Mine (Ties that Bind Book 1)

by A. Zavarelli

  Josh lays his head on my shoulder, and I carry him upstairs. I pause when I get to the door of his temporary bedroom. I eye the key in the lock on the outside of the door. Each of the bedrooms and the bathroom in the hallway have that. It’s strange.

  But I don’t care about that now. Right now, I’m remembering what Lev said. That Josh sleeping with us was for one night. But I bypass his room and lay him down in our bed.

  Our bed.

  I shake my head and tuck Josh in.

  “Want a story?” I ask, lying down beside him.

  He nods, puts one thumb into his mouth—something he only does when he’s very tired—and wraps his other hand around a lock of my hair. He closes his eyes as I start to recite from memory Good Night, Gorilla and can’t help the tear that slides down over the bridge of my nose as I watch him sleep.

  They wouldn’t hurt him, would they? Would they hurt a little boy?

  I was three when I lost my mom. Will history repeat for Josh? Is alive better than dead if it means foster care and caregivers like the George family?

  No. Alive is always better than dead.

  I slip my hair out of his hand and climb out of the bed, wiping the stray tears. From our duffel which I’d laid on a chair when we arrived, I find my scarf. I dig it out and inhale the smoke smell that still clings to it.

  I go to the bathroom and lock the door. Filling the sink with warm water, I set about cleaning the scarf, draining the dirty water several times until it finally runs clear.

  I think about Nina as I wash her blood away. And I think about Joshua, about when he gave me the scarf, as I squeeze the excess water out of it. He’d stolen it. We were at the mall with the Georges, and I’d been looking at it. Mrs. George thought the pink ugly and childish and told me to leave it. I think I may have liked it even more because she hated it.

  Later that night, when we were supposed to be asleep, Joshua snuck into my room and gave it to me. I still remember how surprised I’d been. How happy. I don’t think I’d ever hugged anyone as hard as I hugged him that night. Over a simple scarf. It just felt like so much more at that moment. It felt good to know that someone cared about me.

  When I open the bathroom door, I stop dead, my heart in my throat to find someone lurking at the bedroom entrance. I almost scream but recognize it’s Lev when he moves into the little bit of light coming in from the streetlamp.

  Lev puts his finger to his lips and gestures for me to follow him into the hallway.

  I go, and he pulls the bedroom door closed behind us.

  “I told you one night,” he says. “He should sleep in his room.”

  His hair’s wet, and he smells soapy. “That’s not his room. This isn’t his house. Did you just shower?”

  He takes my arm, walks me into the second bedroom, and closes the door. The only light here is that from the moon coming through the split between the curtain panels.

  “Where did you shower?” I ask.

  “At the club.”

  “You went to Delirium? Why?”

  “Because I have to play nice with Vasily until I get things sorted.”

  “Is that smart? Or safe?”

  He studies me, considering, and it’s that moment he takes before he answers me that makes me anxious. “It’s fine. What are you doing with that?”

  I look down. “Oh. I was washing it.” I look around, then go to the radiator and stretch the scarf out over it to let it dry.

  When I turn back to him, he’s still watching me, and there’s something both intense and distracted in his eyes. It’s unnerving.

  “What is it? Did something happen?”

  He runs his hand through his still wet hair and comes to me. He takes my hand and walks backward to the bed. There, he cups the back of my head and kisses me. It’s a gentle kiss, not hurried, not even erotic or at least not frantic with need.

  I kiss him back, liking this, liking the warmth of him, the taste of him, the safety of him. I press myself against him and let him hold me. I like his arms around me. I think he can keep us safe. Maybe it’s stupid—one man against the Russian mob—but I think he means what he said. That he’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt Josh or me.

  Or die trying.

  A chill seeps into my veins, and I shudder.

  “Shh.”

  I guess I’m crying again because he’s holding me to him, not kissing me anymore, but his hands are moving, and he’s stripping off my clothes. He’s slow, patient, and methodical, and soon, I’m standing naked. He takes my hands and steps backward.

