by Shandi Boyes
“Install the respirator.” When they give me a look, one that reflects they don’t like their chances of that happening without bloodshed, I murmur, “Handcuff him to his bed if you must. If he wishes to prolong his stay here, we may as well make it as uncomfortable as possible.”
When Arman steps forward, preparing to say something, I cut him off with a glare. “If my wishes aren’t adhered to, I will return. You won’t like the outcome of my second visit.”
Confident he heard the threat in my tone, I pivot on my heels and exit the room. I’ve got names to pluck from drunken idiots unaware I’m priming them for a reason, and whores to fuck. I don’t have time for this shit. There’s just one stop I need to make first: my room. I need a new shirt.
Just before I exit my father’s makeshift hospital room, a person steps into my path, blocking my exit. My first thought is to retaliate, but I hold back the urge when my eyes land on a pair as equally icy as mine. They are the concerned eyes of my mother.
“I need to talk to you about Zariah. It’s time you learned the truth.”
Chapter Fifteen
Zariah
Two weeks later...
* * *
My heart skips a beat when, in the corner of my eye, I spot a large package sitting on my bed. It’s a plain box, nothing like you’d expect to find at a high-end fashion store, but it has a fancy ribbon wrapped around it. When the gold flecks in the ribbon catch the flame of the candle I’ve just lit, hues of gold flicker around my prison-like room. It adds so much sparkle to the usually bland space, if I weren’t so curious as to what is inside the box, I wouldn’t touch it.
The past two weeks already have my head jumbled with confusion. I can’t fit in any more. Asher has been... well, Asher. Just in a less confusing way. Nothing major has changed between us, but when you stack up all the little things, it seems like so much more. He hands me his plate every night instead of waiting for me to collect it; he gave me permission to shower in his bathroom so I don’t have to wake super early to beat other staff members to the only guest bathroom on this floor, and we’ve talked. Not full conversations, but it’s certainly more than we exchanged my first month here.
He still tells me to jump, and I still ask him how high, but the fear that kept me in order the past six weeks is gone. It is as if I’ve been granted special privileges for good behavior. Nothing will reduce my sentence, but following his rules has made it more tolerable.
Incapable of harnessing my curiosity for a second longer, I blow out the match-head, place it inside the almost empty box, then pace to my bed. Since my room is so small, it doesn’t take me many strides. I check the box for a gift tag. Of course there isn’t one. I don’t need one to know who it’s from, though. Except for the one time Asher and I argued in here, no one but me enters this room. It must be from him. I’m just a little unsure why he has gifted me something.
My pulse flutters in my neck when I carefully unknot the bow then flip off the lid. There is a heap of tissue paper folded over the treasure hiding beneath, but not enough to keep my eyes from growing misty. There are hundreds upon hundreds of photos inside the dowdy box. They range in size and shape. Some are Polaroids, others look recently printed. The ages of the people photographed also differ. They extend from newborn babies in diapers to fresh-faced teens.
Asher is in many of them, making me wonder if he is my gift donor. There’s nothing risqué about the pictures, but they’re very personal, so I doubt a man with a reputation as fierce as Asher’s would want them circulated. Not that I ever would, but we don’t have that level of trust—yet.
The longer I inspect the bundles of photos, the more I conclude that Asher must not be my gift giver. Perhaps it was his mother? The photos do show a timeline of her friendship with my mother. They’re a perfect reminder of the strong bond our families once had before we became mortal enemies.
The hate generated between our families the past decade is too inconceivable to explain. I myself have often wondered what caused such a mammoth rift between two once indestructible allies. I’ve yet to find a morsel of evidence or a person willing to answer my many questions.
The already frantic beat of my heart pumps out a new tune when I remove enough of the photos to unearth another treasure. There’s a film projector nestled in the bottom of the box beneath a dozen loaded film spools. Although I’m not overly crafty, I do know how to operate projectors like this. My mom had a make and model similar to this one. She loved the feel she got from film and never went digital. I’m the same. I still have a Polaroid camera.
