Page 43 of Keeping My Enemies Closer: Pt. 2

Chapter 22

Kasimir~

After we’d gotten the names of the two men from Marcelle, there’d been no need to keep Zoya there any longer, so I’d taken her home, leaving Viktor and Aurora to finish the job.The entire ride home, she hadn’t said a word, but I could only imagine how conflicted she must be feeling, and that’s why I wasn’t a fan of emotions.

Emotions complicated the simplest of things, and remorse was probably the worst of them.People did a lot of things in the heat of anger, or made idiotic decisions in the name of love, but once they were thinking clearly again, remorse was always there to greet them, and that was the shit that kept you up at night.Depending on the transgression, that shit could also last for the rest of your life.

So, right now, that was my greatest concern.I was worried that Zoya’s insistence was going to come back to haunt her, and I didn’t want that for her.It also didn’t matter that we hadn’t needed to torture Marcelle in order to get her to talk.When Aurora had stabbed that knife into her thigh, Zoya had visibly paled, and it’d taken everything in me not to drag her back home.That experience was going to stay with her forever, whether she wanted it to or not.

Walking into the house, I followed Zoya to the kitchen, and I didn’t say anything as she grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator, and it still warmed my heart to watch her make herself at home here.Little by little, she was getting used to the idea of us, and what more could a man like me ask for?

“How are you holding up?”I finally asked, having waited for her to take a healthy drink from the bottle.

Looking at me from across the kitchen island, she said, “I’m not sure.It all still feels...it still feels like it’s not real.”

“Which part?”

“All of it,” she answered.“I mean...it’s everything, Kasimir.How in the world did two regular customers turn out to be men willing to steal and kill for money?I...I just feel so naïve right now.I feel like a...a side character in my own movie.I feel like...I don’t know.I feel like...like I’ve moved to another country and have no clue of what’s happening around me because I’m not familiar with the language or culture.”She shook her head as she let out a heavy sigh.“I just...I never imagined that...they seemed like just normal people.”

“You’d be surprised at what a man will do for the woman he loves,” I remarked with a shrug.

“You think Daryll did this for love?”she asked, trying so hard to make sense of it all.

“Honestly, probably not,” I replied candidly.“Marcelle mentioned their relationship too casually for it to be anything more than a mutual hookup.My guess is that he did it for the money, though life in prison is a huge risk for fifty-thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, but money is relative,” she stated.“While fifty-thousand dollars isn’t a big deal to you, it might be life-changing for Daryll and Jim.”

“And what of Marcelle?”I asked.“How are you feeling about that?”

After a few seconds, she said, “You were right about how it’s possible to become conflicted when it’s actually happening.I thought my anger would keep me focused, but when she started begging for the life of her parents, all I could think about was how I’d met them and had spoken to them many times.”She let out another sigh, and I hated seeing her so troubled.“I also don’t understand it.I should have wanted it to be an eye-for-an-eye.I shouldn’t care if her parents were killed, not after everything that she caused.”

“There is nothing wrong with having compassion, Zoya,” I told her, though that philosophy didn’t necessarily work for a man in my position.

“I also hadn’t expected Aurora to...I mean, I know it sounds stupid, but I’d been expecting a...a warning or something,” she said, making me chuckle a bit.“I just...I hadn’t seen that coming.”

“Like I’ve said, Aurora is something else,” I grinned.“And I can’t imagine that pregnancy is doing anything to soften her disposition.”

“I guess I just...I don’t know,” she sighed.“I think I just need to...to process.”

“I imagine so,” I replied, trying my best to sound understanding and not condescending.

Nothing more was said as Zoya finished off her water, but when she was done, she said, “I want to be there when you guys...uhm, question Daryll and Jim.”

I was already shaking my head before she even finished her sentence.“Absolutely not,” I told her.“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“Kasimir-”

“Zoya, you could barely stand to see Aurora do something as simple as stab Marcelle in her thigh,” I pointed out.“Plus, you’ve just admitted to feeling sorry for her parents.”

“That’s different,” she argued.

“How do you figure?”I almost snapped, doing my best to have a reasonable conversation with her.“You think that not knowing them as well as you knew Marcelle makes a difference?”

“It’s not that,” she replied.“Unlike Marcelle, these men actually hurt me, Kasimir.They shot and killed my mother.They shot me and left me for dead.That’s a different kind of anger.”

“While I can appreciate that, they’re still human beings, Zoya,” I reminded her.“They’re still going to plead for their lives, and you’re not...that’s not anything that you need to experience.”

“They killed my mother, Kasimir,” she repeated.“I want to see them face-to-face for the same reason that I wanted to face Marcelle.”