Pain blooms in my side as her boot connects with my stomach, knocking the air from my lungs. I hit the floor hard, gasping, reaching for her like I can physically pull her back to me.
Her gaze flickers over me once—cold, distant.
Then she’s gone.
And she takes a piece of my heart with her.
What I do know is this:
I’m not giving up on her.
I let my sister down once already and I’ll be damned if I do it again.
fifty-two
1 MONTH LATER
I stand over the freshly dug gravesite, my hand clenching Ava’s tightly, but she hasn’t once complained. Tears streak down her porcelain face for a woman she has never met. My Little Red might have turned into a little psychopath but hasn’t lost her ability to empathize.
My father stands to my right, his face hard and impassive, unwilling to break down in front of his men as he watches them lower his long-lost wife into the crypt. It isn’t until this moment that I realize how truly lucky I am. Compared to him and Ivan, I’d gotten so much more time with her. Time none of them will ever get.
Ivan stands on the other side of my father. If the event wasn’t somber, I might have laughed earlier when he tried to approach Ava. The only reason she didn’t deck him was out of respect for my father.
It is nearly summer in Russia, but the wind is still biting cold. The graveyard is nearly filled to the brim with the men and women who have come to support theirPakhans. Even Tomas, who once swore to me he would never step foot in his home country again, is here, standing just behind me with Vas and my brothers in arms.
What I wouldn’t do to turn back time to save her, but then I wouldn’t have all of this. I wouldn’t have Ava, the goddess beside me, and that is unacceptable. Seamus and Kiernan have joined us as an extension of our alliance with the Kavanaughs, but Liam stayed behind to keep an eye on Katherine, who, despite the progress she has been making, isn’t clear to fly long distances.
“You know,” my father muses once the pomp and circumstance is finished. “Your mother used to sing to you in the womb.”
Ivan groans, but I just smile.
“Bayu Bayushki.” My father beams at me. “She sang it to me every night.”
“I tried to keep that tradition going when she—” He swallows hard. “But Ivan and Antony told me I sounded like a tone-deaf opera singer that has a cat’s yowl for a voice.”
Ava snorts.
“And that was being generous,” Ivan mutters. My father winks at Ava and me.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“The entire lullaby was bad,” Ivan argues.
Andrei shrugs. “She liked it, and that’s all that mattered.”
“Gave Antony nightmares.”
The three of us stand over her grave, swapping stories about the woman none of us ever truly got to know. Even after eleven years with her, my mother is still as much a mystery to me as she was to the man she married and the other child she birthed.Because the woman I grew up with was changed by the cruel world that took her.
Ava stands by my side quietly, her eyes drifting closed as she leans into me. My Little Red has been fighting jetlag for half the day. I pick her up in my arms, and she gives a small groan of protest before I narrow my eyes at her in warning. That shuts her up fast, and instead, she leans her head against my shoulder as I walk through the cemetery toward the line of SUVs waiting for us. By the time I reach the car, she is fast asleep in my arms.
Vas opens the back door, and I gently slide inside, careful not to wake her. Once Vas is behind the wheel, I nod at him that we are good to go. He pulls out from the curb, following the route to take us to the hotel.
My phone dings in my pocket, and I dig it out.
Unknown
Tell her to stop looking.