Page 118 of Untamed Beast
“Don’t youdaretalk about them. I can see why you never did for all of those years. Because you were guilty of their deaths.” My voice cracks on a sob.
He nods at Leks. “Who knows who you would have opened your legs for, if you would sleep with scum like this?”
The awful glint in his eye brings everything he’s done into focus.
This is who he has been all along.
Even as he’s about to meet his death because of his own actions, he can’t help insulting me further.
“Give me the knife,” I demand, the rage turning the blood in my veins into icy vengeance.
Leks slides the cold metal handle into my hand. With a scream, I plunge the blade deep into my father’s chest. I can feel it cut through layers of fat, muscle and sinew until it hits his heart.
A trail of blood runs from the corner of his mouth, his eyes going blank. He’s still breathing, in shallow, rasping breaths. Not dead yet, but in pain.
Good.
“Goodbye, Papa. This is for Fyodor and Pyotr.”
He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a bubble of blood. I don’t have the slightest interest in hearing whatever it was.
I wrench the knife from his chest and pass it to Leks. “Your turn.”
“You’re sure,zolotse?”
I think of my mama downstairs, pretending that everything is fine. She’ll miss my father. I’ve never wanted to hurt my mama…but there’s no point protecting people who have never done the same for me.
I meet Leks’s blazing eyes. “I’m sure.”
He slips his fingers through mine. I don’t flinch, or close my eyes, as he tears my father’s throat open with one slow drag of the blade.
No, I don’t feel anything but relief as I hold my husband’s hand tight and watch the life drain out of my father’s eyes.
37
NATALIA
One month later…
It was easy to take Leks back after thinking he was dead. I was so consumed with relief that all I wanted was to prove to myself that he was really here.
…it’s harder to trust him again.
I keep thinking he’s going to leave me alone and carry out some plan I don’t know about. I still shake when I remember those hours that I waited for him to return and he didn’t. He was in danger and I had no idea. He could have died. I thought he had.
We’ve moved into my family’s home. It feels familiar but not. I’m an entirely different person from the girl who lived here.
The house is different too. Leks doesn’t trust my father’s staff. He wanted to fire them all, but I told him to put them on paid leave until Yuri could do background checks on them all. It’s a slow process, but we’ve finally got a cleaner back.
Mama has moved out. She practically fainted when we came downstairs that day, covered in blood, Leks needing serious medical attention for his burns and smoke inhalation.
Still, I knew it was better to rip the bandaid off.
My mother had been living a lie the same way I had, and she needed to hear the truth.
When she’d calmed down from the initial shock, we sat her down and told her the truth. She pretends not to hear us, not to understand, for an entire week, not speaking to either of us. Until finally, she dragged me into the living room and made me tell her everything I know about my father’s involvement in my brother’s deaths.
That sent her into a spiral. So much that she’s moved into one of the Manhattan apartments instead of the mansion where I grew up. She said it was too much to stay here with all the memories of my father, to be looking at the physical reminder that she believed a lie for all those years.
