by Christa Wick
One arm pinning the boy to his chest, he turned the clippers on and ran a line up and over the boy's scalp. As the black hair fell around Bogdan's shoulders, the boy went limp. Still blocking the door with his weight, Mikhael angled his body to see the boy's face.
The stark blue eyes were open, the jaw slack.
"I'm sorry, my son," Mikhael whispered, hoping the boy was just playing possum and not in a deep state of shock as the last vestiges of his Rodchenko past drifted to the floor.
18
Mikhael
The day didn't get any better. Bogdan remained unmoving after Mikhael finished shaving the boy's hair at the clipper's closest setting and washed the shoe polish off what remained.
Carrying Bogdan into the front room, he placed him on the couch, across from where Alina sat in a side chair, her arm awkwardly held to avoid getting blood from her sleeve on the fabric. Turning his back on Bogdan, Mikhael knelt in front of her.
He reached for the cuff of her gown. She recoiled and pulled the arm closer to her body. Her haunted gazed darted in his direction then away just as quickly.
"It needs disinfected and bandaged," he said, settling onto the floor in defeat. "If you won't let me take care of it, you need to."
Careful not to come into contact with him, she eased out of the chair and went into the bathroom.
With a quick glance at the boy to make sure he hadn't moved, Mikhael rose and went into the kitchen. He would need locks for some of the kitchen drawers and cabinets to secure anything the boy might turn into a weapon—which was pretty much everything. Pulling out his phone, he started dictating a list into his texting app.
After a lifetime under the thumb of the Rodchenko family's hired thugs, Alina hadn't wanted guards outside or in the house. A security team was still in place in another house across the street. If he hadn't insisted on removing the listening devices and cameras discreetly placed around the safe house, the team would have been able to stop the boy before he had stabbed her with the fork.
Sighing, he hit send, requesting one of the team members across the street to pick up the supplies. No more glass or china, just plastic, plus brackets and combination locks to lock up the necessary dangers.
He hoped the boy hadn't picked up Dima's fascination with fire.
A shudder passed through him as he remembered the long ago arson that happened in the days following his ejection from the Rodchenko family. He saw the building filled with families, their lives acceptable collateral damage so long as it meant Mikhael Nazarov died that night.
And he had died—inside at least. Making the jump between the burning building and the next one, running like a rat to disappear into the night. Two hours later and an hour out of the city, he had contacted the FBI agent whose assassination he had heard Dmitrey Rodchenko plotting.
That one call for help had snowballed into rushed training for a spot on a joint task force, his age, coloring and Moscow accent matching a low level dead Russian convict whose identity they could steal and use to insert him into the Volkov family.
He saved lives with the work he did in Russia—took more than a few, as well. But the work he did for the task force and then for security companies like Stark International never made him feel alive for more than a few minutes at a time.
Each night, he crawled into bed and woke up a corpse.
Dragging himself up out of the past, he saw Alina slip into the kitchen and begin to fix breakfast. Dressed, with her face washed and her long, black hair pulled into a tight knot, she kept her head down. Whenever Mikhael moved the slightest, she froze in place.
She was never going to forgive him. Not for what he had just done—not even for saving her in Moscow and rescuing the boy from Dima. She couldn't see past the boy's current frame of mind. He had been happy before Mikhael's arrival, now he was miserable. That was all she could focus on. That and the boy's glaring hate for her.
Going into the attached living room, Mikhael sat at the opposite end of the couch from his son. The boy looked at the blank television screen while Mikhael's attention floated between Bogdan and Alina.
She made oatmeal and buttered toast and marmalade, something that didn't require trusting Bogdan with a fork again. Ignoring her own needs, she brought a tray to Mikhael then returned with a second tray and knelt in front of the boy. She tried to coax him into taking a piece of toast. When he remained limp and unblinking, she held the bowl in one hand and scooped up some of the oatmeal.
"Try to eat a little, malcheek," she urged, the spoon hovering an inch from his mouth.
