“You do?” Maya asked warily.
“I do,” she replied.
Maya stared at Zoya’s hand like it was a forbidden fruit. But when Zoya persisted, nodding her head in encouragement, Maya gently placed her shaking hand in Zoya’s.
“Come,” Zoya coaxed gently. “Let us go home.”
Maya sighed and whispered, “Home.” I heard Kisa sniff and her hands held me that much tighter.
“Bless her heart,” Talia said, but broke away from Zaal when Zoya led Maya to us. I watched as my sister introduced herself. Then I watched, with pride in my heart, as Kisa took Maya’s other hand. Maya, along with Ilya, appeared overwhelmed with emotion. But then, when you have never seen kindness before, it is difficult to accept its power.
Signaling to the cars, I announced, “Let’s go home.” We all made our way to the cars and Ilya took Inessa to the van. As Kisa slipped beside me in the backseat, I threaded my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. When I closed my eyes, I felt Kisa’s hand drawing lazy circles on my stomach. As the cars pulled away to take us all home, I left the pit and the kills I had made on the tarmac.
It was done.
It was an impossible feeling to accept, but as I held my Kisa in my arms, I knew it would hit home eventually. I was finally in New York to stay. The threats from my past now put to bed.
At long last.
* * *
“They are all settled?” I asked Valentin and Zoya as they came down the stairs in their house.
Valentin rubbed his hand over his closely shaved hair and nodded. “Yes. They’re all sleeping. It took awhile to show them everything, but they’re all exhausted.”
Zoya sat back on the couch and ran her hand over her face. Valentin sat beside her, laying his hand on her knee. Zoya shook her head at something in her mind. “That pit is truly a place of hell,” she uttered, and Valentin nodded his in agreement.
Zoya looked to Kisa and me standing in the room and said, “What that Master did is beyond anything I could have imagined in my nightmares. What he created through greed and hate.” She shook her head. “What he did to my brothers.” She placed her hand on Valentin’s face. The male turned to his female, and I could see his adoration for her shine through. “What he put my Valentin through … Inessa, Ilya, and poor little Maya.” She shook her head again. “I wish I could have killed him myself. The gulags, everything because one man saw people as disposable and subhuman. It makes me so mad.”
“He’s dead,” Valentin said with finality. “They all are. That’s all that matters.” Zoya exhaled through her nose and nodded. She then smiled. “And you have your sister back.”
“I just want her to wake,” he said, and Zoya kissed his scarred cheek.
“She will. And when she does, she will know that you kept your Big Brother Promise. You never gave up.” Valentin lay down with his head in Zoya’s lap. Her hands ran over his shorn hair.
This was Valentin in love.
“Lyubov moya?” Kisa said quietly. “Let’s go.”
I nodded my agreement and waved to Zoya and Valentin. Valentin’s eyes were being pulled by sleep. Zoya moved to get up. I held out my hand and shook my head. She gave me a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she mouthed. I knew she was thanking me for more than sparing her the need to see us out. She was thanking me for Inessa.
It wasn’t just me who was responsible.
As we climbed into the back of the car, Mikhail asked, “Home, knayz?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but at the last minute I changed my mind. “To our cove, please, Mikhail.”
Kisa lifted her head from my shoulder, her eyebrows pulled down in confusion. She must have seen something in my eyes as she sighed and contentedly lay back down.
When we arrived at our cove, Mikhail opened our door. As we stepped onto the sand, I said, “We won’t be long.”
Mikhail signaled that he understood. He got back in the driver’s seat as Kisa linked her arm through mine. The warm breeze drifted over our skin as we walked along the soft sand. I inhaled the salty air and filled my lungs.
When we reached our spot, I helped Kisa navigate the stone wall and we sat down where we always did. I leaned my back against the wall and Kisa lay on her back, supporting her head on my lap.
She was staring up at me, smiling. “What?” I questioned, my hand traveling down Kisa’s pretty face and neck.
“You are still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.” She smiled her smile just for me, then added, “Those eyes, those eyes that tell me to whom they belong.”
Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to her lips. When I lifted my head, I stared out over the dark sea, listening to the waves crashing against the shore. “You’ve never seen anything like the Blood Pit, solnyshko,” I confided. I shook my head. “I thought the gulag was bad. Then with Zaal and Valentin, I wondered how it could possibly get worse.” I huffed an incredulous laugh. “But it did, it was worse. A nightmare.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Kisa asked. When I stared down at her looking up at me in concern, I knew she meant it. Every word. Kisa had always been there for me. She had never shied away from the hard times and the gruesome details that were never easy to hear.
Moving my hand to her stomach, I opened my mouth to confide in her, to tell her all that I did … but then I just … didn’t.
I slowly shook my head and genuinely surprised myself by saying, “No.”
“No?” Kisa questioned, now confused.
I shook my head again, and with a newfound peace, I repeated, “No.” I lifted Kisa’s hand to lie over my steadily beating heart and whispered, “It’s over.” As those words left my lips, the reality really sank in. Kisa had stilled. With the heady sense of completion settling within me, I confidently voiced my thoughts, “It’s really over.”
Kisa moved until she was on her knees beside me. She pressed both her palms to my cheeks. “Luka,” she hushed out and wiped away a tear I didn’t know I had shed. “Baby…” she murmured, kissing my dampening cheeks.
“It’s over, solnyshko,” I rasped, “all of it. Everything that chained me. Us.”
Kisa swallowed back her emotion and softly asked, “And how does it feel?”
I searched for the right word. I smiled, when the only thing I could think of was, “Free.” I inhaled, my lungs no longer heavy and my heart no longer pained. “I am free.”
“Luka,” Kisa cried, and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held my wife. I held my wife and unborn baby in my arms.
When Kisa leaned back to meet my eyes, I said, “It was this cove where we made memories as children. It was this cove where you brought me back to you. You made Raze remember he was Luka, the male made just for you.” Kisa blinked as she listened to me, and I added, “And it is in this cove where I realized all that we have been fighting, everything that had kept me imprisoned, has disappeared. It is gone…”
“Luka,” Kisa whispered, an uncontained happiness shining through her bright smile, “I love you, lyubov moya. Forever.”
“I love you, too,” I rasped, and took her lips with my own. When Kisa drew back from the kiss, she lay back down on my lap. I stared out over the ocean, with a new calmness in my heart. Feeling Kisa’s stare, I glanced down. She was looking at me and raised her hand to ghost around my eye—the brown eye that was smudged with a little of Kisa’s blue.
“Luka Tolstoi,” she said nostalgically. “God put a piece of my blue eye in yours so we matched. So we would always know that we were meant to be together, and that our souls were fused. So no matter where you went, you would always find your way home.”
As Kisa’s words washed over me, I knew they were true.
“And it worked,” I said, smiling back at my solnyshko so wide. “It was you who brought me home. Your soul called to mine when I was lost. And it’s still here now, when I am found.”
Kisa smiled through her tears and reached out to thread her fingers through mine. There was nothing left to say. Right now, as I sat in this cove with the other half of my soul, I knew that life had played out as it should.