  He’s still fully clothed, and when I try to move to strip him, he shakes his head.

  “I want to look at you now,” he says.

  Instinctively, I want to pull away, to hide myself, but he won’t let me go. Instead, keeping hold of one hand, he reaches to switch on the lamp beside the bed.

  “Lev—”

  “Quiet.” He has both of my hands again, and this time, he holds me at arm’s length and sits on the edge of the low bed.

  I feel exposed. This is different than the other times I’ve been naked with him. This is him looking at me, and it’s somehow more intimate than when he’s inside me.

  “Look at me.”

  I don’t. I can’t.

  “Look at me, Katya.”

  Katya. I like when he calls me that. He’s tender when he calls me that.

  I look at him, feeling my face flush. He must see it too because he smiles a little and there’s that dimple. I like when he smiles.

  But then he shifts his hand up to my forearm and, with eyes still on mine, he feels the bumpy, burned skin with his thumb.

  “Tell me about this.”

  Fuck.

  I swallow, trying to contain the emotion that I force down every time I remember what happened. Remember anything that went on in that house. I keep those memories secured in boxes. It’s where I like them. Where I can keep an eye on them but keep them safely locked away.

  “Tell me, Katya.”

  A tear slides down my cheek. He doesn’t move to wipe it away and won’t let go of me so I can do it either.

  “It was to punish Joshua, I think. And me, I guess, but more him.”

  More tears and Lev doesn’t move. His expression doesn’t change.

  “I think Mr. George hated him the most. He always made him watch.”

  Lev’s thumb stops moving, and his hands tighten on me.

  “I don’t think he cared one way or another about me. I could have been anyone.” I pause, remembering. “Mrs. George did this. Joshua only heard it happening. Mr. George was bigger than him. He’d tie Josh up, restrain him somehow, and force him to watch. He wasn’t home when she did this, and she wasn’t strong enough to make Joshua do anything. I think he would have killed her if she hadn’t locked him in his room first.” The words come like a flood now. I don’t even know why or from where. I didn’t realize I remembered all the details like the clicking until the flame took, the sound of paper burning. Fingertips singed. The smell.

  God. The smell.

  “She found the hole we’d made in the wall in Josh’s room where we kept a diary of sorts. Everything they did to us scratched on any piece of paper we could get our hands on. We were going to expose them one day. She took them all, though, and locked him in his room, and we went downstairs to the kitchen. She turned on the burner.”

  Lev’s eyes narrow, harden.

  “She made me burn them one by one. I remember the tips of my fingers burning and the smell of it. It’s weird what you remember, isn’t it?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You know what she used to do? They were religious, the Georges. We went to church every Sunday. She had this cross around her neck. It was a hideous thing, old and big. And when she’d watch him hurt us, she’d clutch it in both her hands, and she’d pray.” I feel the rage in my voice when I tell this part. “She’d fucking pray as she watched her husband—”

  I stop myself, give a shake of my head.
>
  Lev is watching me. I see rage in his eyes too. Not pity. Thank goodness it’s not pity. His grip on me is harder. I wonder if he’s aware.

  “When all the papers were gone, she turned off the fire, and I thought it was over, but it wasn’t. She wanted to hurt Joshua. To punish him. And I think hearing my scream did it.”

  I don’t think anything else they did to me hurt as bad as that. Physically at least. Fire is a different kind of pain than anything else.

  Lev stands, and his grip is so tight now it hurts my wrists. I think he realizes it at the same moment I do because he lets go and cups my face, turning it up to his. With his thumbs, he wipes away my tears, and I think that’s it when he kisses me.

  I think he’ll just hold me then. Make love to me. It’s what I want.

  But he’s not finished yet because he pushes my hair back and thumbs the scar on my temple.

  “This?”

