by Bree Porter
“They won’t find you. None of them would get their shoes dirty in sewer water.”
That made her smile faintly. “I suppose you’re right, but we can’t underestimate them. Especially if they’re joining forces.”
“You really think they would join forces?” I asked. “None of them seem like the type.”
Tatiana looked at the dark walls, expression drifting. “Did I ever tell you about how this happened to me, Elena?”
“Your father left you and your mother for a younger woman...and son. You both fell into poverty and you mother passed away.”
“She died with her arms wrapped around,” she said. Her tone wasn’t sad or happy, instead airy and dark, like she was lost in a nightmarish memory. “Sometimes when I fall asleep, I can still feel them. I can feel her sweaty skin and fever, feel her shaky chest and cracked lips. No dignity–my father didn’t let her die with any dignity.”
“Neither did mine.”
“Fathers,” Tatiana sighed. “I think about him often. Do you think about your father?”
“I still have nightmares about him,” I answered honestly. “I can see him doubling over, clutching his chest. Sometimes he knows I’m the one who poisoned him, sometimes he doesn’t.”
“I like to think he knew. It makes me feel smug.”
I felt my lips twitch. “Me too.”
Tatiana peered at her. In the dim light, her eyes looked closer to black than they did to grey-blue. “I decided my fate the moment I couldn’t feel her pulse anymore,” she said. “I knew as my mother passed away with me in my arms, that the world needed to be punished. The men who abandoned her, the women who betrayed her. All I had was my brain and beauty–both served me well.”
“Clearly.” I gestured around me. “You have a kingdom at your command.” A shit kingdom, but a kingdom, nonetheless.
“I see myself in you, Elena. Younger and hopeful, but myself. I look at you and see the little girl who took one look at Konstantin Tarkhanov and knew he would be the perfect safety blanket.”
“Why did you choose Konstantin?”
Tatiana looked thoughtful. “I was seventeen or eighteen–young–and working as a receptionist for a known criminal. Konstantin took down his organization...but he let me leave before the guns started going off. Even passed me my bag and coat, warning me to get as far as possible before things got dangerous.” It sounded like my husband. “I didn’t. I just waited on the street for him and Artyom to finish the bloodshed. When he saw me waiting, he offered me a job.”
“It wasn’t good enough?”
“Not even close,” she laughed. “I watched for years as he amassed power and my hatred for him grew stronger and stronger. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was my father.”
I gritted my teeth to stop myself from snapping at her. Konstantin was nothing like any man Tatiana had ever known, especially not her pathetic father.
Her eyes went to the fading bruise. “I guess he was more like my father than I had previously thought.”
“What about your son?” I asked. “Don’t you miss him?”
“I regret not being able to save him,” she admitted. “I could save her, but I couldn’t save him.”
I could save her.
My brows narrowed. “Her? Who are you talking about–?”
BANG!
The world shook, dust falling down from the ceilings. Tatiana looked up, face paling in horror. “They’ve found us.”
“You’ve got no weapons,” I said. “What are you doing to do?”
She snapped her head to me, lip curling up as realization hit her. “You bitch–!”
Tatiana lunged and we hit the ground. Pain ricocheted through me as her fingers wrapped around my throat, pressing down on my windpipe.
I scratched at her face, summoning every inch of power within me. I wasn’t going to die here, I wasn’t going to be overpowered by her–
“Let her go!” Thundered a voice.
A gun clocked.
Tatiana’s hands relaxed when the barrel of said gun pressed to her forehead. “Who are you?” She said to someone I couldn’t see.
“Agent Stephen Kavinsky, bitch.”
The FBI.
My eyes closed as pure relief flooded through me. Konstantin had done his part; I had done my part.
It was over.
When I opened my eyes, I met Tatiana’s stare. She was peering down at me with an expression of horror and betrayal.
“You’ll regret this, Elena,” she hissed. Kavinsky told her to shut up.
I coughed, my lungs still trying to find air. “I doubt it. I highly doubt it.”
33
Elena Tarkhanov
I’m surprised with how much I’ve forgotten.
My dreams and thoughts used to be haunted with images of my father’s greying body and ex-husband’s wide empty eyes. I used to wear my mother’s weakness like a stain around my mouth. My apathy, my intelligence, my restlessness–all frustrations and weaknesses that have disappeared into the wind of time.
I’m better for it. I know that now.
I had more trouble forgetting about Tatiana. In the first few months, she stood in doorways and at the end of hallways, ignored but never forgotten. On the edge of every conversation her name went unspoken and when Anton would ask questions, he was given vague answers.
Then, eventually, like all things, she was forgotten. Her chair at the dinner table was filled, her room was repurposed, Anton stopped asking questions. She was so lost in the sea of time that the first time she creeped back into my mind, years later, I stopped in place, like I had suffered a scare.
When she refused to leave my thoughts, I went to visit her.
The location was hidden and secret, an unknown location on unclaimed land in an unnamed structure. Black out site, Agent Kavinsky told me when he saw my eyes darting around the place, trying to put a name to what I was seeing. For all intents and purposes, it doesn’t exist.
