18
Rafael
Itightened my grip around Isa’s waist and tugged her back, putting distance between her and the predator who stared at her as if she hung the moon in the sky and could be everything he ever needed.
She could only be that for one person, and it wasn’t the twisted little maggot who touched her sister as if her very existence wasn’t an insult to Isa. She could only be that forme.
“I believe this conversation has run its course,” I said, striving to keep all inflection out of my voice. To show my hand so clearly when Isa was safely tucked within my grasp would have been a foolish and pointless endeavor. Even if my need to maim and kill threatened to take away all my rational thought and left me cringing internally like one of Pavlov’s dogs waiting for a treat.
My treat just happened to be born of pain and suffering, of the blood and anguish of those who thought to claim what was mine.
“It is over when I say it's over,” Dima growled his warning, trailing a finger over Odina’s cheek. She shuddered in his grasp, faintly trying to pull away from him even though her eyes remained snared in that blank stare of hers that felt so similar to the way Isa looked when she retreated inside herself. “You haven’t asked me the most important question yet, Isa,” he said, twisting his lips into a smile as he turned his body toward Odina. He tugged her dark, greasy hair away from her neck, placing his mouth only a breath away from her ear and whispering something to her that we couldn’t hear.
Odina whimpered, pouting despite the blankness of her features and shaking her head from side to side.
“What question is that?” Isa asked, swallowing her fury. I felt the tremble of her limbs as she shook in my embrace, her need to do something to protect her sister making her body rebel against the inability to move.
Against her helplessness, and I was immediately reminded of her request to never be helpless again. I’d do everything in my power, give heranythingto make sure she never had to feel it. That she would never be the person sitting in that chair, restrained and resigned to the end of her life that was coming.
“What part of her will I send back to you?” he asked, touching his finger to a spot on the right of Odina’s neck. “She has a freckle here. Do you have a matching one, or is yours a mirror?” he asked. Isa squeezed her hand on my thigh, trying to communicate something to me silently.
Isa reached up to the left side of her own neck, touching the freckle there. It was the largest one on her body, the most noticeable in the sea of them that I’d counted in the time since I’d started watching her.
“A mirror, then,” Dima said with a self-assured smile, and Alejandro and I exchanged a glance.
“Who do you know that is a twin?” Isa asked the question rattling in my brain. To my knowledge, none of the Kuznetsov children had been twins. I couldn’t remember a single one thinking back to my knowledge of the family I did my best to avoid.
Dima leaned forward, turning his head to the left and touching the birthmark on the side of his jaw line. The faint stubble disguised the darker skin, but he tapped it pointedly before returning those same digits to his mouth again and tapping his bottom lip. “Oleg was always the weakest of my father’s sons. He was too soft, preferring to cuddlekittensrather than teach them to betigers.”
“What did you do to him?” Isa asked, the sinking horror written into the side of her face matching the storm I felt inside me.
In all the times the Kuznetsovs had visited my father,Oleghad not been with them.
“I put his head beneath the water during our evening bath. I hardly remember it now, of course, but I have never regretted it for a moment. The weak have no place in this world. Much like your sister,” he said, reaching over to the table and grabbing the knife off of it.
He touched it to Odina’s throat, drawing a whimper from the young woman who looked like nothing more than a girl with the glint of a blade against her skin. All traces of her hatred for the world were gone in the face of her potential death.
“Don’t,” Isa said, her voice a command and steady despite the wavering in her body. She wanted nothing more than to do what she could to help Odina, but there wasnothing. Even if I would have allowed her to give herself up for someone who didn’t deserve it, the baby made that an impossibility.
“Then come to me,” Dima said, raising an eyebrow. “I am more than happy to trade the weak twin formi reina.” The sound of my name for Isa on his lips was wrong on a fundamental level, making a shudder go through my body.
“I can’t do that,” Isa said. “But if you return her to me, I’ll convince Rafael to let you live. Surely your life is worth the return of one girl you don't even want?”
“Ah,??? ?????,even your pussy is not good enough to convince a man to give up his thirst for blood,” Dima laughed, digging the tip of his blade into Odina’s throat. Blood welled around the knife, trickling down her skin slowly. “Say goodbye to your sister, Odina.”
“No!” Isa yelled, lunging forward as Dima dragged his knife down over Odina’s throat. The video feed cut off, leaving just enough time to see the deep wound left at the side of her neck and the knife continuing the path.
Isa may not have had to watch the life leave her sister’s eyes, but the stillness in her body confirmed that she understood exactly what had happened.
That her sister was gone, her throat cut by a man obsessed after a day that never should have happened. There were no tears as Isa tried to wrap her mind around the turn of events, blinking as I shifted her in my lap until I could see her face.
Alejandro stood, pushing back his chair and leaving the office. He closed the door behind him and shut us in the silent room. If I couldn’t feel the expansion of her chest against mine, I would have wondered if she evenbreathed.
“This is your fault,” she mumbled, burying her face closer into my chest.
“I know,” I confirmed. “She was dead the moment I handed her over.”
“You don’t even care, do you?” she asked, pulling back to stare up at me. The first tear broke free from the maelstrom in her eyes and more followed in its wake as she watched me, waiting for my reaction.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t care that she’s dead. Dima saved me the trouble of having to do it myself, and he saved both of us the heartache of you having to find a way to live with what I did.” She released a strangled sob, her chest shaking with the force of it as she pressed her hand to her mouth and her chest lurched like she might be ill. I ran a soothing hand over her back, willing her to feel the truth in the words that would follow. “But I am sorry that it hurts you.”
She nodded, sniffling through the hand touching her face as the other joined the first. Leaning her head against my shoulder, she felt as lost as she’d been the day I found her.
Trapped in the shadow of the vindictive twin who seemed to haunt her even in the death that had been decided thirteen years prior.
Death came for us all.