Page 173 of Ruthless Sin
Not my father. Not Yelena. Not me.
Not anyone in that back room.
30
MILA
The folding knife has been in my hand a long time. I have not opened it since the corridor at Casa Lucia, but I have cleaned it, wiped the blade, and the scrap of his sleeve has been taken by Marco. The blade smells of cleaning oil now, not blood.
I have decided to go down. To be in the room where he can find me. I do not know what I want from him when he gets there. I know I am done being alone with what I am carrying and he is the only person in this house who knows the weight of it.
That is enough of a reason. That is the only reason I have.
I put on the chain at my throat under the high collar. I close my left hand around the knife. I walk down the stairs.
The library is empty. Cassia is in the medical wing with Sofia and Izzy. Sofia is stable. She woke this morning and said Izzy twice and asked for water and went back to sleep, and when they told me I sat on the edge of my bed and pressed my fist against my sternum and breathed until the shaking stopped.
The household has left the library to me tonight.
I sit in the chair Cassia gave me, the chair by the window, and the garden is going dark outside, the sun at the edge of the magnolia, the jasmine coming up strong in the heat the way itdoes after sundown. I lay the folding knife on the small table beside the chair. I open it. The blade catches the lamp.
I am armed. I am choosing to be here anyway. I am angry at him and I still want him and I do not know what to do with both things living in me at the same time except sit here and feel them.
I do not call him. I need him to come to me. I need it to be his choice.
His steps in the gallery. The cadence I have learned over weeks of listening for it, but slower tonight, careful, the slight unevenness that wasn’t there before the rescue. He is still hurt. My chest pulls with something I don’t want to name and I name it anyway.
Worried. Still angry.
He stops at the doorway of the library.
I do not turn my head. I look at the window. My jaw goes loose. A breath out through my nose. I do not speak.
He waits in the doorway.
My hands stay in my lap. I count one breath. Two. Three. Four.
The first verse ofTonkaya Ryabinaopens in my throat.
I have not sung this song since they took me. I have hummed it in the dark when I thought no one could hear. I have played it on the violin with the door closed. I have not been able to sing it to anyone except Yelena.
I open my mouth.
My voice comes out rougher than I expected, thick with rust, and my body has forgotten how to push air across vowels in the shape music wants. But my throat knows it. The way my body knew the violin before my hands could hold it, the way the song lived in the part of me that nothing took.
The first long note wavers and I let it. It hurts in a clean way, the way something hurts when it is finally allowed to. My voicefinds the next line and the next and then it catches on the high part, the part Yelena always held longest, and it cracks there and I do not stop. I sing to the end.
I stop.
I do not look at him. I look at the window. The garden is darker.
I can hear his breathing from where I’m sitting. Slow and hard, like a man holding himself very still. His hands are in my peripheral vision, flat on the black fabric of his pants. Halfway through the verse the right one has begun to shake. His jaw is locked. He has not made a sound. He has not crossed into the room. He is still at the threshold.
I look at him for the first time.
The cut at his eyebrow is closed, the skin still bruised at the edges. The tape at his ribs shows at the open collar of his shirt, white against the olive skin.
The skin under his eyes has gone gray and his mouth is set in a line it has held for days. His eyes find mine and they are the ones that live underneath everything else he shows the room, the ones I saw the moment he turned the canvas around, and I have done that to him and I know it and I came down anyway.
