by Bethany-Kris
A soft sigh of desperation escaped her lips, and she fell back into bed—just as there was a knock on the door, and she had been considering hiding back under the blankets.
“Go away,” she called out.
Either not hearing Karine, or just not caring, the lock on her door clicked loudly swinging open to expose Mrs. Hughes, one of the women who worked closely with her. She leaned just far enough in the doorway to show a brilliant smile.
“Oh, good, you’re awake, Karine. Your father is here to see you, and I just wanted to check if you’re okay with that.”
What?
She stared blankly at the woman, sure she’d heard her wrong. Her father?
“Sylvia is at a bad location today, cell service is spotty—we also can’t reach your husband to clear the visitor, but your file filled out by him did check off immediate family as approved visitors. And it is noted in your file that having guests really does improve your mood and days. We’re willing to accommodate the visitor for a short time, if you’re interested.”
It was almost as if she was saying no harm, no foul. We won’t tell if you won’t. Karine was beginning to think there was more than one thing about the Twin Rivers facility that wasn’t exactly above board.
Karine just blinked.
She was sure that box had been checked by her husband either by mistake, or simply because there wasn’t another option. Maybe he’d been distracted.
Alarm bells rang in her mind.
Silently, but loud all the same.
“Karine?”
“My father—you’re sure?”
“Maxim Yazov. You did mention him the other day when we went on our walk, remember?”
But briefly, in passing.
She knew better than to spill the truth about her father and every sordid detail of her history.
How did Maxim find her hiding place? If he was even alive like Roman claimed. It was just a theory, and he didn’t have actual proof that Maxim was alive.
What if it was Dima claiming to be her father? Or one of his men. Was he that cunning?
Mrs. Hughes must have finally noticed the hesitance in Karine because she stepped into the room, and closed the door slightly behind her. Leaving only a crack open. “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. I can ask security to escort him out. We certainly weren’t expecting any guests for you, and you’re not required to have any. I simply thought you’d like the choice either way.”
Karine could feel her lungs collapsing painfully in her chest. The possibilities of danger were endless, and suspected the staff in the facility had never truly known the full scope of her situation. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be happening in the first place.
However, this could be her only chance. To put an end to everything.
If it was Dima and he’d found her, she wasn’t going to be safe here anyway. It was already too late. Or perhaps her father had come to collect on his dues.
Maybe this was her opportunity to put everyone out of their misery.
“Yes, you’re right. I would like to see him ... but not out there with everyone else. Could I have privacy in my room, and see him here? Thank you.”
*
Karine quickly changed out of her pajamas, splashed some cold water on her face, brushed her teeth, and tied her hair up in a tight ponytail after Mrs. Hughes had left her room. She didn’t want to appear weak, even if she felt like exactly that.
She stood at the end of the bed with her hands clasped at her front. Outside the door, she could hear Mrs. Hughes’ voice and footsteps, muffled but getting closer with every passing second.
The harsh knock on the door made Karine stand a little straighter—and then it opened.
She heard the exaggerated sound of air rushing into her lungs and then blowing out through her nose. Mrs. Hughes was smiling up at the taller, older man with broad shoulders. His three-piece suit was cut perfectly to his large form.
Karine wasn’t listening to anything being said. The only thing she could do was stare at the face of her father.
It was him.
Maxim Yazov stepped into the room, peering around as if nothing he saw bothered him, and he was perfectly comfortable in the unknown surroundings. Finally, his gaze rested on her. Karine searched for words to say, her spine ramrod straight, and heart beating against her ribcage wildly. How was a daughter supposed to react to a father who had given her away? A father who had disappointed her—neglected her in every possible way?
Maxim looked at Mrs. Hughes with a charming smile, one Karine recognized from her father. It drew people in, meant for them to think they were safe in the gaze of a predator.
“Thank you for your help,” he told the woman. “Really appreciate the accommodation today, yes? I’m sure her husband will also be ... thrilled you made an effort.”
Karine swallowed hard, her stare darting to Mrs. Hughes who seemed entirely entranced by the handsome, older man beside her.
“Of course,” she replied. “I’ll let you two get at it. I’m sure you have a lot to catch up on. Just to note, should you require help, you’ll have to knock on the window of the door, as staff remains in the halls, or press the red button in any room. We turn off the cameras in private rooms for the sake of confidentiality during day-time visits.”
Mrs. Hughes beamed at them both, then left the room, shutting the door behind her.
It had been a very long time since Maxim and Karine were alone in a room together. They never had any need to be. Maxim didn’t think he ever had anything private to say to her, and as a younger girl and in her early teens, she’d become accustomed to his roar whenever she did disrupt his peace. It always sent her running scared, intimidated by the one man who should have kept her the safest.
“Karine ...” He said her name softer than she had ever heard his voice dip before. It was almost disconcerting.
She tried stepping away, but the back of her legs hit against the end of the bed, and she sat down with a thump, losing balance. And yet, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Already, she’d lost the will to keep her strong stance in the face of what awaited her.
