palm upon my skin. “What happened next? Because … because after you left, and I didn’t know where they had taken you, we were told you were dead.”
The smell of smoke burned my nose. The sounds of screeching tires skidding to a stop. There was a bus …
“I was in a bus. It was cool outside. Night. I remember not being able to see through the glass because the windows were so steamed up. There were four, maybe five of us being taken away somewhere. Nobody talked. We all sat separately. But I could feel that we were all scared. We were all young … teens? Some could’ve been even younger. Some had been sold by their families to work on the farms.”
I stared off at the lights on the pier, almost feeling drained by how much I had remembered tonight. But the lights blurred and I could suddenly see something else in my mind. The lights … the screeching of tires …
“The bus was run off the road,” I blurted, my voice speaking aloud a memory it was currently processing. “Headlights from a van blinded us on a dark road. There was a loud bang and the driver of the bus swerved and we rolled into a ditch.
“We were all screaming, but the driver wasn’t moving. I remember climbing over the seats, hearing the other boys moan from their injuries, and crawled to the driver. But when I got to him, I could see blood. I could see a hole in his head … a hole I knew he didn’t get from the accident.”
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, the pain of such memories coming too strong.
“Luka?” Kisa whispered and began rubbing at my back. “Don’t.… don’t push yourself too much. It’s okay, lyubov moya. It’s okay. Don’t rush yourself. This is all too much for you to go through in such a short space of time.”
Anger boiled in my stomach, and I began to shake violently, my inner rage almost too much to cope with.
“No,” I snapped curtly, my voice sounding deadly even to me. Kisa jumped and I heard her hold her breath at my sudden change in mood. “I need … to remember,” I forced out.
“Luka?” Kisa asked and slowly began backing off my lap. “You need to calm down. You’re turning red. Your skin is scalding!”
Tipping back my head, I roared toward the night sky, releasing all the confusion, the rage, and the frustration that had been bombarding me over the last few days.
“Luka!” Kisa cried, and I could hear her sniffing, sobbing as she moved from my lap and scurried backwards into the rocks.
“The driver had been shot, and men stormed the bus … Georgians … Georgians stormed the bus.” I began rocking on my knees as the scene played out. “They beat us, forced us into the back of the bus…” I s
ucked in a long, stuttered breath and looked to Kisa, who was now dressed and pressed against the rocks as though she were facing a monster.
She was. I was a fucking cold, sick monster. This was what they had made me … what they’d been ordered to do to me by …
“They knew my name,” I spat out. “Those men … they asked for me by my name.” I blinked, but the memory of my full name didn’t come. “Luka,” I said and hit the side of my head with my fist. “Luka … Luka … ARGH!”
I couldn’t remember my last name!
“Tolstoi,” a soft voice uttered against the breeze. “Luka Jakob Tolstoi … that was your full name. That is your full name.”
Shoulders sagging, I tilted my head to the side as I witnessed the expression on Kisa’s face transform from fear to sadness.
Feeling my legs shake, I fell forward on all fours, my hands fisting into the sand.
“Luka!” Kisa shrilled, and I heard her drop beside me, her hand tentatively resting on my back.
“They had been sent for me,” I rasped, all energy seeping from my body into the sand beneath me. “Fuck … I can still feel it. Like a fucking dagger, Kisa, a dagger.”
“How?” Kisa asked cautiously, her fingers running down my spine. “Why were they sent for you? How did you know?”
* * *
“Luka Tolstoi. You’re coming with us,” the man with the gun said.
“Where? Where am I going?” I asked, but I got no answer.
“To fucking hell, boy. You’re going off the grid. Someone’s paid us a shitload of money to make you disappear.” The guy pointed to the other boys being dragged out of the bus. “You all are.”
“Why?” I asked. “Who ordered this?”
He smiled and shrugged. “You fucked with the wrong family, boy.”
All I felt was dread at his words. “Durov? It was Durov?”
The man looked taken aback, but then he laughed. “Well, at least you’ll know who’s to blame for what lies ahead. Abram made sure you’ll never ever return to Brooklyn.”
* * *
Lurching to a sitting position, I stared at Kisa. “Abram … Abram Durov…”