by Holly Hart
I stared at Ellie's face, desperately searching for the slightest hint of understanding. I was struggling to find the words for what I needed to tell her. I wanted her to figure out what I was saying without actually having to articulate it.
"He beat us. Made us fight each other for scraps of food, Tim and me. We worked together, most of the time. But sometimes, when we hadn't eaten for days, it's hard to do that, to trust. When there's a scrap of food, and you know it's all you'll eat that day…" I squeezed my eyes shut, reliving every moment. "Hunger makes you do terrible things."
The implication hung between us, heavy with guilt and blame. I let myself wallow in the darkness, believing with every fiber of my being that Ellie must. I didn't deserve her, didn't deserve life, for that matter.
I didn't dare open my eyes. In fact, I kept them squeezed as tightly shut as I could manage. I ran my hand through my hair, brushing my forehead first, and I noticed with surprise that every crease and line on my face had disappeared, the intensity of holding back a wave of emotion that I hadn't allowed myself to confront for years smoothing it until it was as calm as the glassy surface of a lake.
Ellie asked the question that must have been dancing on her lips, the question that I'd been willing her to ask. She said it softly, reserving all judgment, her voice as sweet as a summer's breeze. But it was a question that needed asking, because the truth was, nothing I'd said made the slightest bit of difference to her life, or changed any of what I had done. Not yet.
Except the truth was, my past had everything to do with her future. Her child's future. Our child's future.
"Why," her voice broke, and I heard the sound of footsteps gently padding across the carpet. "Are you telling me this?"
Ellie took my hand in hers, and I opened my eyes, feeling a hundred pounds of tension streaming out of my body. She knew. I could tell she knew what I was saying, even if it was deep down, in some secret, hidden compartment of her brain.
She knew.
19
Ellie
A sinking feeling, and not, all at the same time. Like a boat taking on water and throwing it out the other side. My stomach was all at sea, a thousand butterflies floating on nervous thermals. "What are you talking about, Roman?" I asked. "Tell me straight."
He pulled me down onto the couch next to him, soft and gentle, but firm all at once. I collapsed onto it, and resisting, every muscle weaker than it had been at any point during my long spell in hospital. He didn't speak, not for a long time, and every second he waited the tension inside me ramped up another notch, and another, and another. My body was in a strange Neverland, in which every muscle and every limb was powerless to resist, empty of energy and devoid of movement except my chest, which was tight and tiny with tension. I wanted to scream out, and to demand answers on my schedule, not his.
But I didn't do any of that. I felt more powerless than ever before. Roman's head sank into one of his huge hands, but it only lingered there for a second as he composed himself, before it re-emerged. He wore a pained expression on his face as he spoke, pinched with nervousness. "You don't recognize me at all?"
The question hit me like a punch in the gut. Something I felt that I knew a lot about…
It tossed me into a muddy pit of emotion, and I wallowed in its depths, struggling to claw my way out. Its plain simplicity added to its impact, and built upon it. The question called into question everything that I had known to be true – little enough, as everything was since my accident. I was scared to blink, or to close my eyes lest memories that I didn't want revealed pulled themselves to the surface. Who am I? And more importantly: who was I?
"What are you talking about, Roman." I said, repeating his name. It felt meaningful, something to hang on to. After all, if I was saying it like that, it was almost as though I'd only just met him. Which was true. Wasn't it?
He stared at me, and his icy eyes glistened with a hundred colors, flecks of amber and gold and silver and ivy – a sea of hurt. An ocean. I close my eyes, just to escape before I drowned in it. And the second I did, I was assailed by a vicious attack. Not physical, not from Roman, but worse, far more cutting and impossible to evade: memory.
A man in a hockey jersey. No, more than one. Clustering around me. I'm hurting already, but the reason escaped me. I'm in a bar, it's a place I've been before. I won't come back. They are pressing against me, hemming me in, and no one's doing a damn thing about it. I look around, trying to catch someone's eye, but no one will look at me. They're staring into their half empty glasses of beer, or else playing a game of darts. Too intently. They know what's going on, but none of them is man enough to step in. Nor am I. Any scrap of courage I ever had seems to have drained out of my thighs and down through the barstool. Why don't I just get up? I scream at the dream me, but nothing happens. I can't affect it.
The guy in the hockey jersey caresses me, and I close my eyes just hoping that everything will go away. It's happening again. Wait? What does that mean, again? No – that's another river of emotion that I know just by sensing it that I can't handle. Not now. No one's helping me. Wait. There is.
Just one.
I feel safe.
I gasped audibly as my eyes flickered open. "You."
Roman nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't know, not all of it. Not the truth. But I think you knew it the whole time."
I closed my eyes again, searching for an escape, any escape from the crushing weight of truth that was beginning to press down upon my shoulders. "No, no, it can't be true." But even as I said it, I knew that it made sense. I remembered half-snatched fragments of dreams, a vague feeling that I'd met this man before, that I understood why I felt safe by his side even when all sense screamed the opposite. And the way he looked at me. It was honest, caring – and all too much.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. His voice was apologetic and hurt all at the same time. I guessed that perhaps he had harbored some vague hope that everything would turn out all right, that I would jump into his arms and tell him that everything would be okay, that I loved him, and that now we'd found each other, nothing would ever tear us apart.
