From the moment I saw you, everything changed. I wanted out, I wanted to start over. I wanted to deserve you. I sold the Belovs all Lisko’s product. If things cool off, you’ll never even know. We’ll go somewhere far away with all the money, and I’ll do something safe and boring, and maybe one day you’ll fall in love with me the way I love you.
Or I’ll end up dead, and you’ll have to sort through my things and you’ll find this box. If today is that day, then I want you to know it was all worth it. Saving you was the best thing I’ve ever done. And I would gladly die just for the chance to earn your love. If that happens, fall in love with a man who really deserves you and will give you everything you want.
She read the letter over and over again in a haze of tears, the mara jittery like an insect trapped in her skull. He’d been lying to her about everything, but he’d loved her enough from first sight to change. When she’d flung herself in front of that bullet, she’d thought she owed Fedir, but all along, he’d been trying to deserve her. He’d found her worth risking everything for.
“Anything for you.” Instead of Fedir, it was Nikolai’s voice that came back to her, deep and grave. “Love yourself, Katya.”
Nikolai also thought her lovable, had bled for her, had made love to her so tenderly he’d called forth unknown passions. He’d shown her with his mouth, his fingers, his whole body.
Something shifted inside her, not the mara, but deeper, like her guts were realigning.
She was worthy of a man like Nikolai’s love. Worthy of love.
The news sank in, and slowly, the mara calmed as if absorbing Katya’s realization. In the silent apartment, her mind grew as quiet as it had been in…maybe ever.
In the hush, the mara whispered. Avenge yourself.
Had that been her cry all along? Find Lisko and kill him to avenge herself. Her life had been worth something. Nikolai’s kindness, his desire, the sacrifice of his blood all proved it. Fedir’s letter sharpened the proof into an undeniable truth.
In the apartment, in her depths, the crystalline quiet was profound. The cold creep of death seeped into her along with the mara’s truth.
Katya deserved justice.
She would have to kill a man, to take his life to pay for her own. A man whose dreams she’d walked in, whose morose resignation she’d felt when he’d stared at Lukyanivska Prison, whose blood she’d lain in on the boxing mat, whose shocked regret at killing her had flashed in his glacial eyes.
A deafening bang fractured the silence.
Then came a shout, just feet away from her on the other side of the door. “Hello. It’s Officer Marchuk again. I know you’re in there, Ms. Zurkov. I’m sorry to say, something’s happened to your uncle.
Katya’s gut slammed into the cradle of her pelvis, even though she knew mentioning Nikolai was just a ploy to get them to open the door. Another louder knock had her jumping as she reached for the gun.
Maybe Lisko had been justified in killing Fedir, but he’d still sent his goons to find Nikolai’s niece.
Dariya’s door squeaked. Katya hid the weapon just before the girl’s head appeared from around the corner of the kitchen wall, her eyes wild and searching for Katya.
Katya shook her head, mouthing words. He’s lying. Go. Close the door. She pointed to punctuate her meaning.
A walkie-talkie blared on the other side of the door, and then the man spoke. “Nobody’s answering. Want me to break down the door? Right. I’ll go check her school.”
Long minutes after his boots had thudded down the hall, she risked closing her eyes. Thank God Dariya wasn’t at school.
The chill settled over her, like a fog condensing on skin, just barely too warm to freeze. Shivering, she waited, gun in hand, head against the wall.
More footsteps sounded in the hall. A key jangled. Had the officer gotten a copy from the super? She aimed the weapon. The door flung open.
“Dariya! Katya!”
At the sound of Nikolai’s voice, her freezing, limp arms collapsed with her finger on the trigger.
Chapter 22
“Dariya, Katya!” Nik fumbled with his keys at the door. The air felt as thick as glue, slowing down his every movement as he slid one in, turned the knob, and burst into the apartment.
His gaze volleyed around the room in search of signs of violence. What if the cop car he’d seen driving away had been Lisko’s hit squad, come to take away everything Nik had left? Thank God, there was no pool of blood, no corpses lying limply.