  “I didn’t want to strip for a bath with her perv husband watching so he bashed my face into the edge of the tub. It knocked me out so I count that as a win. I didn’t have to know what he did to me then.”

  That was the first time he touched me. It wasn’t the only time there was blood, though. There was always blood with him. I think it got him off.

  “I wonder if Mrs. George watched that time. If she prayed. Joshua wouldn’t tell me anything. He couldn’t look at me for a long time after that.” I don’t want to think about it, about what he was made to do.

  “Katya.”

  I snap out of my memory. Lev’s jaw is tight, eyes hard. He has murder inside them.

  “He touched you? Forced you? The man who was supposed to care for you.”

  I don’t answer. I don’t have to. A single tear smears down my cheek. I lower my lashes when he won’t let me look away.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Yes, I do.

  “Katya.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t understand.” I make myself look at him.

  “What don’t I understand? He touched you. He touched you when you were a child in his care.”

  “I used to come when he did it.” I wait for his reaction. For his repulsion. I’ve never said this out loud. Ever. His expression, though, doesn’t change. “It’s sick, huh?” I bite my lip to keep it from trembling, but I’m shaking all over now.

  “That’s physical. Just your body’s natural reaction.”

  “Natural?” I almost laugh but it sounds crazed. “There’s nothing natural about that.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Katya. You know that.”

  I look down now.

  “Is she dead? The woman?”

  I shake my head.

  “But you killed him.”

  My gaze snaps up to his. No one knows that.

  “You stabbed him in the gut.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Is that why you were sent to juvenile detention?”

  I just keep staring.

  “But they blamed Joshua. It doesn’t make sense, though. That Joshua died the way he did because how did George do that in self-defense if he had a knife in his gut? And just the size difference between them.” He pauses, and I think about Nina again. That expression she’d use of doing the math. Lev’s doing the math. “What was Joshua, barely a hundred and twenty pounds was what the coroner’s report said. That dick was a big guy. Did they know what he’d done to you? That the husband and wife were abusing you?”

  “I don’t know if they knew all along, but if they did, they covered it up because a case like this getting out would be bad for them. Kids left in a foster home where they were abused and the caseworker was oblivious, or worse? It doesn’t look good. Joshua was dead, so he was the one they accused of doing the actual stabbing even though they knew it was me. I was sentenced as an accomplice, but they pinned the majority of the blame on Joshua. I wasn’t fully responsible because Joshua had manipulated me, they’d said. I served my time in that detention center. My records were sealed because I was a minor, but I think also, again, to cover their asses. Those people don’t care about the children they’re supposed to be protecting.”

  “I’m going to make it slow when I kill her,” he says. He traces the burned skin on the inside of my arm. “Maybe show her what this feels like.”

  Should I be upset by this? Tell him no? Not to do it?

  I’m not, and I don’t.

  Instead, I kiss him. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his lips with mine, and I realize something at that moment. And maybe it should scare me, this thing. No, it should definitely scare me.

  Lev and I are bound to one another. I feel like we were from that first meeting. But it’s more than that.

  I think I love him.

  “Stop crying, sweetheart,” he tells me, hugging me to him, then sliding his hand between us to that other scar, the good one. “Tell me about this. Tell me about the day my son was born.”

  24

  Kat

  I wake up to little hands pushing the hair from my face.

  “Hi, Mommy,” Josh’s smile is wide when I open my eyes, and he launches himself against me. I hug him tight, squeezing his little body. He smells like sleep and laundry detergent, and I can’t get enough.

  This feeling, I think, this is joy. And I want to hold on to it for as long as I can because I know when I let him go, the fear will creep in again.

  “Pasha made pancakes!”

  “He did?” I ask. Sitting up, I scratch my head as I look at the clock beside the bed. It’s a little after seven in the morning, and I’m not sure when I came in here. Lev and I fell asleep on the smaller bed in what’s meant to be Josh’s room after making love for an eternity.