But life's not like the movies.
"You're, you're…" I stammered, struggling to get the words out. He nodded.
"The father."
My ears rang, suffering under an almost physical assault. It was like someone had taken a hammer to a huge brass bell and held my head to it. I was off-balance, and I would have collapsed without the couch underneath me. Roman put his arms around my body and pulled me to his side, but he held me gingerly, clearly worried about whether he was doing the right thing. I couldn't blame him. I didn't know either. It felt nice, warm, and safe. But I couldn't tear my mind away from the truth of the deceit, nor the fact that he had lied to me. Roman was my kidnapper, my lover, it now seemed, and the father of my baby.
"Tell me everything," I said, pulling away. It was too much to bear, especially in his strong embrace. Escaping his strong warmth was unpleasant, like pulling away the duvet on a cold, wintry day, but it needed to be done. I couldn't trust myself to make the right decision without it. And like it or not, we were bound together by something stronger than love. We shared a child.
He started speaking without so much as a second's hesitation. It wasn't a practiced speech, more a recitation of a million buried thoughts and feelings spewing out in one volcanic eruption. It felt honest, true and from the heart. The choice I needed to make was whether it excused any of what he had done.
"I didn't know when I took you from the hospital. I slept with you what, a year ago?" He continued without waiting for a response, without even looking inquiringly at me. "And then nothing. I didn't see you in that bar again. I went back, more than once, but I don't know whether I really hoped to find you there. You were an illusion, a tantalizing view of salvation – but one I didn't think I deserved." He paused. The silence hung for a few seconds.
"And then?" I prompted, surprised by the fact that my voice came ou
t calm and steady.
"And then I saw your face on my phone," he replied. "A death warrant. Cash for a life. Something I've done more times than I can count on two hands." He said it simply, not bothering to disguise the brutality implicit in his words. I knew the truth, hiding it would have done nothing. Still, I was rocked by the implication. "And I knew right then and there that I couldn't do it again. I'd been wavering for a long time. I told you how I got into this business. Well, not all of it."
He looked up, as if hoping that I would coax the truth out of him. I threw him a lifeline. "Tell me."
"I killed my father," he said finally. A storm of emotions was visible on his face, his cheeks tense and taut with worry and half-suppressed memory. "You know what he did, to me, to us. When Tim died," he croaked, then his voice strengthened. "When he killed him, I snapped. I never trained harder than I did back then, and all for one reason. To rid the earth of that man."
I realized that my hand was trembling, and I pressed it against my thigh. My throat was dry, and I realized that I was living vicariously through his pain. "I'm sorry…" I said, but he didn't hear it. Roman's was a mask now, glassy as he molded it to hide the pain. I suspected that he had been doing that for years.
"So I did it," he said, sparing me the details that I desperately wanted to know, but knew better than to fish for. "I killed him, and I didn't stop. I was barely more than a kid, and I didn't know how to do anything else," he laughed bitterly.
"So I did it for cash. Just a little bit, to start, enough to get by. Bad people. Mobsters, gangsters, killers – the scum of the earth. And then I got the good jobs, the ones that pay enough for you to buy a new motorbike, and then a car, and then a house. The first time you kill a man," he glanced subconsciously down at his hands. "It hurts, like you've ripped a band aid off your soul. But I kept doing it and I kept doing it until it didn't hurt anymore. But by then, I was on the verge of breaking. And then I met you, and something changed. Everything changed. I didn't hurt anyone after that. I still got the jobs, sent to my phone like everyone else. I checked them out of habit more than anything else. And then I saw your face flash up on the screen and I knew I couldn't let you end up as just another cold body in the city morgue."
"And that's when you took me from the hospital," I said. Croaked. My mouth bobbed open and shut like a goldfish as my mind attempted to process what Roman had just revealed, its gears turning as slowly as though someone had poured wet concrete over them. It was a wrecking ball of truth. A hammer, smashed directly against the edifice of everything I thought to be true, and shattering it, sending it tumbling to the ground in a spinning shower of shards, a tower of dust as thick and deep as the fog sweeping through my mind.
He could be lying, my brain warned, a quiet yelp that I could barely hear through the unbearable rushing sound of blood coursing through my ears. My hands were sticky, cold and clammy with sweat. Just spinning a tale that sounds too far-fetched not to be true, too unbelievable to be a lie. Playing with your heart when you're at your weakest. He's a killer. He's a kidnapper. Is it too much to believe he could be a liar as well?
But one glance at Roman's crushed, broken face told me that he was telling the truth.
And that was way more terrifying.
We were linked together, forever.
And I didn't know how to handle it.
20
Roman
The pit of despair that had grown in my stomach, pulsating like a fire breathing dragon, already felt like a bad dream. The truth was out, in the open, and I no longer had a need to lie. I was many things – a killer, and worse – but I was never any good at lying. The terrible, creeping despair of our situation, though, was no better. The silence between us began to throb with tension, and I felt as though I had to fill it.