The perfect prison for Tatiana the Toothless.
The nickname had come a few days after her finale. Though not grammatically correct, it conveyed the creature behind the title well. She had betrayed her fellow women, ripping out their teeth, the only weapon they had that they didn’t have to share with a man. Tatiana had left them without their fangs, unable to bite. How was a dog meant to chew it’s leg off when it was toothless?
I considered that was how Tatiana felt for a time. A dog, chained down, unable to escape, and with no teeth. However, instead of growing teeth and offering to free her fellow animals, she began biting all the other prisoners.
Seeing her wasn’t as monumental as I had created in my head. In my mind’s eye, she hadn’t changed or faded, forever that beautiful woman whose heart was moldy and rotten. However, Tatiana was not half the creature she once was, instead now small and gray, eyes full of hatred and uselessness.
She didn’t get up when she saw me.
Tatiana’s prison was built to maintain dangerous criminals. A single bed, a toilet and chair. Allowing us to look inside was a large clear screen. I felt like a child tapping on the goldfish’s tank, waiting for it to do a trick.
Bits and pieces of her laid around the room. Books, magazines, pencils. They had even given her a red bouncy ball for enrichment, but it laid forgotten beneath the bed, gathering dust.
“Are you bored?” Was the first thing I asked.
Tatiana leaned against the back wall, legs crossed. She wore a white jumpsuit, and her hair was shaved to her skull. Her lips curled back when she saw me. “Have you come to gloat, Elena?”
Her voice was scratchy, like she hadn’t used it in a while.
I stepped closer to the glass, spotting my reflection. If Tatiana was the bald tree in winter, I was the blooming meadows and emerald-green forests. Young, beautiful, ancient…and free.
“Why would I need to gloat?”
She spat. It didn’t do anything.
Glass thicker than bricks separated us.
“Answer my question. Are you bored?”
“Obviously.” Tatiana glared at the agents behind me. A few had argued with their superior when they had seen me at the door, but Kavinsky had shut that down and brought me inside.
The young ones haven’t learned the different types of enemies yet, he had said.
You better teach them fast, I had replied. Before they end up making a new one.
Now, none of the young agents could meet Tatiana’s eyes.
I smiled to myself. “I’ll send you some books. Better material than whatever the government is providing you with.”
“Why?”
“I feel sorry for you.”
Tatiana flinched like I had hit her. In a way, I had.
“I forgot about you. We all have.” I went on. “You’re nothing more than an empty space in our home and hearts, slowing gathering dust.”
“And you have come to remember me?” Her eyes were dark. A glimpse of the Tatiana I had known shone through. “Here I am. Take a good look.”
“Here you are.”
Tatiana met my eyes, filled with enough fury they could’ve burned through the glass. Once upon a time, I had wanted to ask her so many things, but like her, the questions had faded from my mind. A few surfaced again as I took in the sterile white room and defeated animal it caged.
I slipped my hands into my coat pockets and continued to assess her.
“You look like a Russian when you stand like that,” Tatiana said. “You’re no longer the feral animal that bites whatever hand gets too close, no? Now, you’re something worse. The wolf with yellow eyes in the shadows, the snake lulling its prey by pretending to be asleep. Look what Konstantin made of you, look at the monster he created.”
My eyebrows rose at her assessment. “Do you have enough oxygen down here, Tatiana? Konstantin made me a mother and wife, but he didn’t make me powerful or brilliant. I made me, I moulded me. The creature that stands before you grew from a seed fertilised on pain and watered by blood. And now that very same creature is on the other side of the bars.” In the reflection of the glass, my smile looked positively cruel.
We stared at each other in silence for a few moments.
“Yes,” she finally conceded. “I think you’re right. Only girlhood can birth such a beast.”
I glanced at the agents behind me before looking back to her. “Would you like to know how your son is doing?”
Tatiana glanced at the blank white walls. She seemed to be having an argument with it. “No. No. I don’t want to know anything.”
She asked, “Why did you come here, Elena?”
“I’ve come for answers about your daughter.”
She didn’t even flinch. “My daughter’s dead.”
“You and I both know that’s not true,” I replied. “Where is she?”
When she met my eyes for the second time, the gray of them had hardened into steel. I was almost relieved to see it; it meant that the mundaneness of this place hadn’t absorbed her soul into its white void.
“I’ll never tell you. On my life, Elena, I’ll never speak a word about her. You can tear my fingernails out one by one, peel my skin off inch by inch, but I’ll never reveal anything.”
I understood. If I was in her position, nothing could make me fail my children.
But I wasn’t in her position and for good reason.
“That girl is a part of my family,” I said. “I want her back, I want to keep her safe and raise her. Nowhere else in the world is better for her than with her brother and father. You know this.”
“My mother used to think the same thing about my father–and he ended up killing her for some tight young pussy.” Tatiana sent me a look. “Hell is a better place for my daughter than being with her father and brother.”
“That might very well be where she is.”
Tatiana glanced at the wall again. “She’s safe.”
“I’m never going to stop looking for her,” I warned.