With no time to react, Mikhael saw the boy's face suddenly narrow. Bogdan's arm whipped toward the bowl and made contact, plastering the hot oatmeal against Alina's blouse and drawing a pained gasp from her lips.
"Perhaps the psychiatrist—" she started.
"No." Mikhael winced at the harsh tone with which he answered, but he knew what Alina didn't know. After the earlier displays of violence, the doctor had wanted to drug and institutionalize the boy "for a few months or more."
"Go see to yourself," he ordered, settling back against the couch and taking a bite of his toast. "I will watch him."
She looked at Bogdan and then the bits of oatmeal that had missed her clothing and landed on the floor. Cupping her hand, she started to scrape the mess on the carpet in one direction.
"I said take care of yourself," Mikhael repeated, the already hard edge to his voice growing sharper. "He will take care of the mess when he finally gets hungry enough to behave."
19
Mikhael
By four in the afternoon, the boy's stomach was growling loud enough for both of his parents to hear. Disobeying Mikhael's order, Alina placed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a paper plate and left it on the coffee table, a plastic cup with milk resting next to it.
Her gaze beseeched Mikhael to turn on the television and distract the boy with one of his favorite shows. He ignored the pleas in her eyes and, six hours later, the food and drink remained untouched.
"He has to drink something," she whispered, approaching Mikhael for the first time since she had brought him breakfast.
"So do you," he countered. "Go to bed. I'll get him to drink something."
Seeing the shadow that crossed her face, his mouth drew into a deep scowl.
"For the love of God, Alina, I'm not going to waterboard him!"
She blinked, but her eyes were dry. No more crying for Alina. No more smiling either.
"Get ready for bed," he ordered as he began to chew over what needed to be done.
The boy took his catharsis with violent tantrums. Alina allowed herself no release at all. No tears, no raised voice, no angry shaking of her hands. Every day, she faded a little bit more.
Sitting in silence with Bogdan, he watched Alina disappear into the bedroom. She shut the door. He heard the slide of the dresser drawer and closed his eyes. He imagined her body, the marks across her back from the electrical cord beatings, the same network of abuse on her legs and arms.
"Maybe if I sit with him," Alina suggested after she opened her door.
Mikhael nodded at her bed. "I'll bring him in a few minutes."
Another flicker of mistrust crossed her face but she turned back into the room and sat on the edge of the mattress. Mikhael picked the boy up, but took him into the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he stood Bogdan in front of the toilet and turned the water on at a barely audible trickle.
The boy shot him a dirty look, the sour twist of his mouth indicating he knew what Mikhael was up to.
"I can wait all night," Mikhael said as he turned his back on the boy and blocked the doorway. "I'm not going to have you wet yourself when you throw your next tantrum."
Not that the boy had done so already. But he hadn't urinated since at least early morning. And a tantrum was imminent because Mikhael planned on triggering it. He wasn't going to watch the woman he loved wither away and his son continue turning to stone until one day the boy realized with
a devastating clarity just how much pain he had inflicted on his mother and how much she had already suffered to protect him.
The sound of water running in the sink was joined by liquid hitting the toilet bowl. Mikhael suppressed a grin and kept his back turned until a few seconds after the boy flushed.
He had to fight to keep the smile from his face as he turned to Bogdan and maneuvered the uncooperative pile of flesh over to the sink. He squirted soap on the boy's hands then waited several long seconds before the kid shot Mikhael another furious look then shoved his hands under the faucet and washed them on his own.
Two wins in his column, Mikhael mused as he turned off the water and dried Bogdan's limp hands. Pretty much his only wins as far as Alina and the boy were concerned. But hopefully there would be more before the night was through.
Placing a firm hand against Bogdan's shoulder blade, he tried to coax the boy out of the room. The little mule's legs locked straight so that any pressure threatened to propel him face first into the floor.
Fine—carrying him wasn't a loss even though Bogdan seemed to think so.
