Page 171 of Jace
It won’t happen.
Ruslan may never break, not in front of his soldiers and sons, but Iwillbend him.
“Forgiveness.” I let go of Vivian’s hand, trusting her safety beside Nick and Zar before I’m looming in front of the devil. His blood. His biggest. The beneficiary of his brutality. “It’s what you really want, isn’t it…Father? It’s why you’re really here.”
I search his eyes, finding cracks in his ice. A crevasse of pain he can’t hide, as deep and daunting as the valley of death.
“You don’t want my kidney. You know you won’t survive the surgery.” I lift my nose. “I smell death on you, old man. It’s coming for you. It comes for us all: the great equalizer. The question is, when it finds you, will you find eternal light or darkness?”
There it is; what he really believes.
It flashes across his yellowed eyes. His final thought before his last breath. “And you know the only way to light is through forgiveness. You need to be forgiven.”
I search.
I swallow.
I sense the little boy in the dark trunk.
He was so scared.
Before he lifts the lid and finds the light.
“I forgive you, Father.” It shocks me as much as it does him. Humility floods his stare seeing the truth in mine. “And I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it formyson one day. This ends withmypeace. Pray you find yours.”
An exhale liberates my heart. A cycle finally broken. Freedom never felt so good. Power so permanent.
“Prostite menya,” he mumbles.Forgive me.Foreign words in his native tongue.
Never thought I’d hear them.
“Say it to everyone,” I order, and he flinches, nostrils flaring. It’s too much to ask, but we didn’t come this far. I won’t give up. There are too many little lives at risk. “Then say we have a deal. Say we have peace.”
He straightens, tugging his black jacket, a stubborn skeleton in a suit. He can’t decide if he should shoot us or slither away. Some sins die hard.
“Say it, dying man.” I reach, barely touching his chest. “Say the only words that may save your soul.”
He steps back, faltering. As if I’m Death, come for him now. His final moment reflected in my eyes. His last breath can be painful or peaceful.
With one look at me, then Sasha, then his sons, he addresses our mom. “It is a deal…Nadia.”
He’s never said her Christian name. Not once. Not that I’m aware. And he said it in English.
When I look at our mom, I’m right.
He’s acknowledged her identity. Her injury. Her survival. Her victory.
She’s too powerful to blink in reply, to give him a single thing after he tried to take so much from her.
And lost.
But it’s done.
With a wavering pivot, he turns for his guards. The soldier I recognize from Palm Beach takes his arm, steadying him as he leaves.
But not before Ruslan barely cranes his neck, glancing over his shoulder at me. “You will be a good father, Jasha.”
He says it in Russian, loud enough for the room to hear. It wasn’t meant for just me. It was meant for all of us.
