“You don’t want to know, Nik,” I answer him, feeling the painful fissure again in my chest. My cheeks heat as I stare down at my hands and pull away from him. I start to tell him that I love Carter and that I only ran because he doesn’t love me in a way that’s healthy. I only ran because I can’t bear to think of a child growing up in this world we inhabit. I wanted to run away from it all, but as the truck jostles over a bump, I know I only ran into another hell.
“You’re safe now,” Connor says calmly from his seat. It takes me a long second to remember who he is. To place his face and his voice. Turning around in my seat, I remember the other man from when we were younger. The memories pooling together and reminding me who I am.
“How about I tell you a secret?” Nik offers. He sets his hand on my thigh and rubs a soothing circle with the pad of his thumb. He’s so much taller than me, I have to crane my neck to look up at him after watching him swallow.
The air changes instantly, tensing and becoming thick. Too thick as Nik starts, “Do you remember the day we met? At my father’s funeral when we were just kids?”
My pulse feels weak as I answer him, knowing deep inside of me that Nikolai will never hurt me, but also feeling that whatever he’s about to tell me, whatever it is, is going to cause me pain. It’s the look in his eyes. I recognize it too well.
“You have to wait for me to finish,” Nik presages his confession, and I nod. “Tell me you will. Promise me, Ria,” he commands me, his voice hardening.
I glance at Connor, who cautiously looks back to us before I tell Nikolai, “I promise.” With a quick breath I add, “I’ll let you finish.”
Butterflies flutter in the pit of my stomach as Nikolai says, “I was working for Romano at the funeral. When my father died, I was working for Romano.”
The words hit me over and over. Working for Romano. A revolting wave of nausea spreads through me as Nikolai swallows and peers down at me, waiting for a response. I can’t breathe.
Romano. The man who took me and traded me for a war. The man who would have seen me dead that night I killed Stephan rather than to have his ally murdered.
My body stiffens and I can’t control it. I’ve never feared Nikolai, not until this moment.
“Romano told me your father had my father killed. That’s why I was so angry when you touched me. When you came over to me as if you had any right to.”
I can’t swallow and I struggle to breathe.
“I don’t know what my father–” I battle the need to explain, to defend, to do whatever I have to do to survive with the anger that slowly rises. Lies. My life has been built on so many lies and with so many men I can’t trust.
Nikolai cuts me off. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters, Ria.”
I have to bite down on my lip to keep from screaming at him not to call me by the name my mother called me. The betrayal and rage stir inside of me, brewing a cocktail I’m not sure I can control.
My best friend. My only friend. Deceived me for years. He was a rat. A fucking rat!
“Your father told me that it was Romano who’d done it. That Romano had my father killed. And I didn’t know who to believe. I had no one, yet both of them had hired me. I was only a kid; I was angry and more than that, I was scared and so fucking lonely.”
The truck moves steadily along until we’re out of the brush and dirt road entirely, headed down a back road of thin asphalt.
The day at the funeral comes back to me slowly with the quiet rumble, the picture painted in a different hue than I’ve seen it before.
“I’m still the same, Ria. You have to understand. I was a kid, and you don’t say no to men like your father… or to men like Romano.”
“Did my father know?” I manage to ask him as the anger wanes and the boy in my memory looks back at me. I remember his face. I remember the anger and I remember how he held me in return. How I needed someone just like he did. He was my someone. But the lies… I’m so sick of the sins and secrets.
“No.” His answer is solemn. “Romano wanted me to keep eyes on Talvery, and Talvery hired me to do shit work. I figured one day, one of them would kill me.” Nik’s voice is resigned and flat, with no motive revealed in his words other than survival. “Romano would kill me for not telling him everything. Or your father, for being a rat. I didn’t want this. I was only a boy.”