Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Either way, I’m going to get the answers. I just need to be patient a little longer.
“How was your day?” I ask, settling more comfortably into my chair. “What did you and Slava do?”
Her smile turns impossibly brighter, and she tells me all about my son’s amazing progress, her small face so animated I can’t take my eyes off it. She sounds as proud as any parent, and for the first time since I’ve learned of Slava’s existence and Ksenia’s death, my chest doesn’t feel as painfully tight when I think of him and the future that awaits him because of the tainted blood running through his veins. Instead, I feel a sliver of hope as I picture Chloe with Slava, playing with him, cuddling him, loving him… giving him what his mother can’t.
What I can’t.
And that’s part of it, I realize, part of why I want her so badly. I want her not just for myself but for my son. I want her sunshine to touch him, to warm him… to keep away the darkness of his heritage for as long as possible. I want her the way I’ve seen her through the cameras in Slava’s room, gracing my son with her radiant smile, making him feel like he’s the most important person in the world to her.
And I want him to be that.
I want her to love Slava even more than I want her to love me.
Hungrily, I listen to her talk about him, absorbing every word, drinking in every expression. She’s wearing one of her new evening dresses, a pale-yellow number with thin straps that bares her delicate shoulders. Her brown eyes sparkle, and even through the camera, her bronzed skin glows in the golden light cast by her bedside lamp. She’s breathtaking, this sweet mystery of a girl—and mine. All mine. I might not have claimed her physically yet, but it doesn’t change the facts. She was made for me, her light the perfect foil to the dark void inside me, her warmth filling every cold, empty crevice in my heart. I don’t care who she turns out to be or what secrets she’s hiding.
Criminal or victim, she belongs to me, no matter what.
When she’s done telling me about Slava, I ask her about her favorite books and music, and we bond over our mutual love of eighties bands and Dean Koontz novels. I’m not surprised that we have things in common; that’s how it often works when you find your other half, the puzzle piece that completes you. She’s my opposite in so many ways, yet there are threads that connect us, that bound us together long before we met.
We talk for a solid hour, and I find out more about her childhood and teenage years, about her young mother and how hard she worked to raise Chloe by herself. She tells me about hanging out downtown with her friends and vacationing in Florida with her mother, about struggling with calculus in high school and working two jobs for three summers straight to buy her rickety Corolla on her own.
“It’s almost as old as I am,” she says fondly, “but it still runs. Even after all the miles I put on it driving across the country. Speaking of which, did you ever have a chance to ask Pavel about my car keys? I still don’t have them.”
I veil my expression, concealing the beast that stirs inside me at the thought of her getting into her rust bucket of a car and leaving. “He said he couldn’t find them. We’ll look for them when we get back.”
It’s a lie, but I can’t tell her the truth. She wouldn’t understand. I don’t fully understand it myself. All I know is that I sleep better knowing the keys on that furry chain are in my possession, that my zaychik is safe and sound under my roof.
A tiny frown creases her forehead. “Oh, okay. But he’ll find them, right?”
“I’m sure he will. If not, I’ll buy you another car.”
She laughs, clearly thinking it’s a joke, but I’m completely serious. I will buy her a car, something better, safer than the Corolla. It’s a miracle it hasn’t broken down on some deserted road, leaving her stranded with no phone, at the mercy of any murderer or rapist who might be passing by.
Just the thought of her in that situation makes me break out in a cold sweat.
“I’ll just call a locksmith,” she says when she stops laughing. “There are locksmiths in Elkwood Creek, right?”
“I’m sure there’s at least one.” And I’m just as sure he’s getting nowhere near Chloe’s car. The more I think about her driving across the country all alone, the darker my mood turns. Anything could’ve happened to her, absolutely anything—and for all I know, it did.
Her nightmares could have nothing to do with what happened to her mother and everything to do with some lowlife assaulting her on the road.