But the voices kept on whispering. Stop never worked.
The door opened again. Remo stood on the threshold. He stepped inside and I shut up. Humming loudly made people think you were strange. I slowly lowered my hands. Blood and skin stuck under my nails from where I’d hurt my scalp. My pink polish had peeled off in places.
I was momentarily distracted by a red stain on Remo’s gray shirt.
“Did you kill Mom and Cody?” I asked.
Remo raised his eyebrows. Dad had always tried to hide everything bad from me, but Mom had told me everything. Remo was like Dad. He had the same dangerous glimmer in his eyes. They were killers. Mom said they were bad, but neither Dad nor Remo had hurt me. The nice men Mom had brought home, they had.
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
He crouched before me, meeting my gaze. The other men preferred to tower over me. He didn’t look sad or as if he felt pity for me. He looked as if he understood me.
“Why not?”
He smiled a strange smile. “Because they aren’t mine to kill.”
I didn’t understand.
“Would you be sad if your mother was dead?”
I looked down at my hands. I loved Mom. But I wasn’t sad. Sometimes I even hated her. “I’m a bad girl.”
“You’re trying to be a good girl so people hurt you less?”
I frowned then nodded.
“Don’t,” he said firmly.
I looked up.
“Don’t ever try to be good to people who hurt you. They don’t deserve it.”
I nodded because that’s what I thought was expected.
“Your father will be here in a couple of hours, Ekaterina. He’s going to take you home.”
“Home,” I repeated, testing the word. I remembered warmth and happiness. It seemed so far away, like the fairytales Dad loved to tell me.
He straightened and looked at me. “Nothing can break you unless you allow it. If you ever return to Vegas, you’ll get your chance to end it.”
I didn’t understand anything. My body was screaming for sleep but I fought it.
“We ordered pizza. You can have some.”
I nodded. Then my eyes darted to the TV attached to the wall across from the bed. Remo headed toward the nightstand and took the remote before handing it to me. I immediately turned it on and raised the volume. It was late so all movies were for adults. I stopped when I saw a familiar scene from the movie Alien.
A woman came in with a pizza carton and put it down beside me on the bed. “You’re going to have nightmares if you watch something like that,” she said to me.
“I like those nightmares,” I whispered.
“Become the nightmare even your worst nightmare fears, Ekaterina,” Remo said before he and the woman left. I turned the volume even higher and took a slice of pizza. I wasn’t really hungry but I stuffed it into my mouth.
My eyes burned with exhaustion but I forced them open, focused on the TV.
A knock sounded. I didn’t look away from the second Alien movie. They were doing an Alien movie marathon, and I felt like only if I kept my eyes on the screen would the voices and images stay away.
“Katinka,” Dad said softly.
I tore my eyes from the screen, my heart beating faster as I spotted Dad in the doorway, dressed in a black suit and light-blue tie. His face was edged with sorrow. Behind him stood Remo and Nino.
“Katinka?” The name he always used for me sounded wrong. He said it different. It felt different. I didn’t know the girl it belonged to anymore. I wasn’t her.
Dad came closer. He looked at me different too, as if he thought I was scared of him. Mom had said Dad was a bad man, that he hurt people, killed them, that he’d eventually do the same to her and me. But Dad had never hurt me, not like the men that Mom had brought home so I’d be nice to them.
I dropped the remote on the floor and stormed toward him. The air whooshed out of my lungs as I flung myself against him. He still wore the same Cologne I remembered and his clothes smelled faintly of cigars. He stiffened and didn’t hug me back. “I was bad,” I gasped out, hoping admitting it would make Dad forgive me.
“Katinka, no,” he murmured and then his arms wrapped tightly around me and he lifted me off the ground, clutching me against him. I buried my face against his throat. I felt like crying but I’d stopped crying a while ago. Now I couldn’t do it anymore, no matter how sad I was. He cupped the back of my head and rocked me like he’d done when I was really little.
He didn’t know what I’d done. If he knew, he’d be mad. Mom had told me over and over again, that Dad would be mad at me, not just at her. He would think I was dirty and bad for what I had to do.