Page 146 of Beautiful Obsessions
“For once, that worked in my favor.”
I took a slow breath.
“The bullet lodged near my spine.”
His expression changed.Just a little.Rage faltered under his horror.
“I don’t remember much after the shot.Pieces only.Hands on me.Someone cursing.Someone saying I was dead.Someone else saying I wasn’t.They carried me out like a corpse because that was what Viktor ordered them to do.”
My jaw tightened.
“They were supposed to dispose of me.”
Archie’s face drained further.
“But they didn’t.Instead, someone took me to Mama Marushka.”
The name moved through the room like an old ghost.
Mama Marushka.
She had not birthed us, but in the ways that mattered, she had helped raise us.She had fed us when our mother was locked in sadness and our father was locked in power.She had cleaned blood from our faces and slapped the backs of our heads when we behaved like animals.She had taught us which herbs brought down fever and which men in the household could not be trusted.
Archie’s throat shifted.
“She was alive?”
“She still is.”
His eyes sharpened.
I knew what that meant to him.Another ghost returned.Another grief undone.
“She had been hiding outside the city for years,” I said.“Bass knew.A handful of others knew.When Viktor ordered them to get rid of me, they took me to her instead.”
“And Bass?”
“He knew by morning.”
Archie absorbed that like another blow.
“Bass knew.”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t tell me.”
“He was protecting you, Archie.”
Archie’s eyes flashed again.
“Everyone keeps saying that, but you can’t keep protecting me from the truth!”He roared.
I said nothing.
He looked at me with open hurt now, and there was no enemy in the world I had faced that frightened me more than that expression.
I could take rage.Rage had shape.Rage gave a man something to fight.But this?This was a brother looking at me like I had joined the list of people who had abandoned him.I had no defense against it.