"You know what I remember about your Papa," he asked softly as he carried his son toward Alina's bedroom.
Hearing the question, her head whipped up.
Mikhael warned her to stay silent with a narrowing of his gaze.
"He loved the mafia movies, Godfather, Wise Guys, anything with a lot of bang, bang, BOOM."
The boy looked uncomfortably inward as the volume of Mikhael's words grew. Ignoring how Bogdan stiffened in his arms, the big Russian sat in the dainty reading chair shoved in one corner of Alina's bedroom.
Worry clouding her gaze, Alina swiveled a few degrees to stare hopefully at her son.
"Roll up your sleeves," Mikhael demanded of her, his arm looped around Bogdan so the boy couldn't bolt.
"You know I won't." Her gaze hit the floor then skittered around the room like a cornered animal looking for escape. When she finally looked up, she nailed Mikhael with a hard stare. "He's as much a victim as we are."
Mikhael shook his head. "No. And he never will be. Now show him your arms."
Her body slumped in passive disobedience as Mikhael continued to hammer at her.
"He stabbed you today. Maybe next time he'll get a knife when we have our backs turned."
"He won't" she protested, ignoring the boy's satisfied huff at the scenario Mikhael had just laid out. "He was upset because Dima could be cruel when the blond started to show."
She dipped her head, tried to catch Bogdan's attention. "Your uncle didn't like your hair looking like your real papa's."
"Lying whore," the boy muttered.
Forcing his arms not to squeeze a little respect and a lot of sense into Bogdan, Mikhael changed arguments with the woman.
"There are only two paths that lead out from where you want to go, my Alina," he started, the soft voice eerily ominous. "The first path, he never, ever accepts you."
Her breathing hitched, but her face remained placid, her eyes as dry as sun baked clay.
"He never accepts you," Mikhael pressed on, "and he keeps on hurting you physically and emotionally."
Another satisfied huff from the boy made Mikhael want to rap the kid on his nose. Maybe it was already too late. The Rodchenkos taught their children to fear and hate from the cradle. Sweet Alina had somehow escaped that curse, only in part because her early years had been spent in a place slightly less horrible than living daily in her father's presence.
Mashing and rolling his lips, Mikhael hesitated to say anything more. Maybe waiting a few days was best. Maybe medication like the doctor had said—something to calm the boy.
A second away from Mikhael relenting, Alina met his gaze with a questioning look.
He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the pain he was about to inflict scratch and claw its way across her beautiful face.
"Then there’s the second path. The second path, he realizes too late and he can no longer accept himself. He takes all the hate he has shown you and turns it on himself."
The boy started to twist angrily in his arms. "Shut up, stupid. I hate you! I hate you both! She is not even a Rodchenko. My papa said so."
"Alina, show him what they did to your arms, your papa and his," Mikhael said then, firmly but gently. “He needs to see it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, slowly, she pushed one sleeve up.
The boy wouldn't look, so Mikhael wrapped one big hand around the top of his skull and forced his gaze up.
"Both sleeves," he said when the boy remained stubbornly stiff and unresponsive.
Fresh hurt unfurled in her dark gaze as she stared at her son's face and worked the second sleeve up to her elbow.
"Your papa and his papa did that," Mikhael told the boy.
"She was being bad so they had to discipline her," Bogdan accused. "Papa told me she was a filthy whore who was always bad. That’s why I always hated her, because I'm a good boy."
Mikhael watched Alina flinch at the last statement, but remain otherwise expressionless throughout the torrent of hateful words that spewed from Bogdan's mouth. She’d had ten years of this, ten years of training in how to take this kind of torture without reacting.
Mikhael had no such training, no such patience when it came to the woman he loved suffering in silence. “You say you always hated her. But she has always loved you, Bogdan. Your entire life.”
"I. Don't. Care!" the boy screamed, straining against Mikhael's hard grip, his slender body leaning toward Alina. "Those are her fault, not mine! You can’t make me feel bad for her!"
