“There’s only so much I can forgive,” I croaked. “Oh, Pietr. What did you do?”
“I made a deal with the devil. But who else did I have?”
“And Max?” I snuffled. “Alexi and Cat? Are they part of this deal?”
“Nyet,” he said crisply. “I’m the only one they get.”
“The only one they get?” I looked up at him. “I thought your part was over.…”
“I did well for Dmitri. Showed speed, courage, and commitment. I was granted stars abnormally early.”
“How?”
“Don’t ask what you don’t want an answer to, Jess.”
“What did you expect me to say? Seeing those?”
There was a long pause, and, closing his eyes, he placed a hand on the ground between us to steady himself. “That I’ve made a horrible sacrifice, but it’s worth it if I can free my mother—have her back for a while. I thought you, Jess—you—of all people, would understand.”
“Because I lost my mother.” My eyes squeezed shut, closing out the vision of stars cut into his chest. “Pietr.” I swallowed, hating I’d raise the question, but knowing I must. “Will your mother understand?
He stood and through my tear-blurred vision I watched as he walked away. The door to the house opened and closed. He was gone. Without any further explanation.
Because Pietr knew I understood why he did it. He knew he couldn’t free his mother without help. The strange and shadowy group parading as the CIA refused to comply. And if they wouldn’t release her, Pietr would find someone who would.
He loved her at least as much as he loved me.
Still, I hated him for the sacrifice he’d made. Because by sacrificing himself to the Mafia, he’d sacrificed us. All the time I’d fought so hard to save Sarah I’d been sacrificing our happiness for what I’d thought was a greater good. Now that he was doing the same—sacrificing us for his mother—I hated him for following my misguided example.
I finally picked myself up off the ground and headed inside.
“Sit.”
I looked up, seeing Alexi seated at the dining room table. He had a shot glass in front of him that he slowly rolled between his finger and his thumb, watching the liquid inside slosh at the edges, threatening to spill out.
“Vodka?” I asked.
“Da.”
“How much have you had?”
“None for the past week.” He smiled at me. “There is that saying: That birds of a feather flock together. We’re one screwed-up flock, are we not?”
Pulling out a chair I sat and rested my head on the linen tablecloth.
“You,” he said. “You and Mother are the two things holding Pietr together, I think. Like glue. You cannot doubt his choice—this deal he’s made. It would be the same as doubting he loves his mother. If you doubt he loves her, you doubt his ability to love. You doubt him and his love for you. Do you see?”
“You haven’t had any vodka yet?”
“Nyet. Not yet. Hopefully not for a long time.”
“Alexi. He killed a guy.…”
“In front of you. Da. I heard. He killed Nickolai in front of you, too.” The vodka sloshed higher up on the little glass.
“But…”
“But what, Jessie? They both tried to kill you.”
“Christian was no threat when Pietr first showed himself. And he was ready to kill him right then and there.”
“Do you think the Mafia—men who taught Pietr so much so quickly—taught him mercy?” He released the shot glass and rubbed his hands across his face. “Jessie. You lost your mother, but do you understand the rest of what Pietr’s going through?”
I blinked at him.
“Pietr is seventeen but older because of the oborot genetics twisting inside him. The things he wants—as an alpha, a son, and a young man are constantly kept from him. He wants his family safe and happy, but we are betrayed by some company, threatened by the Mafia, and Pietr, Max, and Mother are quickly dying thanks to the genetic time bomb shortening their life spans. He wants our mother free and cured, but she is imprisoned by the country she chose as her home. He wants you.” He shrugged. “He needs hope. Compassion. Every wrong turn he’s taken was to get back to something good. To get back to you or Mother.”
“Go to bed, Alexi,” Pietr muttered from where he stood, hidden by the doorway. “I’ll watch now.”
“You need to sleep,” Alexi protested.
“Jess can’t stand any more of you trying to convince her how I’ve done this out of love. Especially when it’s a lie.”
Alexi threw his arms into the air and stood. “Sometimes, little brother, you need to accept help.”
Pietr watched until he’d left and then took the vacant seat, staring at me.
I turned away, trying to find something of interest to look at in the dining room, but instead I caught Pietr’s reflection in the glass of the china cabinet.
His shoulders slumped. “I’m not sorry I did what I did. I cannot be sorry because it’s the means to an end. Killing Nickolai, killing Christian, I saved you. I would kill a thousand more to save you. And by making this deal, I will free my mother.” He sighed. “But it’s no noble sacrifice. I am no hero for others to emulate. I am more like Koschei than you hope.”
I adjusted my position to look at him, head still on the table in the cradle of my arms.
“I didn’t do these things out of love,” he admitted. “I did them out of selfishness. Our lives are too short. We get too few choices. I did these things for me. I selfishly want more time with my mother. I selfishly want you at my side. I selfishly want my siblings to have what they want.…”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Da.” He seemed puzzled by the question.
I tried rewording. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“Da.”
“Remember how I said we don’t live our lives just for ourselves? You’re proving that. All you just described—that want, that desire? It’s love.”
“If it was love I would have made choices you and my mother could live with, too.”
“Love is—love is like having a frontal lobotomy.”
