“Why isn’t her name Koslov? She wasn’t married, was she?” I don’t have much dealings with staff at my various businesses, but I should have known if Bratva royalty was working right under my nose.
“Her parents changed their name to King to fit in before Beth was born.” This makes sense. From what Finn’s been able to learn about Beth and her parents, it seemed like they had nothing to do with the family business. If they wanted to go straight, it would be wise to not have such a recognizable name.
This seems like a good segue to pick at what she said earlier about not having family. “What about your parents?”
She slides off my lap to face me, and I feel the powerful urge to snatch her back. “Just a mom. She’s not a bad mom, I just don’t think she was meant to have a kid. By the time she was a practicing doctor, she never had time to meet anyone, so had me on her own from a donor. I think she thought shehadto have a kid. Like it was part of life’s rubric, and she was always an overachiever. And now, we’re more like longtime acquaintances than mother and daughter.”
There isn’t malice in her words, but there are hints of sadness and loneliness. My family is my whole identity. What must it be like to not have that?
She shifts uncomfortably on the ground. “What about you? Do you visit your dad often?” Her voice rises in pitch, like she’s trying to keep the conversation light.Ha.
“He died six months into his sentence. Killed himself.” There’s no mincing words, only the truth. Only justice.
I dread her pity, her condolences, her awkwardness with the ugly facts. Instead, she just says, “Shit.”
I can’t help but laugh at her unexpected response.
“Why are you laughing?” She swats my arm.
“No reason,” I say through a poorly held back grin.
“Did you get to see him before he—”
“Smashed his head into concrete?” She winces but nods.
“Yes, the day before. He’d been in solitary for six months1. He was a fucking ghost. Just a shell of the man he once was. It was the first time I’d been able to talk to him since he went inside. Found out later from a guard that he was there twenty-four hours a day. He got one meal, no lights, no furniture except a toilet, no bedding, nothing. It deteriorated his mind.”
Harlow’s brows furrow and she looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t. So I continue. “He wasn’t talking much sense, like his muscles forgot how to form words. But he was clear about one thing. He made me promise that I would never let my brothers or myself get locked up.” I fight the knot twisting in my throat, my palms aching to find comfort in the feel of her—I reach out and set my hand on her knee, and she covers it with her own. The ruckus in my chest settles.
“And the next day he bashed his head in until he passed out. He trusted me to leave with that promise.” I look her in the eyes, needing her to know that a future with me will not be behind bars, one way or another. “I will die before I break that promise.”
She nods and squeezes my hand. She doesn’t say anything, but then again what do I want her to say? The only people other than my brothers who know how my father really went are all dead. It’s a privilege to hold this information. And not one I want her to receive with platitudes.
We continue going through photos, no words seeming sufficient to follow my declaration. Stuffed suitcases and trash bags surround our little circle on the bedroom floor. Photo prints fan out in front of us. I keep an eye on Harlow’s sympathetic nervous system reactions so I can stop an anxiety attack in its tracks.
So I notice right away when her breathing stutters, a sharp gasp that lodges in her throat. Her eyes go round, and a hint of pink begins to color her cheek.
“What is it?” I spin next to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. My eyes are glued to the emotion flitting over her face.
“I think I found him.” Her voice is hollow and far away. I look at the photo in her hands, and my heart picks up to a stampede.
It’s a photo of Beth, maybe three years old, and there’s a young, white boy around the same age with his arm wrapped around her shoulder—similar to how I have mine around Harlow now. They are both smiling at the camera with matching blond hair and squinting into the sun. The boy’s hand dangles over her shoulder, and my attention locks on the reddish-purple mark covering the back of his hand.
“Tell me that’s not Doug,” Harlow says flatly, even though we both know this isn’t a coincidence.
The photo is over twenty years old, but I can easily see the boy in the photo aging up to the man from Peaches. And the eerily similar birthmark? There’s no doubt.
Instantly, my mind races to make sense of this new development. If this kid is related to the Bratva, how did I not know about him? I have intel on every active member in the city, and many beyond that. And if he killed Beth, why the fuck did the Bratva act like it was me when it was an inside job?
Thoughts bounce around my head like a goddamn ping-pong ball, and I squeeze my eyes shut to try and drown out the unhelpful ones to focus on what’s important. The one thing I know for certain is that lying Russian oaf is getting a visit, and it won’t be pleasant.
1.Being submitted to solitary confinement for longer than 15 consecutive days is considered a form of torture by the United Nations. Despite this, tens of thousands of people in America are in solitary confinement everyday. Sometimes for months or even years. In some cases as long as 25 years. Like all facets of the prison system, solitary confinement disproportionately affects people of color. Resources and organizations fighting to abolish solitary confinement as a practice: www.afsc.org/resource/solitary-confinement-facts and unlocktheboxcampaign.org
Chapter twenty-two
Seventeen
Harlow