Here he was.
And she didn’t know what to do.
“You’re really alive,” she murmured.
“Unfortunate news for some,” he admitted, shrugging.
“You shouldn’t be here ... how did you find—”
“This was a delicate thing, yes? Tricky,” Maximin interjected with a quick laugh. “The details aren’t very important, of course, and while I knew this meeting with you would be inevitable, I didn’t think it would have to happen so soon.”
Confused, Karine continued staring. Silent.
“It’s too bad I had to betray someone who didn’t deserve it to get here,” Maxim added under his breath, eyeing the security panel on the wall in her room that allowed her to speak to the front desk, if needed, or vice versa. “We have a lot to talk about, my daughter, and not a lot of time to do it. Forgive me for my lack of transparency.”
He hardly meant that.
She could tell.
Karine rubbed the back of her hand on her nose in an effort to hold in the tears bubbling inside her chest. “I didn’t think you ever had anything to say to me, Daddy.”
“I know I’ve done things to make you feel that way, yes.”
“I can remember you shouting at me when you were drunk, every time you’d see me peering around the corner, trying to get a glimpse of you because I hadn’t seen you in weeks. You’d yell so loud, Maxim. You couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“Karine—”
“Admit it. You cared about Katina more than you cared about me. You wished it was me that was killed and not her. You have spent half of my life blaming me for what happened to her.”
Her voice was so shrill and low that it actually hurt her throat to speak. However, she managed to get each word out. She still did—they needed to be said.
Maxim breathed in deeply and shook his head. �
��I did not wish your death, Karine. You’ve got that wrong. I just didn’t know how to be a father to a dead child—I was already a broken man when they took her from me, too, no? I didn’t know what had been done to you or how that was going to affect the rest of your life. I was too busy drowning in my own hell. It was an easier place to be.”
Karine snapped her face away from him. “Because you’re a coward—you still don’t know what he did to me that day.”
Or every day after, for that matter.
Dima’s assaults had never really stopped. They haunted her from childhood through her teenage life, and then straight into adulthood as well. She’d been a toy that he used and abused for years, her fractured brain shelving away and categorizing each incident as something for someone else in her mind to deal with.
Never, ever for her.
They’d always made sure he didn’t hurt her, after all. It was one of the only things she was grateful for where Katina and Katee were concerned. Her brokenness had purpose—it did save her. In a way.
“I do know, actually,” Maxim replied, inflection dipping in his tone. “Masha told me everything.”
Most of the time, Karine forgot how much Masha actually knew about what happened that fateful day when her sister was killed. Mostly because they never discussed it in real depth, and Masha had come along after it happened. Too many pills, a bit too much liquor, and she spilled the secrets in slurred words that she hadn’t even thought her caretaker truly heard one evening. She wanted to hide away from the world and never talk about it again. The shame that she kept close to her heart because she continued to be abused by a monster and never had the courage to say a thing about it.
Masha created the perfect safe-space for her where she could continue to live in a dulled state of mind, always at the ready to make any bad feelings disappear the only way she knew how where Karine was concerned.
Of course, she told her.
“I wish I knew about it sooner, Karine. I wish you had told me—”
“Why?”
“Because I would have done something about it. I never would have let Dima or Leonid continue with their position in our bratva. Hell, I could have buried them in the basement the same fucking night, what difference would it make?”
“You practically fed me to him.”
Dima, she meant.
Maybe her father didn’t realize it, but she was willing to give him a wake-up call.
“So many times you sent me away crying, just for being near you, and he’d be there waiting ... pinning me into corners, covering my mouth, so you couldn’t hear me just twenty feet away, but I could still hear you angry and raging. Once he hurt me so bad, just outside the door of your study, that I passed out. You had a maid clean up the blood. You never even asked where it came from, Daddy.”
“I didn’t know,” he said lowly.
“But you should have. You should have known.”
“I’m sorry—you’re right. I should have known, Karine.”
Was he?
Did it even matter?
Karine couldn’t make herself look at her father. It was too painful to acknowledge all the wasted time of her childhood, and the way he’d—unknowingly or not—facilitated her loss of innocence and constant torment.
What if she had told her father instead of Masha? Would her life have looked completely different then?
She doubted it.
Maybe he cared now, but he never did then—and that was the only time she’d actually needed him.
“So, you’re saying this is all my fault?” she asked. “That I did this to myself?”
Maxim drew closer to her, his two steps taking away most of the space between them. Startled by his movement, she glared at him, forcing him to moved back again.
“I apologize,” he muttered, “I just ... can’t stand to hear you say that. None of this is your fault. I can’t blame you for surviving, even if in the end that meant you—”
“Tried to kill you,” she finished for him in a whisper.
Maxi sighed. “Yes. The plot ... the one she made with Leonid.”
