by Lia Riley
A rogue wave slams into the rocks below us, sending spray into the air, and I stand in silence, watching the kelp bob like the hair of drowned mermaids. “Beneath that steely surface is a whole other world,” I say. “Perhaps things live down there that we can only guess at.”
“We see what we can bear to see,” he answers, turning to face me and extending a mug of coffee. “This is to help cut the chill. I have watched you enough to know your routines. You are never without a coffee at your desk in the morning.”
“A necessary vice.” I am glad to take the mug, let the warmth seep into my skin.
He dips his head, a dark lock of hair cutting across his furrowed brow. God, he really is devastatingly handsome, as if chiseled from stone, all hard angles with those even harder granite eyes.
“What if I had asked to leave?” I say, taking a minuscule step in his direction.
He gives his sprawling estate a dismissive wave. “I’d have stayed a little longer, preparing myself to face old ghosts…while being haunted by the new.”
“Me?” I ask quietly.
“Yes, if you had left, you would have become another memory to keep me awake at night.”
“Maryska. She haunts you.”
“Oh yes.” His smile is bitter. “As was her intention, I suppose.”
“Why would she want to hurt you?”
He holds up a finger. “To understand her, you need to venture further back. I will not presume to ask that you try to understand my father, because such a twisted brain does not deserve to be probed. I have tried and that has only led me to darkness. My father was a rich man who ascended to great power after the fall of Communism, becoming one of the principal oligarch families in Moscow.”
“But you are from the Ukraine?”
“Crimea. Maty, my mother, she traveled to Moscow as a young woman with stars in her eyes and a hunger in her belly for a life better than the one she had known. She traded the one asset she had. Her body. And my father, who was married and had children near her age, took her to be his mistress.
“But that wasn’t enough for a man such as him. One wife, one mistress. He and other associates formed a network of exclusive brothels around Europe. Expensive. Discreet. Depraved. My mother was eventually tasked with running one in Kiev after I was born and he lost interest in her physical body.”
“So you were—”
“Raised in a brothel, yes. But it wasn’t so bad, at least during the day. One of the other women had children.”
“Maryska.”
He nods. “Occasionally, my father would come for a visit. You see, he had only girls. I was the bastard, but a son. My cock gave me value. At the time, I didn’t know my father well, so looked forward to his visits. He showered me with expensive gifts. When my mother bragged how I’d developed an aptitude for technology, he kept me updated with the finest equipment money could buy. Eventually it was decreed that it was time for me to leave and go off in the wider world, be educated in fine schools, become the type of son fit for a man such as him—every king needs an heir.
“He selected a boarding school in Australia, a place where princes of England have spent time, saying I deserved nothing less. As if I could transition from a place where women discussed contraception and hand jobs like others might chat about weather or husbands. As if I had a shot of ever being normal. My final night, Maryska came to me. She begged, pleaded for me to stay. She said once I left things would be different. Everything would change. I tried to reassure her, promised no harm would occur. How young I was to make such a promise. So young and stupid.
“I left her behind. Of course, I thought about her. I sent e-mails and letters that went unanswered. I figured she was punishing me. But I grew distracted. My new school chums immediately sensed I was different, unlike them, and like a pack of hungry wolves they drew in. We went away for a school camp in the mountains, the Australian Alps they are called. During a hike, other boys took the advantage. Hit me again and again for no reason. I had done nothing to them, except have a big mouth and refuse to ever let them intimidate me.
“Bran is the one who found me afterward. I had disappeared and staff were worried that I’d fallen into a ravine. He knew better, discovering me in the camp office ready to erase the financial records of the school. Even then, computers were things that I understood while humans confused me. After that, things improved, for a time. He was my friend. Except when my father eventually caught wind of the happenings and considered any slight against me a slight against him. And that was it—he came and I was gone.
“On the flight home, he told me it was time that I become a man, not to let boys push me around. I didn’t realize what he meant until we arrived at my old home and there was Maryska. After I left, at sixteen, she was told that it was time to earn her keep. She had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to, and so she spread her legs to men like my father who came through the doors. That night, my father paid her to spread her legs for me.”
“Oh God,” I say, setting my hand on his arm. He jerks as if my touch is living fire. “The first time I saw you, you cannot know how it felt. The more I see you, the less I see her, but the resemblance is—”
“Uncanny, yes.”
“But you have such a hopefulness to you,” he murmurs, pulling me closer. “It is as if you are the sun, burning the shadows into submission.”
I tilt my face to receive his kiss when he stiffens. In the distance, over the sound of waves and wind, comes the faint womp-womp-womp of a helicopter.
“Katya.” He recoils. “You called him.”
I shake my head furiously. “Of course not.”
His shoulders crumple, his whole countenance retreating inward. “Bethanny…will you…will you hold my hand?”
“Yes, of course. What’s happening? Your face, that expression, frightens me.”
“Be frightened,” he responds gruffly. “If he comes now, he carries bad news.”