He blinked at me.
“It’s radical. You never know how it’s going to affect you, and it can make you a totally different person. You may not think as clearly, either.” I met his curious gaze. “Put your eyebrows back down. What? You wanted me to say something cliché like love is blind?” I closed my eyes a moment. “I need you to tell me what you did.”
“Jess.”
“I want to understand you, Pietr. That’s what I selfishly want. So tell me. What did you do to earn your stars?”
His eyes clouded and he pulled the chair closer to me, locking me between the table, my chair, and his own. “Can’t you be more like Amy about this? Leave the room with your hands over your ears, believing ignorance is bliss?”
“It’s that bad?”
He grabbed my chin, turning my face up to his. “You truly want to know?”
My mouth said, “Yes,” though my heart begged no.
“There was a family … a mother, a boy, and a little girl…” And as his words filled my ears, I saw it play out before me. “The mother had turned witness against someone very dangerous. She and her family were to be made an example. And I was to be their punishment.” He reached for me. “Come.”
I was so scared of what I’d hear, I couldn’t do anything but obey. He scooped me up and wrapped his arms around me.
“Maybe if I hold you tight enough, you won’t leave once you’ve heard.” He leaned back in the chair, holding me close. “I was sent to kill them all.” I twisted in his grasp to face him. His eyes were slits, and listening, he guarded against something or someone. “Slowly,” he clarified. “Brutally.”
My throat closed and my stomach knotted beneath my frozen heart. He’d killed to protect me … at what point was life so cheap you killed for other reasons? I closed my eyes and rested my forehead by his chin.
This might be it—the thing from which there was no way back. The thing I couldn’t forgive, no matter what end it served. “And?”
He tightened his grip, and slid his lips across my cheek to my ear as he whispered, “Dmitri believes I did.”
I whimpered and my eyes popped open. It took a minute for the words to sink in. I pulled away, eyes wide. “You di—”
He grabbed my head and pulled my lips to his, swallowing my exclamation with his mouth as he kissed me quiet. As realization swept through me, I forgot the question, kissing him instead.
“Stop,” he whispered. “Easy, Jess, easy. You must learn to be quieter.” His eyes slid toward the hallway and back. Satisfied no one listened, he sighed.
I pulled back, resting on his lap. “What?”
“I’m not innocent in all this.…” he whispered. “I…” He licked his lips. “I couldn’t save them all.” His eyes grew distant. “You don’t want to hear this,” he said bleakly.
My hands dropped from his face to his shoulders.
“And I-I don’t want to talk about it.”
For a moment there was no sound between us but our breathing. I simply stared at him, watching the muscles in his jaw work in silent anguish. He shoved me off his lap and stood, walking to the window.
Following him, I slipped my hand into his and swallowed. “You can tell me anything,” I insisted. “You know that. You were testing me, weren’t you? Tell me the rest. The entire story.”
He looked at me, the fear in his eyes warring with hope.
I led him back to the chair. “Sit.” He fell into it and I again climbed into his lap. “Tell me.”
“There was a man.” He whispered so softly I had to lean forward to hear. “Not a cruel man, nor an evil man, just a plump, balding man with photos of his family on the wall. Photos of happier times. He was cooking the books for an organization and kept some of the money for himself.”
“He said”—Pietr’s breath caught—“as they broke his hand…”
I cringed and his arms cinched around me.
“… it was to pay for his daughter’s operation. I protested.… But I was not as willing to risk something of mine as you were to gamble your safety for Christian’s. I wanted my mother’s freedom more than a stranger’s life. They shot him.…” His words trailed off. “I’m as guilty of murder as they are.”
“Shhh,” I whispered, resting my chin in the curve where his shoulders and neck met. “No, Pietr. You didn’t pull the trigger.”
“But I didn’t stop them. I barely made a move against them—it happened so fast.”
“You didn’t call the hit. There’s no blood on your hands,” I insisted, wanting him to believe so I could, too.
“All I see is the blood on my hands, Jess,” he confessed. “And all I want is to touch you with these same hands.…” He shuddered at the thought.
Slowly I traced the strong line of his neck with my lips, ignoring his brief protest and kissing him softly, sadly, wishing my kisses could ease the pain, erase the guilt. I kissed each of his tightly closed eyes and came away tasting salt.
“Kiss me,” I requested. “Forget all that … just be here, with me. Now.”
His eyes opened, soft curls of red teasing at the edges of his irises. He grunted and let me kiss his mouth open and whisper into him, gentle things, ways he was good and kind and faithful, letting me fill him with what he struggled to be and what I knew he could be as long as he never gave up the fight.
I pulled at his arms, still limp on either side of me, drawing his hands between us. “These are the hands of a good man,” I assured him, setting one palm over my heart.
His gaze dropped to where his hand rested and his fingers twitched a second. He shifted in the seat beneath me.
I took the other hand and rubbed my thumb across the spot where each finger joined his palm and, spreading his fingers wide I kissed each fingertip so gently his eyes drifted shut and he sighed.
It was only when Dmitri cleared his throat and entered the dining room to grab the ashtray resting beside Alexi’s abandoned vodka that we pulled back from each other. Pietr’s hand was a heated warning wrapped around the back of my neck.
