t-shirt. Then with a shake of her head, she turned to face the room’s absurd bed. As if to make up for the room’s small size, the small bed was even more sumptuous than Pavel’s. A four-poster number, covered in shimmering gold pillows and a crimson comforter. Both the head and foot boards were intricately carved and overlaid with gold paint, and the whole spectacle was surrounded by red gauze curtains that made words like “sheik” and “harem” come to mind.
Feeling like a country mouse who’d somehow ended up in the lap of ostentatious luxury, she pushed through the gauze barrier and climbed into the bed, which seemed like it was more suited to a tsarina than little ol’ Sam McKinley from Detroit. But maybe some of Pavel’s newfound inner peace had rubbed off on her, because soon after laying her head down on the golden silk pillow, she fell fast asleep.
Or maybe she was just in denial. Because today she’d come uncomfortably close to losing someone she couldn’t keep herself from loving. Someone who felt like family, even if they had no blood connection.
And she should have known her stepfather would be paying her a visit.
Sam woke only a few hours later to the sound of Pavel’s terrified voice.
“Mama! Mama!” he cried. “The bad guy got me. Mama, please help me!”
She’d jolted awake immediately, sitting up fully when she saw her stepfather, standing at the foot of the ornate bed. His eyes were gleaming with madness, and he held a switchblade in his hand. The gleaming edge dripping with her mother’s red blood. And he was holding it to a terrified Pavel’s neck.
“Mama! Mama! Please help me!” Pavel cried again.
“Let him go,” Sam screamed at the mad man at the end of her bed, the one who’d already killed her mother and was now threatening the boy she’d taken into her heart.
But her stepfather just grinned at her. Like she was a long lost friend. “Hey, Samantha, girl,” he said. “I sure did you miss you.”
13
Thirty years ago
“R emember, son, before you kill someone, you must always know why you are doing it.”
Sergei said these words to Nikolai, voice calm, eyes flat, as if dragging the man beside him, the one thrashing underneath Sergei’s death grip, struggling to get out of the duct tape Sergei had wrapped around his wrists, caused him no exertion whatsoever. Nikolai’s father barely even registered the desperate man’s muffled screams behind the duct tape placed over his mouth.
As the Rustanov family’s main enforcer, Sergei was well-acquainted with the disposal of bodies—dead or alive.
However, the poor fellow his father held wasn’t an enemy of the Rustanov family. He was only a lowly maintenance man for the apartment building Nikolai, his mother, and Fedya lived in. The maintenance man who had been keeping Nikolai’s mother company ever since Sergei had started ignoring her for a younger, more nubile woman. This wasn’t the first time Sergei had done this. Nikolai had sensed from a very young age that his mother, Natasha, was more a prized possession than someone his father loved.
She was very beautiful, but from a simple shop family, one that used to pay graft to the Rustanovs to do business in their neighborhood unimpeded. She’d also gotten pregnant in high school with Fedya, only to have the boy’s father move away, wanting nothing to do with a baby. So though she possessed exquisite beauty, many of her prospects were limited as a result of class and her status as a young, unwed mother.
But Sergei had taken a liking to Natasha, had magnanimously told her family they’d no longer have to pay him graft or support Natasha and Fedya with their meager earnings, before setting her up in an apartment of her own.
Natasha had told Nikolai the story of how she and his father met one night after drinking too much cheap wine.
“I was a stupid girl,” she told him, her face lined with bitter shadows. “I thought he was saving me from a dull life
Feeling like a country mouse who’d somehow ended up in the lap of ostentatious luxury, she pushed through the gauze barrier and climbed into the bed, which seemed like it was more suited to a tsarina than little ol’ Sam McKinley from Detroit. But maybe some of Pavel’s newfound inner peace had rubbed off on her, because soon after laying her head down on the golden silk pillow, she fell fast asleep.
Or maybe she was just in denial. Because today she’d come uncomfortably close to losing someone she couldn’t keep herself from loving. Someone who felt like family, even if they had no blood connection.
And she should have known her stepfather would be paying her a visit.
Sam woke only a few hours later to the sound of Pavel’s terrified voice.
“Mama! Mama!” he cried. “The bad guy got me. Mama, please help me!”
She’d jolted awake immediately, sitting up fully when she saw her stepfather, standing at the foot of the ornate bed. His eyes were gleaming with madness, and he held a switchblade in his hand. The gleaming edge dripping with her mother’s red blood. And he was holding it to a terrified Pavel’s neck.
“Mama! Mama! Please help me!” Pavel cried again.
“Let him go,” Sam screamed at the mad man at the end of her bed, the one who’d already killed her mother and was now threatening the boy she’d taken into her heart.
But her stepfather just grinned at her. Like she was a long lost friend. “Hey, Samantha, girl,” he said. “I sure did you miss you.”
13
Thirty years ago
“R emember, son, before you kill someone, you must always know why you are doing it.”
Sergei said these words to Nikolai, voice calm, eyes flat, as if dragging the man beside him, the one thrashing underneath Sergei’s death grip, struggling to get out of the duct tape Sergei had wrapped around his wrists, caused him no exertion whatsoever. Nikolai’s father barely even registered the desperate man’s muffled screams behind the duct tape placed over his mouth.
As the Rustanov family’s main enforcer, Sergei was well-acquainted with the disposal of bodies—dead or alive.
However, the poor fellow his father held wasn’t an enemy of the Rustanov family. He was only a lowly maintenance man for the apartment building Nikolai, his mother, and Fedya lived in. The maintenance man who had been keeping Nikolai’s mother company ever since Sergei had started ignoring her for a younger, more nubile woman. This wasn’t the first time Sergei had done this. Nikolai had sensed from a very young age that his mother, Natasha, was more a prized possession than someone his father loved.
She was very beautiful, but from a simple shop family, one that used to pay graft to the Rustanovs to do business in their neighborhood unimpeded. She’d also gotten pregnant in high school with Fedya, only to have the boy’s father move away, wanting nothing to do with a baby. So though she possessed exquisite beauty, many of her prospects were limited as a result of class and her status as a young, unwed mother.
But Sergei had taken a liking to Natasha, had magnanimously told her family they’d no longer have to pay him graft or support Natasha and Fedya with their meager earnings, before setting her up in an apartment of her own.
Natasha had told Nikolai the story of how she and his father met one night after drinking too much cheap wine.
“I was a stupid girl,” she told him, her face lined with bitter shadows. “I thought he was saving me from a dull life
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