A whimper and a gentle thud sounded behind him. He spun.
Katya had collapsed, her gun aimed right at him. She was sprawled limply on the floor, the color had seeped out of her so that she appeared insubstantial, almost translucent, like the ghost she was.
Relief washed over him, along with the vague realization she’d been lying in wait for someone to come through the door, as he’d advised, and he had done the very thing unannounced. She could have shot him.
Where was his brain?
“Katya.” He ran to her, peeled her fingers off the gun, locked the safety, and tucked it into the back of his waistband. He’d never grown comfortable with firearms, but he’d learned how to handle them long ago, in case he ever needed to defend himself, or a witness. The knowledge leant him some surety, though he never could have imagined he’d need it to protect Dariya and a ghost he’d grown very fond of.
He stroked her hair off her face, her skin too cool to the touch. “Dariya?”
“She’s fine.” Katya didn’t open her eyes, her voice a whisper, but strong and determined. “Locked in her room like a good girl.”
Lids low, with a sheen of sweat over her blanched-white face, Katya was perhaps the most welcome, beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
He lowered his face to hers, brushing his lips along her brow, her temple, pressing them to her mouth, her lips temptingly pink without a swipe of lipstick. What a brave little thing she was.
“Is she all right?” Dariya croaked, tiptoeing toward them.
“Yeah.” Nik swung his arm around to touch the hilt of the gun, checking that it was secure in his waistband. The instinct reminded him of all the times Sofiya had braked her car hard and fast, reaching her arm over to keep him in the passenger seat, as if her strength was enough to protect him against the immense physical forces of colliding cars.
God help him. He was turning into a regular mother hen.
“You two look like a fairy tale—a prince and his sleeping beauty.”
Eyes still closed, Katya blew out a breath from her nose. “Those princess stories aren’t the real fairy tales. You need to read the old ones, the true ones. They’re full of rusalkas and zmoras and maras—demons and angry ghosts. Then you’ll know what the world is really like, and set your expectations accordingly.”
“Katya,” Nik warned.
“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Dariya spoke with a sullenness only a teenager could attain. Wrapping her arms tightly across her chest, she caught Nik’s eyes and lowered her voice. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s just not feeling well. I’m going to get her to my room. In the meantime, you call Nadya, tell her you need to stay with her family for a few days.”
“Kolya, I—”
“Take your pills. You’re going. I promised your mother I’d keep you safe.” He was already sliding his arms under Katya’s body. She’d grown too light, insubstantial since the last time he’d carried her.
“I won’t leave unless you promise me Katya is going to be okay.”
He looked up into his niece’s red-rimmed eyes. Her nostrils flared, her fear all raw and on the surface, as if her mother was dying again right there in front of her.
Like a sledgehammer into a window, or a bullet into a fishbowl, something inside him shattered. A rush of grief he hadn’t acknowledged poured out. Katya might be okay, but not in any sense of the word that would soothe Dariya, or his own desires.
The thought wrenched through him, twisted his guts. And it must have showed on his face, because Dariya’s own features sagged from fear into resigned grief.
To his surprise, her eyes sharpened. “How could you do this to me? Bring her here, let me like her, get hopeful you’d found somebody to help us be a family…”
Tears threatened in her voice, but her face was all angry angles. He should have known her imagination would run light-years ahead of reality, should have known Katya’s way with the girl would backfire on him.
“I’m sorry, Dariya. Believe me, I wish things were different. Now go pack your bag.”
The muscles of her jaw clenched, and he relished the signs of her anger. It was so much easier to bear than this girl in a grown woman’s body sobbing on him like a baby. She stomped off down the hall, and as far as he was concerned, she had every right to her rage. He was gnawing on a big serving of it himself and had only Lisko to aim it at.
