Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
My stomach clenches into a tiny ball. “What did he do?” I ask softly, though I have an awful feeling that I know.
“He raped her.” Alexei looks like he wants to vomit. “He pinned her down and fucked her like she was one of his hookers instead of his daughter. She wrote…” He clenches his teeth, his lower jaw working from side to side before he continues. “She wrote that she didn’t fight back. That when he reached for her, she just froze. Because she was so stunned, so disbelieving. Even after it was over, she told herself that it was a bad dream, a nightmare, not real. She didn’t tell anyone that it happened—just wrote about it in her diary and then hid that diary in her personal safe, where she thought no one would ever find it. And no one would have… if she hadn’t died in that car crash. But she did. And now that I know, now that I’ve read that entry, I wonder if…” Alexei takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, they burn with pure torment. “If that crash was actually an accident, or if she—”
“No.” I squeeze his hand tighter against my chest. “No, Alexei, don’t. Don’t go there. She was a mother by then. She had Slava. She wouldn’t have—”
“You don’t know that.” His hand is painfully tense in my grasp. “She was never the same after that night. She retreated into herself, became more of a recluse than ever before. Ruslan and I didn’t know what happened and she wouldn’t tell us, so we thought it was some teenage girl thing, and we just… let it go.” He lets out a harsh laugh. “Can you believe it? We just fucking let it go.”
“Oh, Alexei…” My heart bleeds at the naked agony on his face. “You couldn’t have known. He’d never abused her before, right?”
“No, not like that. He tried to spank her once when she was six, but I put a stop to that.”
I try to imagine it: Alexei, himself still a child, going up against his terrifying father. It must’ve taken a spine of steel. But he did it. Because that’s the kind of man Alexei is and always has been—ruthless, determined, and fiercely protective of those he loves.
The kind of man who’d violently stalk a woman for a decade… and then go without sleep for weeks in order to nurse her through brain surgery and radiation.
I open my mouth to tell him again that he couldn’t have known, that this was in no way his fault when he adds grimly, “Ruslan thinks Slava was her way of getting revenge on our father, in any case.”
I blink, caught off guard. “Slava? Her son?”
Alexei nods darkly. “Ruslan thinks that’s why Ksenia went to Nikolai’s party and hooked up with him. Getting pregnant from a one-night stand—it was so out of character for her. She didn’t date, didn’t go out with anyone. And then to randomly hook up with your brother of all people? It never made sense to us.”
“Nikolai did say he wore a condom that night,” I say, recalling the conversation when he told us all about Slava’s existence. “He swore it must’ve been either defective or tampered with. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but…”
“But maybe she’d actually tampered with it.” Alexei’s lips form a tight line. “Because she wanted to get pregnant. To show my father he couldn’t control her. Or to prove to herself that he hadn’t damaged her beyond repair. Or… fuck, maybe because she was just lonely and depressed.”
“Or maybe she just wanted sex, and my brother is a good-looking guy,” I say as lightly as I can manage. “Her going to that party could’ve been a sign that she was healing from what happened and was ready to venture out into the world again. The condom could’ve just been defective, so her first outing got her knocked up.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
But Alexei doesn’t look like he believes it, and frankly, neither do I.
What happened to Ksenia takes more than a couple of years to heal from. Maybe more than a couple of decades.
It’s the kind of trauma that ripples across generations and touches everyone in the family one way or another. The kind that twists and warps your worldview, making you doubt everything and everyone. Making you question your most basic core convictions—such as that family doesn’t hurt each other. That love can’t be cruel.
That those we love and who claim to love us can be trusted.
“You said your father called you before he died,” I say slowly as it comes to me, piece by puzzle piece. “Was that right before we went for that walk in Geneva and met Birgit?”
He cocks his head. “Yes, actually. Why?”