Chapter Eleven
Beth
The helicopter touches down on the launch pad and I do as Z asks and stand, holding his hand.
He tightens his grip. “Let him come to us.” Despite everything he said, I still have more questions. What happened with his father, with Maryska that made him fear physical touch for seven years? His story shocked and saddened me, but nothing so far warrants such an intense reaction.
The engine cuts out and within moments, Katya emerges, striding across the lawn toward us. Z isn’t a small guy by any stretch, but Katya is bigger still, a hulk of a man. He must work with an excellent tailor to attain such a good fit to his own suit.
He calls out something to Z that I can’t understand.
“She’ll stay,” he responds. “And we talk in English when she is present.”
Katya freezes, as if this reaction is not expected. I can’t decipher his eyes due to the sunglasses, but a muscle tics in the place where his jaw meets the skull. “Maryska’s gone.”
Z sways a moment before fixing his stance, turning to stone. “When?”
“Not long.” Katya demonstrates all the emotion of a statue. “A few hours.”
“Kurva.” The word bursts from him as a deep red flush blooms across his cheeks, his face locked in unbearable strain. “It is for certain?”
My whole body trembles, desperate to pull him to me, protect him from the unfolding horror but unable to do anything to stop the pain.
“You want to see her body?” A ragged tear of emotion rips through Katya’s stoic façade.
“No. Just…Kurva mat!” Z tears a hand through his hair and drops my hand, giving us his back, vibrating with a desperate rage.
“Take her,” he says in a grim voice. “Take her away from here. From me.”
Katya doesn’t miss a beat. He reaches toward me and I step back. Oh hell no. “I am not going anywhere.”
Katya hesitates. He honestly expected me to bounce off with him, as if Z says a thing and we all automatically obey.
That may be the
case when I’m at the Fishbowl, at Zavtra Tech, on the clock. But here, on the coast in this fog-locked battleground between earth and sea, I owe no one anything. But that’s not true. I owe this hurting man my compassion. My touch. My reminder that he is only human and that it is okay to hurt.
“I’m not going,” I say, raw determination swelling within me.
Z’s teeth grind audibly. “There are things you do not understand. That you can’t possibly comprehend.”
“I won’t if you don’t try. Please. Let me in.” Katya rustles with impatience and I whirl around. “I need time with him. Alone.”
He stares without comprehension, as if I just spoke gibberish.
“I’m not kidnapping him,” I continue. “In case you haven’t noticed, he outweighs me by at least a hundred pounds. If you’re so paranoid, go back to the helicopter. I won’t move from your view.”
I can’t see his eyes but sense they swivel to his boss, the one he serves with such blind devotion. Z doesn’t turn around but he doesn’t contradict me either, so apparently that serves as an adequate response because after a few huffs, he retreats, heading back to the helicopter and climbing inside.
I wait until he’s out of sight and then settle my hand on Z’s shoulder, kneading the hard muscle. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Maryska must have been sorrier still, to miss the chance to spit at my face before she died.” He lightly brushes back my hair while his gaze is fierce on my face. If his eyes held the promise of a kiss last night, today they try to shove me away. “To look at you, to touch you, for a moment I had thought it could be enough. That perhaps that would be enough to move forward, heal me. But nothing is ever as easy as we hope.”
“We’ve had one evening and look how far you’ve managed to come.”
He shakes his head. “Even looking at you—all I see is her, that night…”
I reach for his hand and try as he might, he can’t hide the effect my touch has on him. I long to pull him closer, into my arms, and cradle him. But for now, all I can do is hold his hand and hope that will be enough.
“That night we returned,” he says, continuing his story. “I didn’t realize what Father intended. My first thought was we were going to see my mother. It had been some time and it seemed like a natural parental gesture.” His mouth twists in a bitter smile. “Instead, I found she had gone, disappeared. Later I learned she’d run off with one of Father’s associates and died from an overdose in Monte Carlo. The other women didn’t treat me as they once had. But I didn’t string together the clues. No one ruffled my hair or commented how I had grown. They treated me with the stiff formality of a client. I was ushered not to the attic where I had slept for so many years, but to a small red room, and there, beside the bed, stood Maryska. I was so happy to see her that it took me a moment to realize she was dressed in see-through lingerie.
“‘Things have changed,’ she said.
“For a moment, I couldn’t move or react. I was horrified to see what had happened to her in my absence. But then she approached and everything she did next was practiced, professional, and perfect. I’d always loved her, like any boy would love a beautiful girl who he is pushed into close proximity with. When she raised her lips to mine, murmuring words of affection and desire, I believed them for truth. I had her on that bed, with the silk sheets, red walls, and golden lamp that cast everything into a soft dreamy glow. When it was over, as I began to drift off on the dreams of angels, she whispered words from hell.
“You see, I had left her behind and she felt she had no choice but to retreat to this career path to survive. But men treated her badly and she…she…she had contracted a disease. HIV. And that night she cursed me with the knowledge that she had given the condition to me. I’ll never forget her words: ‘You fucked me, now I fuck you.’”