Karine heard how he said she—the way he twisted the word a bit, his displeasure coating the pronoun like he couldn’t manage to say her alter’s name. Or simply didn’t want to.
“Does she scare you?” Karine asked, honestly wanting to know.
He didn’t answer right away. Karine waited him out; they had the time.
“I think she’s scared, actually,” he eventually said. “Angry and scared.”
“You’re not entirely wrong.”
“But I never knew how to handle it—you, I mean. Like that.”
His discomfort with her disorder wasn’t new. That was the very reason he kept her locked away from the outside world. He was ashamed of what others might see as strange or shameful.
Instead of getting her the professional help she needed—Maxim did what he thought was his only option—keep her as sanitized as possible so he didn’t lose face.
Karine didn’t want to apologize to him for what Katina had plotted. She remembered what Roman said—Katina’s actions were not hers. She never made the decision to kill her father, fear did.
Maxim searched her eyes and dabbed the back of his hand on his forehead. “It doesn’t matter, no, because I deserved all of it, anyway. I deserved it. Every bit of it. I wasn’t the father to you that I should have been. I neglected you terribly. You suffered because of the restrictions I imposed. Because I failed to see you.”
Karine’s heart hurt because she had waited so long to hear those words coming from her father. Her therapy with Michelle and Sylvia had not included the possible repercussions of her father apologizing to her. This was never a part of the plan.
And yet, it was happening.
Maxim seemed to understand.
“It was only at the end, when I didn’t know what would happen to me—that I decided I had to do something. One last act of father who cared, even if it was misguided. I sent you away with to give you a chance. It was the only option I had, and I wasn’t sad when he took it from me.”
One fat tear rolled down Karine’s cheek. When she didn’t wipe it away, the droplet fell from her chin to her lap.
“And thank you for that,” she replied.
“Da,” he agreed in Russian. “I see that worked out for you—a marriage, yes?”
“How could I say no?”
Even her father laughed.
She didn’t remember hearing the sound before—it was as strange as it was interesting.
“I wished I could have told you myself—how much I wanted things to be different between us,” Maxim said, his sudden emotion stunning Karine as much as his laughter. “How much I wanted to save you from Dima and Leonid, and your fate that I had personally signed. It was just too late. I’d done what I had done.”
“So why didn’t you? Why did you stage your own death instead—why run?”
“Because Leonid had grown far more powerful than I realized. Over the years, I had been so caught up with grieving and feeding my own selfish desires that I neglected the bratva. Leonid had it all planned out—I couldn’t have won. He would have taken the seat right out from under me. I wasn’t going to be safe in Chicago unless I went along with his plot, but I didn’t even know about it until it was almost too late. Roman gave me time by telling me what he knew—not a lot, but enough, Karine. Enough time to make another choice.”
Karine’s heart beat faster when she heard his name. Her husband’s name. A smile erupted on her face and Maxim nodded.
“Do you love him?” he asked.
Karine didn’t even have to think about it. “He’s not perfect, but I love him for that, too.”
“Someone told me once that love doesn’t have to be perfect, only yours. I believe it to be true. And now his family is facing the aftermath of what I left behind.”
“Of Dima, you mean.”
“I owe them everything,” he said absent-mindly checking the ti
me on his watch. “I know I do, but I need your help, Karine.”
She stared at her father with her brows raised high. Never did she believe this day would come when her father stood there—asking for her help.
Karine didn’t know what Maxim’s plan was or what he wanted her to do, but the part of her that had been so angry all these years was slowly chipping away. Not because she thought he deserved it, or even because she loved him. But rather, because they were two souls with a purpose that she thought might be the same ...
She didn’t need Roman to tell her every detail to know that things were bad, and his family needed help. If the chance was handed to her to make it happen, why shouldn’t she take it?
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Dima is coming after what he wants. What he thinks belongs to him.”
“Me,” she replied, shuddering. “You can say it.”
“Can and should are not the same thing. It won’t make a difference to him that Roman married you. In his eyes, you were his property the moment I agreed to the wedding.”
Karine could feel her lungs tightening in her chest again. “I’m not exactly in a position to do much at the moment.”
“You can be. It’s a matter of more details.”
Right, but what kind?
“I won’t force you into anything, Karine.”
He hadn’t even spelled out the damn plan.
She wrung her fingers, clasping and unclasping them tightly in her lap. A thin film of sweat formed on her forehead that she wiped away with the back of her long sleeve.
Karine really only wanted one thing.
“Will I be free?” she asked.
Maxim nodded.
“In the end, you will be. Consider it my late wedding gift to you. I think you’ve earned it.”
FIFTEEN
Roman was in his loft, knocking back his third shot of vodka, and it was barely even noon. Disregarding all pretenses that he cared about what his father demanded he do, he was more concerned with taking care of himself.
The vodka was all he could allow—and God knew he needed something to numb the hell inside his mind. Roman wasn’t touching coke again, so liquor it was. Even Marky’s death wasn’t going to fuck him up. He had to stay clean.