No, that wasn’t true. He could aim it right at his own damn heart, fool enough to fall for a ghost. He’d been young and naive when his hopes had fallen apart with Alisa. There was no excuse for doing it a second time.
If Katya had been even a little conniving, he might have pointed some of his blame at her too. Instead, she was fierce, and generous, and skeptical of her right even to breathe the air in her former apartment. She certainly hadn’t tricked him into caring for her.
He laid her in his bed and tucked her in up to her chin. If only a kiss were all that was required to restore her to life, like those fairy tales. But no. It was time to make his blood offering to the mara, or whoever it was that collected the toll for her hours in the flesh. He would have to take care not to bleed out on the bathroom floor this time.
He’d bruised himself with all the cuts at the crook of each arm, so he moved down his forearm to one of the blue veins trailing under his skin on the inner side. With gritted teeth, he sliced it lengthwise and forced himself to feel the fiery burn and to watch as the blood oozed and dripped. His head grew feather light, his thoughts woozy, but if he averted his eyes, he’d end up unconscious again. When the blood grew into a substantial pool on the tile, possibly half a pint there on the floor, he applied pressure to the throbbing wound. It took half a dozen Band-Aids to patch himself up, but he hid them under his shirtsleeve and then went to Katya.
She’d sat up in his bed, a healthy pink returning to her cheeks. Again, he felt it—the excruciating pleasure of simply seeing her and knowing there was no way he could keep her. He’d never felt that about his ex, and the knowledge left him cold, almost as frigid as she’d been when he’d found her.
She frowned at whatever she saw on his face and gulped. “Fedir left me a letter in the box with the gun. It’s probably still in the living room.”
He waited to see if she would say more, but her silence made it clear she meant for him to go get this box. He returned with it and offered it to her. She held up both her palms and wagged one at him—an invitation.
He set the box on the bed, rifled through paperwork that named the man nearly everything other than Fedir Antipin, and found the unmarked envelope. “This?”
She nodded.
He skimmed over the letter. Chert. So many confessions. What a mind fuck—the man had been trying to start over, reform himself for Katya. But he’d done it in the stupidest way possible.
“He double dealt with Lisko.”
She offered him a rueful smile. “Apparently.”
“So he really had broken the rules.” Nikolai stopped short of saying he got what he deserved.
“Yes.”
There was something different about Katya, a new calm, a steady determination rather than the mara’s frenzied desperation. It made him hopeful.
“Now that you’ve seen the truth in his own hand, what does the mara want?”
She took a deep breath, her lovely breasts lifting inside one of the sweaters he’d bought her. “You were right, Nikolai. I have to find another way. I’ll stay here and read up on maras online. The most important thing is that you get Dariya somewhere safe.”
Another way.
A second wave of relief washed over him, just as powerful as finding them alive minutes earlier. Katya had come around. She was going to be civil and humane. She was going to be the woman he believed her to be, not the monster she believed to be more powerful than herself. He almost lunged for her, to pour kisses of pride into her, to second everything Fedir had said in his tragic farewell letter. But hell—the things she’d just learned.
“Do you hate him now?” When Nikolai had learned Alisa knew the full extent of the truth, she’d begged him to conceal in the doping story, and he’d instantly ceased to love her.
“No,” Katya said. “How could I hate him?”
“He lied. He sold illegal drugs for a living.”
She sniffed, nodding, the red rimming her eyelids now just as noticeable as her blood-pinkened cheeks. “But he also loved me, and he was trying to change.”
“Aren’t you mad?”
“I’m furious at him for lying, and…” She blew out a breath, not sounding at all angry.
Nik noticed he was holding his own. What was he hoping to hear? Some confession that she found him more lovable and honorable than Fedir? It wouldn’t solve any of his problems. Still…fuck. He was actually jealous of a dead gangster who’d failed her in the bedroom. This was bad, and it was going to get ugly when she was gone.
He forced himself to inhale. “Furious, and…?”