Well, I did before Asher confiscated it from my luggage.
After rearranging my room for an impromptu feature film, I load the first cylinder onto the projector, snag the generous serving of sharlotka the head chef gifted me, then settle in for a night of reminiscing.
I moan as I swallow down the last of the crumbs on my plate while sinking deeper into my mattress. Eda was right: this sharlotka was even better than the one we devoured like piggies last week. It filled my tummy with as much hearty goodness as the gift Farah snuck into my room has filled my heart with mucky sentiment.
Over the last forty minutes, I’ve watched three clips my mom filmed with an ancient video recorder. It’s funny reflecting back as if I wasn’t part of the memories. The hundreds of photographs stored inside the box reveal I was very much a part of the picture back then, but my mind is a little blurry on the facts. I know Farah was a close acquaintance of my mother’s, and that their friendship was formed during their shipment from the US West Coast to Moscow, where they were to wed strangers, but the months around my mother’s death are hazy to say the least.
Like the video jutting across my paint-peeled wall this very instant. It shows a teenage Asher wrangling an overzealous Vaughn from his neck. He has the same killer glare and nasty sneer, but there’s a twinkle in his eyes that could never be denied no matter how hard he scowled. He may not like Vaughn hanging off him like a monkey, but he’s loving the attention.
Me... not so much.
I’m in the corner of the frame. I have my arms folded in front of my chest, and my lips are perched high on my face. If I wanted to play it off, I could pretend I’m hating that Asher was hogging my little brother’s affection, but that isn’t what shows on my twelve-year-old face. I look angry. I might even go as far as saying jealous. Seems absurd looking back at it now, but the longer I watch the tape, the more I’m convinced that is what it is.
No one is guaranteed a long life in this industry. You either grow up fast, or accept that once you’ve reached your teens, you’ve most likely lived half your life. Once upon a time, I would have said the odds didn’t matter to me. Now I’m just striving to make it to next week.
My thoughts launch from the negative void my reminiscing put them in when a deep voice rumbles through the padded-cell silence surrounding me. “There wasn’t a day that went by without her shoving her video camera in our face, was there?”
With my heart beeping in my neck, I leap to my feet and spin to face Asher. He’s standing in the doorframe of my room/prison cell. His favorite jeans and plain white t-shirt have been replaced with a pair of fancy slacks. He’s holding a recently laundered dress shirt in his hand, and his hair is wet as if he recently showered.
“Who gave you these?” He points his free hand to the old projector and bundles of photos stacked on my rickety drawers.
“Umm... ” I nearly lie until I realize it will do me no good. “I don’t know. A box was on my bed when I returned from the kitchen. Since it had no name on it, I opened it. I’ll turn it off. I didn’t realize you were coming back here before going out, or I would have waited to watch it.”
Rumors around the compound are that Asher has organized a glitzy one-off event at his nightclub tonight. Those with an invitation are buzzing with excitement; the guest list is one of the most impressive seen on this side of the continent in the past decade. Those without are wallowing in self-pity while downing
reverse-engineered apple cakes to make themselves feel better. Can you tell which group I belong in?
It isn’t that I expected an invite to his event; we’re just balancing on the line that separates friends from foes, but I would have happily catered for it if it meant I got to be a part of it. Everyone who is anyone in the Russian cartel is going to be there, meaning I would have had a great chance of bumping into someone I know, hopefully someone with the same blood as mine. Alas, my invitation seemed to have been misplaced.
With my shoulders hanging low, I head to the projector to switch it off. Since my room is so small, I’m already halfway there when Asher requests for me to leave it on. My already fast pulse quickens when he steps inside my room. I don’t know why it fills me with giddy gooeyness, but it does.
My inward grin fades when Asher asks, “When was this filmed?”
It’s still heard in my voice when I reply, “I don’t know.”
