As soon as it was free, she started to fall.
She didn’t have a good enough position on the stairs to stopherself. The shove I gave to her middle didn’t help, either. One second she was staring at me, her face a crimson mess of exposed bone and twisted cartilage, and the next, she was gone.
She fell hard, building speed as she went. The stairs were dangerous, relics of a time before health and safety regulations. She landed halfway down with a hard crack, her neck’s broken angle clear to see, even from where I stood.
There wasn’t even a flicker of regret in me for taking a second life. I couldn’t muster even a moment of it. All I felt was relief. I’d spent so long living among monsters, I’d become one too. I couldn’t find even one part of myself that cared.
Now it was time to get my sister and get the fuck out of here.
The house wasquiet as I walked down the plush-appointed corridors. Art decorated the walls, and console tables were bedecked with lavish flower displays. The scent of flowers hung in the air, more like a pall than a pleasant fragrance. It smelled like a funeral home.
Tatiana’s room was on the opposite side of the estate from mine. The only close call came when I had to sneak to the lower level, cross the bottom floor, and go up the stairs. Two guys with buzz cuts and black suits stood around talking, but neither of them glanced my way. I supposed Sergei didn’t consider his daughters much of a flight risk.
I made it to Tatiana’s door without any trouble and unlocked it with the key from Vera’s key ring.
When I pushed open the door, silence greeted me.
“Tatiana? It’s me, Kat,” I said to her.
Silence, and then a rustling sound.
“Kat?” her familiar voice called.
Then she popped up behind the bed.
“Kat!” She jumped up and ran over to me. “I’m so glad it’s you!”
“Who else would it be?” I grabbed her and hugged her tightly.
“I thought she came back. Sister Vera,” Tatiana said, her voice muffled against my chest.
She leaned away to look up at me, and I gasped. She had a split lip, and her eyes were red. She had been crying.
“Did she hit you?”
Tatiana nodded, and more tears fell. I hugged her again and smoothed her hair back.
“It’s okay. Don’t cry and don’t worry. She’ll never hit you again. I promise.”
“I don’t want to stay here anymore,” she said.
“Neither do I,” I murmured. Leaning down, I looked her in the eye. “Shall we go?”
Tatiana nodded. “But where will we go?”
Home. The image of Massimo’s Gothic but oddly warm townhouse filled my head.
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but anywhere is better than here, right?”
She nodded again, and I took her hand, leading her over to the wardrobe in the corner.
“Put warm clothes on. You’ll need them outside.”
I spied out the window while she got dressed. I could see the sweeping gardens of the property with a guard post manned by security at the very bottom of the driveway. We couldn’t get out that way. We needed to go out the back.
“Come on, let’s go,” I whispered to Tatiana, and took her hand.
We started down the stairs. It was just as quiet as before; however, when we got close to the lower floor, one of the patrolling security guards had decided to do his job and paced back and forth.