"I'm sorry," I murmured. "For lying to you. I was lying to myself, really. I didn't know how to tell you the truth, the truth that I –, we have a child, a baby, and that I don't even know his name. Or her name," I added bitterly. I couldn't help but express my violent hatred of the man who had done this to me – Victor Antonov. He was a weed, a worm, an example of the very worst that Alexandria had to offer, and he'd taken his brother's death not as a warning, but as an opportunity. He was the powerbroker in this town now. A week ago, I didn't care. A week ago, it meant nothing to me. A week ago, I didn't know that I was a father.
A flash of stricken worry danced across Ellie's beautiful cheeks. "What the hell are we going to do?" She gasped. "Oh my God, we need to call the police. Right now. What if someone has my baby! What if –," her voice cracked, and she looked ashen. I knew exactly what thought had crossed her mind. I was no stranger to it.
"No!" I snapped, putting more force into my voice than I had intended. Ellie's words cut through me. My baby, she said. It shouldn't have hurt me, but it did. It was my child, too. She recoiled like she'd been stung, like I'd reached out and slapped her. I never would.
I softened my voice, grinding my teeth together as I mastered my anger. It crashed against me, buffeting every last pillar of resolve in my mind, a seething hit of acidic rage that threatened to take control. I couldn't let it. I needed to be strong. For Ellie. For her child. For my child. Anger would get us nowhere. It was time to act smart.
"No," I repeated. "We can't. If they don't have it –," I paused. The word it sounded so impersonal, as though the child I was talking about wasn't my own, didn't have my own blood running through its veins. I said it again.
I decided to make my peace with it, for now. But when I broke that peace, and I would, someone would suffer. And that someone had a name. Victor Antonov. "If they don't already have our child, or know that he exists, then we can't give them the opportunity to find out. Believe me, the police in the city are crooked to a man."
"I know," Ellie said back shortly, her eyes closed as though reliving a memory. "I don't know how, but I know. You're right. But what the hell are we going to do about it? We can't just, just, sit here! We have to go back to the hospital."
"No, we don't," I replied. "They'll be watching –"
Her eyes popped open with sudden, betrayed energy. "You're being a coward," she said accusingly. "We can't just leave him," she said, unconsciously copying my description of our child as a boy.
"We're not going to," I said, my voice firm and unbending.
"But you said…" She broke off, her face screwed with confusion, and more than a hint of betrayal.
"All I said was that we aren't going to that hospital. There's only one of me, it would be suicide. No matter how many guns I bring. We have to be smarter than them, not stronger, because we'll lose that fight every day of the week."
"Then what?" Her tone of voice was harsh, clipped, and left me in no doubt that if my answer was unsatisfactory, then she would break off, ignore me, and strike out on her own path to save our baby.
"We have other options." I pulled my phone out of my pocket, as much to buy myself time as for any other reason, but not quickly enough to avoid the inquisitive look on Ellie's face, a look of hope that cut through the thunderous, tear-threatened squall storming across her face – fear, anger, and a burning desire to fight back against someone, anyone, all doing battle in one simmering cauldron of emotion.
"What are you talking about?" She said, her voice curt.
I wavered, a decade of experience of working on my own, of keeping my own counsel and hiding my own secrets fighting against my desperate desire not to have to lie to her any longer.
She grimaced, and the irritated gesture made her message as clear as if she'd shouted it – no more games. I bowed to her pressure like a stalk bending against the wind.
"I might have a lead," I said, remembering the feeling of my phone vibrating against my leg. "I'm not sure." Ellie's expression changed yet again, and a little jig of hope, of relief danced across her face. I couldn't stop myself thinking about how pretty she was, how beautiful. About how she, for a brief, split-second anyway, looked at me as a savior, and
a someone to trust. But the second I looked back, it was gone. I let myself believe, hope really, that deep down she still felt something for me. No matter how selfish a thought that was right now, I had to hang onto it.
I raised the cheap black burner phone up to my eyes, conscious of Ellie's anxious gaze burning a hole in my forehead. A small LED light on the front glowed, then faded; glowed then faded in the universal notification that I had a message. I took a deep breath in, realizing that in the moment, I'd forgotten to breathe.
"What is it?" Ellie said plaintively, her voice cracking. I glanced up, and saw that the black, grim emotion that had wreathed her face only a few moments before was gone. "Tell me, Roman. Stop treating me like –"
I raised my hand and cut her off. "Okay, okay. I've got – well I'm not exactly sure," I said, acutely aware of the hesitancy that even I could hear in my wavering. The location was familiar, but confusing nonetheless. "It's a residential address. I just don't know what I'll find there."
Ellie opened her mouth to speak. Only one word came out. "We'll." It was laced with determination, dripping with a justified, righteous, crusading anger. And yet I thought I knew better. I put my foot in my mouth.
"No," I said firmly. "You're staying here."
Her head jerked upwards, her chin held high and proud. She was a little five foot tall bundle of roaring thunder, and I immediately regretted speaking up. No matter the difference in our sizes, she looked fiery enough to tear my head off.
"The hell I am," she snapped, spitting fire. "If you think that I'm going to sit around here while you save the day, you're insane. Trust me Roman," she laughed. "I don't trust you an inch."