Asher gives me a look, one that announces his annoyance at my lack of knowledge. I’m not playing dumb; I just started watching this reel when he arrived, so I haven’t had time to evaluate the blurry date at the bottom of the screen.
“There’s a timestamp at the bottom.” I point to the date I thought was a smudge at the beginning of my mini movie marathon.
When Asher steps closer to the wall, the wide span of his shoulders hides my dislike of Vaughn hogging all his attention. “It was the Christmas before your mom died.”
Although shocked he remembered the year of her death by only seeing a date, I nod, acknowledging I heard him. Grief must impact you in ways you’d never suspect, as the months around her death are where things become hazy for me. I remember the date of her death, and how Asher held me at her funeral—more because of the video his mother played weeks ago than actual memories—but I don’t recall much after that.
I guess there isn’t much to remember. My incarceration didn’t start the day Asher shoved me into this room. It commenced many years earlier. I understand why my father locked me away. He was a feared man who terrified more people than he assured, but he loved my mother—so much so, he did everything in his power to ensure she was well protected.
It didn’t work.
My mother didn’t die of natural causes. She was murdered. By whom? We don’t know. All we know is that it had to be someone close to her, because my father never let anyone get near his beloved Ari. It wasn’t that he feared she’d leave him; he just knew his enemies would use his only weakness against him. His protectiveness of her shifted to me after she was killed. Some days, I wish it hadn’t. The life I was living before my father gave my hand in marriage to Asher wasn’t a life. I’ve lived more the past six weeks than I have the past six years.
I gasp in a sharp breath when the reason for Asher’s sour expression in the black and white footage pops into my head. It’s a little fuzzy, but a memory all the same. “Vaughn wanted the firetruck my mother gave you for Christmas. She hadn’t accepted that you no longer played with toys. Well, not kiddie ones anyway.”
For the first time in a long time, I see sparks of the boy I used to know when Asher throws his head back and laughs. “That’s right. Supposedly he had asked Ded Moroz for that exact one. When he didn’t get it, he accused me of swapping the tags. I didn’t even want it, but since he did, I pretended I couldn’t live without it.”
The butterflies in my stomach fly away when my laughter joins Asher’s. “You always did tease him like that.”
There’s a much bigger age gap between Asher and Vaughn than me, so they’ve never really been friends. They had more the big brother/ little brother vibe going on.
Hoping to keep our conversation light, I murmur, “Vaughn will never admit it, but I swear he’s still hoping to become a fireman one day.”
Asher’s laughter stops, replaced with a much deeper, much more pulse-quickening growl. “Are you sure that is what he meant, Zariah? Perhaps your innocence had you misconstruing what he said. Men often hope women see parts of their bodies as hoses. Rarely are they referencing a job title.”
Feeling daring, I stick out my tongue. His reply was cheeky, so I’m confident I won’t get reprimanded.
I do, in a way, just not as I anticipated. “Poke it out again, and I’ll put it to good use.”
A normal person could misinterpret the innuendo in his reply as a threat. I’m not close to normal. He is being as playful as the havoc his naked torso is causing my lower regions. Not even the poor lighting from the flickering projector can detract from his physique. My eager eyes are happily drinking in the rigid cuts of his abdomen and the smoothly stretched skin of his pecs. He has bumps and veins sprouting in all directions, and a tattoo he never had when he was a teen covers a majority of his left shoulder. He’s always had a compact body, but now it’s more of a fighter’s build than a fitness fanatic’s. His muscles aren’t for show. He certainly knows how to use them.
When he steps closer to me, preparing to retaliate, I back away. I’d give anything to be brave enough to test the ambiguity in his tone a little further, but my trip down memory lane left me feeling a little defeated. Being forced back into living has rejuvenated my lungs with oxygen, but it’s been an extremely eye-opening few weeks. Things have certainly changed from when we were kids, and no, I’m not solely referring to Asher’s panty-wetting build and seemingly dark temperament. My mom brought out the best in people—Asher and myself included. No amount of polish could duplicate the shine she added to our lives. It feels bleak without her, almost empty.