  I warm at the memory. Last night, he’d made love to me. He’d kissed every inch of me, scars and all, and he’d loved me.

  “With blueberries and even marshmallows inside them,” Josh continues, and I guess I had drifted off in the memory of last night because I must have missed part of his sentence.

  “Pancakes with marshmallows in them?” I raise my eyebrows, and Josh’s huge smile makes his eyes sparkle.

  He nods. “I taught him,” he says, and he knows he’s about to get away with it when I squeeze his cheeks, then pull him to me to hug him again.

  When I touch his bare feet, I feel how cold they are. “Did you go downstairs all by yourself?”

  He nods very proudly. “Don’t worry, I held on,” he says, trying to roll his eyes but just managing to tilt his head way back in the attempt. We don’t have stairs at our house in Colorado, and I guess they still make me nervous with him.

  “Isn’t Lev here?” I ask, knowing he’s not because if he were, he’d have put socks on Josh’s feet.

  “Pasha said he had to go to work. I’m going to get a toy from my room,” he says and disappears.

  I get up, grab a hoodie and a pair of jeans out of our meager duffel, and quickly get dressed. I brush my teeth and comb my hair with my fingers—my brush is one of the things I forgot to pack in my haste. I don’t bother with makeup before making my way downstairs with Josh.

  “Good morning,” I say to Pasha, looking around.

  “Good morning, Katerina,” he says. He’s a nice guy, but having him here doesn’t make me feel as safe as when Lev is here.

  “Where’s Lev?”

  “He got a call earlier. Said he’ll be back as soon as he can.”

  “Was it Vasily who called?”

  Pasha glances at Josh and gives me a short nod before returning his attention to the pancakes.

  I get myself a cup of coffee and find my phone, which is on the coffee table. It’s still strange not to have anyone’s numbers from school or from our lives in Colorado. It’s like none of that happened. Like those years didn’t exist.

  When I touch the screen, I see I only have 1% battery left, but before I go searching for a charger, I see the message on the screen.

  Lev: I’ll be back as soon as I can.

/>   That’s all. Nothing else.

  I consider texting him to ask where he is, but if he’s with Vasily, it’s probably best not to do that.

  “Do you know where I can charge this?” I ask Pasha.

  Pasha points at a drawer where I find odds and ends, including several different types of chargers. I wonder who else has used this house as a safe house. Who has been here before me, and how has it ended for them?

  Finding the charger that fits my phone, I plug it into the wall and turn to watch Josh eat a marshmallow pancake.

  “You know, marshmallow pancakes aren’t really a thing, right?” I say to Pasha with a smile.

  He winks. “What do you mean? They’re delicious.” He plates a pancake and hands it to me.

  “Thanks,” I say, noticing this one is blueberry. “Did you eat?” I ask him.

  He just nods, and I see how his glance gets serious when it shifts to the window before returning to the pan on the stove. As relaxed as he looks standing there, he’s a soldier. He’s most likely armed beneath the hoodie he’s wearing, and I have no doubt he’s deadly.

  Just then, I remember what Lev said last night about Mrs. George. I know if we survive this, he will find her, and he will kill her.

  If we survive this.

  Shit.

  It takes effort to eat my pancake at that thought, but when we finish, I tell Pasha I’ll wash the dishes while he goes out back to smoke and make a phone call.

  When that’s done, I call out to Josh. “Let’s get you bathed and dressed, kiddo,” I tell him as a phone rings. The ringtone is foreign. I haven’t changed any of the factory settings like I had on my old one, so it takes me a moment to realize it’s my phone.

  I go to it, see that there’s no caller ID, but I decide to answer anyway. It could be Lev. I’m not sure which numbers exactly he programmed into my contact list.

  But when I answer, the caller hangs up.

  Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think anything of it, but with everything that’s going on, it worries me.

  I put the phone down as Josh comes into the kitchen. “When will we see Emma?”