“Proud?” She shrugged, turning toward him abruptly, and he wanted to gather her up, but she kept moving, hopping off the bed, striding past him toward his sock drawer—apparently, she helped herself now. Like a far-flung tangent to their conversation, that detail fanned some tiny spark in his chest. Chert. That should not make him happy.
He gritted his teeth and took hold of her shoulder. “Katya, he was a criminal, a kidnapper and murderer who took a fancy to you. It’s kind of creepy really, though I’m damn glad he saved you. Why are you proud of him?”
“No. I’m proud that he loved me so much.” Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she covered her mouth with the flat of her hand.
The gesture, the words, they brought him to an instant boil. The words flew out of his mouth like a speeding steam engine, barreling forward with a force and will of their own. “And what about me? I’ve been doing my damndest to show you…” What, that he was in love with her?
“Show me what?” A crease formed between her brows, but her lips hinted at a nascent smile.
She was a ghost. She was leaving. Like Alisa, like Sofiya. The L-word wouldn’t form on his tongue. “I lo—I like having you here.”
The smile bloomed into indulgent amusement. “I’ve liked being here. It’s…no, you…” She put her hand over her heart. “You’ve helped me so much. I’ll be forever grateful.”
Forever. It was not a word he used to quantify any sentiment toward a woman, and it took on a strange meaning when spoken by a ghost trying to win her passage into the afterlife. And yet he could sympathize with Fedir. One look at Katya, and a man’s very nature could shift.
A rap sounded on the door. “I’m ready, Kolya.”
Chert. His niece had shit timing.
Cro-Magnon that he was, he longed to be the one to finally persuade Katya how fucking perfect she was. But Fedir and his letter from the grave had hijacked that train. Nik wanted to take hold of her chin and force her to look at him. Surely she would see the things he’d proven unable to say. But her ruler-straight spine and raised chin warned him to keep his hands at his side.
“You need to get Dariya out of here, and I need to find a way to satisfy the mara. And then I’ll be gone and you can get on with your life.”
Dariya knocked again. “Hey. Don’t mind me, just hanging out here in mortal danger.” She began to whistle.
Katya skirted around Nikolai and yanked open the door to reveal Dariya wea
ring her coat and boots, a small duffel bag in hand. Something about her face had changed—she must have taken the pills, because her features were uncharacteristically quick to smile, and it made her seem smaller and younger.
She was right. It was time to go. He ruffled her spiky pink hair. “Just give me a second.”
Gently, he closed the door in his darling niece’s face and turned back to his ghost.
Like a predator lunging for prey, she struck lightning fast, grabbing hold of his lapels and bringing his head down to hers.
He expected a quick kiss, a farewell before a brief parting—he was coming right back, after all. But as she kissed him, one hand went around the back of his head, holding him firm and tight. She began a deep exploration of his mouth, like the first kiss they’d enjoyed.
He poured himself into her, his mind filling with her scent, the slick slant of her mouth under his, warm and open and hungry. It must have been her siren powers, because Lisko and Dariya and hundreds of cancer victims faded from his mind. There was only Katya, her kiss, her body, and the desperate desire to keep her forever.
She pulled back, leaving him breathless. “Now, off with you.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I’ll fix this.” He pulled Fedir’s gun from his waistband and set it beside her. “Stay safe.”
“You know”—she smoothed her sweater down over her belly—“last time being rescued by a knight in shining armor didn’t work out so well for me.”
He scoffed, crossing his arms and leaning against the door in case doped-up Dariya tried to come in. “Lucky for you, I’m Batman, and my armor does not shine. But I take your point. We’ll fix it together.”
Maybe Katya didn’t know enough about comic book superheroes to realize Batman was essentially a vigilante. Is that what he would become for her? And could he live with himself afterward?
She reached for his collar and smoothed it over his lapels. “I have this sneaking suspicion Batman is way hotter in bed than any white knight. And he knows more naughty stuff than Superman.” She blushed, a tiny grin ghosting over her lips.
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