Asher and I spend the next twenty minutes in silence. I stand to the side of my room, nervously tugging on the low rise of the shirt I’m daringly wearing as a nightie, whereas Asher maintains his stance just inside my bedroom door. We don’t talk. We just watch the soundless movie from a time when I was too young to understand why Asher so desperately wanted to be anything but the man he was born to be, and he had just reached the age where he realized that would never be a possibility. He was only a teen but was already expected to do so much.
The flapping of the reel coming to an end overpowers the frantic beat of my heart. I’m about to light a candle before switching off the projector, but Asher stops me. “Do you have any more?”
“Yeah.” I nod way too eagerly. “There are a bunch of reels in here.” I flip off the box’s lid before waving my hand over the bright silver reels that appear much newer than their rusty counterpart. The projector is so ancient, I have to manually feed the tape from projector A to projector B. “Is there anything in particular you want to watch?”
New butterflies take flight in my stomach when Asher steps closer to me. His freshly showered scent was already tightening my insides from a distance. I don’t know if I can handle it up close and personal. “Are there any prior to the one we just saw?”
I nod. “They all precede that tape. From what I can gather, we stopped being filmed after my mother died, then we lost contact only a few short months after that.”
When Asher smiles, I peer at him in bewilderment. Why is he smiling? Saying we ‘lost contact’ was putting it nicely. Our families battled—viciously. We became mortal enemies within months. That’s nothing to laugh about.
I realize I have the situation all wrong when Asher murmurs, “Do you have my tenth birthday in there?”
As sassiness sizzles my veins, I spread my hands across my cocked hip. “The one where you ate so much cake you nearly vomited, or when Wyatt dared you to kiss Melanie Roderick in front of her father?” I’d give anything to sock him in the arm when he nods at my second question. Since I can’t, I use words instead. “No. I don’t have that tape.”
I’m lying. I know it, and so does Asher, but I don’t care. I’d rather be reprimanded for lying than recall how I cried myself to sleep that night because Asher’s lips touched Melanie’s. My seven-year-old self didn’t understand why I was angry, but I was certain I wanted to kill Melanie.
Mercifully, her father was just as mad. After a stern word
with Asher’s mother, he stormed out of our house that afternoon with a crying Melanie in his clutches. Only a few short days later, Melanie was shipped to boarding school. Serves her right. She was fourteen. She should not have been flirting with a ten-year-old boy.
Twirling, I dig my hand into the box. “We don’t have your tenth birthday, but we might have my fourteenth from when I kissed Feodor Balstra.” Once again, I’m lying, but if it elicits one tenth of the jealousy I’m experiencing, I’ll take it.
My plan goes to shit when Asher’s hot breaths hit my nape. “The night that led to Feodor spending three weeks in the hospital?”
My hair slaps his face when I crank my neck back to peer at him. “You heard about that?” I cringe when my girly squeal bounces off the stark walls of my room.
Asher doesn’t seem to mind. “Who didn’t?” My breathing shallows when he tracks the back of his index finger down my cheek before gliding it over my top lip. “It wasn’t just members of your family after Feo that night. He had half the men in Moscow plotting his death. Your first kiss is supposed to be special, Zariah, not handed to any random fool because he dared you to kiss him.”
Since I see sparks of the boy I once knew in his wintry blue gaze, I speak freely. “Can anyone say hypocrite? You kissed Melanie because Wyatt dared you to.”
As a wicked smile curves his lips, Asher shakes his head. “Ah, sweet, innocent, Zariah. Melanie was not my first kiss.”
His tone is so cocky, I’m waiting for peacock feathers to fan out behind him. When they don’t, I try to regain some of the control his confession made me lose. “And who said Feo was mine?”
“This.” He drags his finger down my cheek again. It doesn’t tighten my belly as it did earlier. “And this.” This time, he runs his finger across my tightly knitted brows. “You could never hide your jealousy when we were young. You can’t now, either.”