“You will. After a time, you’ll forget. Once a year, around a certain date, you might mourn her absence but in time, she will be but a faceless ghost in your dreams.” Tatiana laid a hand to her heart. “Like she is to me.”
I traced her outline in the mirror. So small, so weak. I had once cowered beneath this woman, risked my life and broken my heart to keep myself safe from her. I recalled when we had first met, that sickly swollen woman who had been so warm and loved. Little had I known, revenge had already eaten away at her heart and infected her blood.
If I had known, perhaps I would’ve put something else in the tonic I administered her.
“I’ll send you some books, Tatiana,” I repeated.
“I would like that.”
We observed each other for a little longer. I stopped outlining her, holding my hand to the cool glass.
“What do your hands say?” She asked.
Only a few words were written over my palm. “It’s my shopping list. Glue–Niko has a school project–eggs, yeast and flour–Dmitri’s making blueberry bread.”
She didn’t reveal anything on her face at the mention of his name. “How domesticated you’ve become.” Sadness darkened her eyes into the color of rain clouds. “I mourn what you could’ve been, Elena. I will always grieve the future you could’ve had if men didn’t exist.”
Domesticated? I would’ve laughed had the sadness of her words not resonated with me. “I mourn what you could’ve been as well, Tatiana. Truly.”
Tatiana’s jaw twitched. “I want you to go now.”
I nodded. “I’ll leave you to rot in peace.”
I signalled to Agent Kavinsky.
He stepped forward. “Right this way, Dr Tarkhanov.”
Tatiana jumped to her feet. Animation returned to her as she said, “Doctor?”
It was the first time she had ever looked like at me like I was something to fear–the same way we all used to look at her. I almost saw a sliver of respect in her expression.
“You didn’t really think I had been domesticated, did you, Tatiana?” I asked. “Come on now. Do I look like I have a penis?”
I didn’t wait for her reply. I couldn’t be bothered to listen to it.
When I returned home, I stacked a pile of books and wrapped them up in brown paper. Konstantin caught me as I tied string around it. He didn’t ask; he already knew.
A few weeks after I sent the books, I got a request for more. Only Kon knew about the packages I handed to Kavinsky through rolled down car windows.
It was smart making sure there was a connection with Tatiana still.
After all, Kon and I might be done with her, but the rest of my family wasn’t so lucky. Tatiana would enter our lives again, tomorrow or in a few decades. Who knew when, who knew why, but she would. She was the weed in our lives we couldn’t quite find the root of, forever ruining our garden and choking the other flowers.
I forgot my father’s face and ex-husband’s name, but I remembered her.
The night after I saw her for the first time in years, I was scared I would dream about her. I didn’t. Instead, I dreamt of my husband and sons, all of us together in our garden. When the flowers bloomed and pollen dust rose into the air like stars, we linked hands and fell back, our laughter ringing in my ears like music.
When I awoke, only one word remained with me. Love, love, love.
Epilogue
Konstantin Tarkhanov
I grabbed Nikolai’s arm when he started forward.
“Gently,” I warned. “Or else you will frighten her.”
My seven-year-old paused momentarily, his eyes dancing over Duchess. He could barely contain his excitement, but he did heed my warning and slowly approached the mare. For a child so wild and careless with his life, Nikolai did have a natural knack for settling animals and connecting with them.
Nikolai stretched his palm out to Duchess, who sniffed it for
carrots. Her ears turned back when she realized her favourite Tarkhanov hadn’t brought her any food. But all three of us knew, as soon as I turned my back, Nikolai would sneak her some apples or molasses.
“Can I get on now, Dad?” He asked eagerly.
“Have you checked your girth?”
Nikolai scrunched up his face in thought.
Technically, he didn’t need to check his equipment. I had already checked it multiple times for even the slightest indication of danger. There was no way I was letting my son up onto a horse without making sure it was as safe it could be.
His mother would kill me.
Nikolai double-checked his saddle, making a bit of a show about it. Once he had made sure I had watched him tighten the girth, Nikolai turned back to me expectantly.
“Now can I ride?”
I slipped my hands into my pockets. “What do you think?”
The anger that crossed his face made him look so much like his mother I almost laughed. “I think yes.” He replied. “I’ve checked everything.”
“Up you go, then.”
When he was little, I used to lift him up onto the saddle, but now he was insistent on getting up onto a stool and mounting Duchess himself. With a push, Nikolai swung himself into the saddle, adjusting himself into the correct position and securing the reins expertly.
Duchess huffed.
I went to lead the mare to the arena but Nikolai said quickly, “No lead, Dad.”
“Very well.”
Nikolai urged Duchess into a walk, directing her towards the arena. I followed closely but careful not to coddle Nikolai. He was getting older now, as painful as that was, and meant he no longer needed a protector but instead a teacher.
The air was crisp, the chill in the air turning harsher and crueller as we left November and went into December. Snow was in the forecast, but it would be a month or two until snowflakes fell from the sky. Until then, Nikolai was trying to get as much time outside as he could–especially with Duchess.
I held the gate open for Nikolai as he led Duchess into the arena, but instead of entering behind me, I closed the gate and leaned up against it.