Head drooping, Alina quickly started to push her sleeves back down.
Growling, Mikhael stood and dumped the boy in the chair. A soft kick closed the bedroom door and then his arm shot out to lock it.
Slowly he stalked toward the bed and murmured softly to Alina, “Come here, love.”
Alina looked up, the first threat of tears making her eyes shimmer.
So damn beautiful and hurting so badly, all because of his mistakes all those years ago.
It ends tonight.
Bending down, he lifted the hem of her long nightgown up to her knees.
"They did this to her, too," he told the boy before straightening and pointing at the headboard a second time. "Turn around, Alina. He needs to see your back."
"Please, no," she whisper-cried.
Her shoulders shook with the kind of bone-deep distress and anguish bred from years of mental torment.
Mikhael waited for her to comply, wanting only to help her, not break her.
He knew the moment she realized he would not relent tonight, and just like that, all the fight was gone from her.
She let him turn her and unbutton the back of the nightgown, expose the scars that her son has never seen.
Returning to the chair, Mikhael lifted the mulish boy out if it and stood him a foot away from Alina. He secured his hands on both sides of Bogdan's head so he couldn’t look away. “Do you see the scars your mother has hidden from you?”
"It looks like someone took a giant cheese grater to your back," Bogdan said callously, sounding like a robotic clone of the little devil himself. Despite his cold words, the young boy couldn’t completely mask the look of horror on his face at what he was seeing.
A harsh cry wrenched Alina's throat. She rolled across the mattress until she faced the opposite wall, her back still exposed, her entire body shuddering with pained tears.
"Say what you want," Mikhael growled and dragged the boy toward the bed. "But you will look at her. You will see what she has endured for you."
"No," the boy protested, his voice sounding weak for the first time tonight. "It hurts my eyes."
"It's your papa's work," Mikhael explained, holding the boy's chin so Bogdan couldn't look away again.
"She must have done something bad to deserve it," the boy maintained stubbornly, even as his eyes began filling with tears.
Drawing a long, slow breath, Mikhael f
ought the angry fire building inside him.
He’s just a child, he reminded himself, a child mentally manipulated by a sociopath whose entire goal was to intentionally poison Bogdan against his own mother, just as Dmitrey had slowly poisoned Mikhael's mother against him.
Fueled by that memory, he pushed Bogdan closer, pointed out each scar marring Alina's flesh. "These were her punishment for loving you. But she never stopped. Every night she whispered to you when you were a baby, 'I am your mama, lubimi, know me. Know your mother loves you.' And every night they punished her for that."
The first full-bodied sob tore through Alina's throat.
A matching one slipped past Bogdan’s lips.
"You were lied to, Bogdan. Those marks across the front of her arms—the reason she wears long sleeves every day—are from when she shielded her belly so your grandfather couldn't beat you in her womb." Mikhael’s voice went as cold as the boy's brainwashed soul as he pushed even more. "The marks on the other side of her arms are where she shielded her head from getting whipped and kicked so she wouldn't die with you in her belly."
One hand leaving Bogdan's head, Mikhael traced one of the scars that ran the full width of Alina's back. "She nearly didn’t survive when she got this scar,” Mikhael said, almost unable to speak those words out loud. But he kept going. He was getting through to Bogdan, he could feel it. "It was the last time she was able to hold you before your precious papa took you completely away from her and poisoned your mind with lies.”
Alina's sobbing became uncontrollable. “Stop. Just stop.” Her fingers curled around her ear, the nails denting the thin flesh and threatening to tear it.
But Mikhael couldn’t stop. Not until this was over. Bogdan would not hurt Alina any more. “Your papa punished your mother for loving you. And now, you're doing your papa's work for him. You are hurting your mama, Bogdan. When all she has done is love and protect you."
Finally, Bogdan's legs gave out.
Mikhael let him crumple to his knees, his own stomach churning from what he had done, what he’d had to do.