“You.” Dmitri motioned at Pietr. “Keep your head in the game.”
Pietr nodded and waited until we both heard Dmitri climb the stairs before he released me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my nose to his. “You didn’t kill him.”
“I couldn’t stop it, either.”
Was one truly as bad as the other? I wondered. I didn’t want to think about it. Wanted to finally claim there was no time to think about such things.
“Couldn’t is different from didn’t try,” I pointed out. Looking down, I chewed my bottom lip. “The family. How did you convince…?”
“Do you know where to buy pigs’ blood?” he teased.
“No. Ewww.”
“Well, Alexi does. And now I do, too. Amazing what access to pigs’ blood and passports can accomplish.”
“Were they all you were ordered to kill?”
“Nearly. But I only lost the one.” He cleared his throat. “Dmitri wants me as his second in command, he intends to shake things up—start fresh. The idea of having an oborot as one of his men seems quite attractive to him.”
“But you won’t. That’s what you meant: Everyone lies and breaks promises.…”
“Da. I have learned to lie to save a life here and there.”
“But he wants even more from you, after we free your mother.”
“I’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
“I just wish…” I touched his shirt at the two places I knew the stars lay hidden beneath cloth and invisible in regular light.
“They give access to things no one else will provide for—this upcoming big event,” he pointed out. “They earn me trust.”
“With untrustworthy characters,” I reminded him, but I closed my eyes, nodding.
“Think of them as a passport.”
“To a place I don’t want you ever traveling to again.” I rested my head on his chest and listened to the racing of his heart. “Do you think he can hear us?”
“Your ex?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
I nodded.
“I’m not underestimating him.”
“And we know he can see us.…”
“Almost whenever he wants. But I’d bet he doesn’t want to see through your eyes when you’re so close to me.”
“Now I hope he’s watching.…” I twisted on his lap so I straddled him, my legs sliding through on either side of the armrests, feet touching the Oriental rug beneath us. My fingers wound into his dark hair and I set my lips to his until his heavy-lidded eyes sparked red and he grabbed me with a growl, covering my mouth with his, lips grappling with mine. I pulled away, breathless.
Pietr was panting.
“I love you, Pietr Rusakova.”
“Then say it in Russian.”
“I don’t know how.”
His voice gravelly and full of promise he began, “Yah…”
His fingers traced my lips and when I opened my mouth to repeat “yah,” his eyes widened, glowing red.
“… tebyah…”
“… tebyah…”
“… lyewblyew,” he concluded, mesmerized by my lips as I struggled through the final word.
“Yah tebyah lyewblyew, Pietr Rusakova.”
He sighed, his eyes closing, shoulders slumping. “Yah tebyah lyewblyew, Jess Gillmansen.”
I pulled my legs back up to tuck them beneath me so I could curl up there, leaning against his chest, but he carefully moved me aside, off his lap.
I stood and stretched.
He watched.
Closely.
A smile twisted the edges of his lips up. “You’d better get some sleep—school tomorrow,” he added. “And I’m supposed to be playing guard-dog.”
“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. I leaned over and kissed hi
s forehead. “Good night.”
“Da,” he agreed, stretching the syllable as I walked away.
“You can quit watching me,” I teased as I disappeared from his sight.
He snorted, caught.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jessie
We attended school again the next day, according to our “Just Act Normal” plan. Amy was waiting for our bus outside and immediately grabbed Max for a quick morning kiss. “I needed some help warming up,” she teased him, grabbing his hand and dragging him toward the door. Max didn’t mind at all.
And I doubted he noticed what I did. Looking over my best friend, I determined to find out why she looked so tired after one night back home. But as it did so often, school got in the way of important things.
I noticed Marvin ahead of us, leaning by the water fountain as Amy walked by. He didn’t straighten up, didn’t say a word, but his eyes followed her the whole time she walked down the hall.
Away from Marvin. With Max.
I read those same thoughts in Marvin’s eyes when our gazes briefly brushed.
Shivering, I held Pietr’s hand tighter.
Maybe this watching Amy thing had always been normal for Marvin and I’d just never noticed. I’d been gone a while—and even when I’d been here I hadn’t been tuned in. Otherwise I would have noticed the trouble between Marvin and Amy.
Wouldn’t I?
Jessie
In Miss Wyatt’s psychology class we got a new assignment. “So, because life is ephemeral—a fleeting and brief thing—we will be doing a eulogy project,” she said.
I swallowed hard. Dad, Annabelle Lee, and I had worked together to write Mom’s. This assignment hit a little close to home. Looking across the aisle at Pietr, I noticed he was drumming his fingers softly on the desk, eyes fixed on the clock. Yeah, this assignment was hitting a little too close to home for a few of us, I realized.
I pulled out my pencil and flipped open my notebook.
“A eulogy, as you all know, is a summary of a person’s life at the end of it all. What did they accomplish, how will they be remembered? What things made their life worth living? You will have the advantage of looking ahead and imagining the things you want to have said about you. How do you want to be remembered? What will your impact be on society, whether large or small? As Mary Oliver said: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Bargains and Betrayals Page 19