A chill shot down my spine.
“In the end, I didn’t get it. Do not worry about last night. I have been tested every six months for seven years and am as clean as a virgin. But eventually the illness progressed with her. For years, I have sent her money, made it possible to go anywhere she wanted, do anything. But I believe in my heart that all she craved was death. Life had proved too cruel. I failed her.”
I brush tears from my cheeks. “What she did to you, it was wrong. So wrong, you know that, right?”
“More wrong than leaving her alone in a brothel? When I founded Zavtra Tech, I tried to get her to move here, to San Francisco, promised her an apartment where she’d never have to see me, excellent medical care at Stanford, but she wouldn’t come. Her little brother did, though.”
Realization dawns. “Katya.”
“Yes. I might have failed her but I’d not fail her brother. He is now a U.S. citizen and is like my own sibling. As for my father, I developed a computer supervirus, one that targeted his companies, his vast financial empire—the thing that he valued more than anything else. Within two years, he was on the brink of total economic ruin and collapsed of a heart attack. Thus, without pulling a trigger, I avenged Maryska and myself. The bastard deserved to suffer more, but in the end, my only regret is that he didn’t know for certain it was me. Oh, I am sure he suspected. But I never had the satisfaction of telling him.
“And so,” he says wryly, “you got your bedtime story at dawn, pretty Bethanny. And now go, walk away and know you possess my darkest secrets. Everything that rots my heart.”
“Stop. Your heart isn’t rotted. You had an awful childhood and look what you overcame, how you succeeded.” But even still, uncertainty niggles at me. Will I ever understand him, what he has faced? I thought my own parents were the worst things ever, but they could win Mother and Father of the Year in comparison.
“I need you to go.”
“But do you want me to?”
“What I need and what I want are vastly different things, Bethanny. Please. Leave. I need to go bury the past, but I’ll never be able to get rid of the ghosts.”
“I can’t walk away, not now, not when we stand on the edge of everything.” I throw myself against him, my tears wetting his shirt. “This, you and me, it wasn’t for a night. It can’t be.”
“What we had wasn’t a night.” He cradles my face. “It was a lifetime.”
“Then give us a chance. Give me a chance. Go if you have to, I understand that, but I don’t understand you shutting the door on the possibility of us.”
He brushes his mouth over my forehead. “You deserve so much more than me.”
“No. I don’t. I’m not perfect. My best friend died because we were bickering in the car while she drove. She was being moody, not talking and shutting down. I yelled at her to open up, suspecting she was dealing with so much more than she was letting on. She started to tell me her story, then clammed up, said that I didn’t understand. Those were her last words. And in so many ways, she was right. There is so much I don’t understand about the world and how it works. But I do know one thing, that the connection between you and I doesn’t just happen. We can’t let this moment slip away without seeing if maybe we are destined for greatness.”
“I don’t deserve—”
“Stop. You deserve good things. And so do I. So did Pippa and Maryska. You deserve more than to live out your life amid sterility with only a fish for a pet.” It strikes me then why Koroleva is perfect for him. He can’t touch her.
“What do we owe the dead?” he murmurs.
“To live our best truth. And mine is that I want to stop waiting to live. Who knows when our chapters will end? None of us know how long our stories will last. All we can do is make sure the pages are filled with life.”
“And you think we can write a happy ending?”
“I don’t know, but I’d rather try than not.” I kiss him then, hard, fast, and furious. “Go deal with your past and I’ll be here, waiting in your future.”
Chapter Twelve
Z
I am gone for ten days. Katya and I cremate Maryska’s wasted body and scatter her ash
es at Blue Lake on the outskirts of Kiev, a place we once spent the happiest of afternoons not long before I left for boarding school, perhaps the last truly happy day in her life. We then fly to Moscow, to the cemetery where my father is interred. As I stood in front of the stone, I waited to feel anything. But none of the old anger and hatred rose within.
Only Bethanny’s reply to my question, “What do we owe the dead?” rang through my head.
“The truth.”
And the truth was that I didn’t want to be ruled by the past anymore. Ghosts surely have better things to do than haunt me.
“Svidaniya, Otets.” Goodbye, Father.
When I get back to my hotel, I dial her number.
“Hello?” Bethanny sounds sleepy.
“Shit, the time difference.”
“Z?” There is a rustling and despite everything or maybe precisely because of it, I harden. It is a comfort to know that despite the horrors of my last few days, she is somewhere safe, in bed.
“I’m here,” she says, more alert. “What do you need?”
I rest my head against the wall, place a hand against the creamy wallpaper, and pretend it’s her skin. Impossible when it’s not soft or warm against my palm.
“Are you okay?”
“I am now.” Then I remember, yesterday was her big day. “How did everything go with your presentation?”
She giggles softly. “I don’t want to brag or anything.”
“You nailed it?”
“With a Thor-sized hammer. I got the funding.” She breaks off midlaugh. “You didn’t happen to pull any strings, did you?”
“No,” I say honestly. “This success was all you.”