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He trailed off. I knew he was thinking of Olya, safe and sequestered away as she finished up her final semester of college in Hungary. This was all the more personal to him, as a father, but right now, all I could think about was taking revenge.
"We need to make him pay for what he did to her," I snarled. Maxim narrowed his eyes at me.
"You think that’s going to help?"
"He needs to pay," I repeated myself. I wasn’t thinking about what would make things better, not clearly. I just wanted to beat the shit out of that old man for what he had done to her, that pathetic monster who had sold his own daughter to pay his debts. I couldn’t think of anything more evil than that in the world.
"We need to talk to her about this," Maxim warned me, sensing that I was about to fly off the handle. "She doesn’t need us—"
"I’m going to track down that motherfucker and make him pay for what he did to her," I told him, and I turned on my heel and stormed out of this office. I could hear Maxim calling my name behind me, trying to get me to think this through, but there was no way I was going to stop now. Not when I knew what he had done to her, and not when I knew how much he deserved to pay for it.
Chapter Sixteen – Mina
Holding a glass of wine in my hand, I perched on the edge of the couch and looked out into the city laid out below us.
It was hard, at times like this, not to think about my father. I was worried about him, despite all the shit he had put me through, despite the mess that he had made of my life. I knew he couldn’t cope without me, and it worried the hell out of me to imagine what he must have been going through without me around to look out for him.
Crazy, right? I should have been well and truly done with him. I should have been glad to have gotten out from under the weight of his addiction, under the pressure they put on me. I had managed to get out, and these men who had found me, who had taken me in, they had shown me more kindness than he had in a long time.
But I had grown so used to caring for him, and, beneath everything he was, everything he had become, I could still see the memory of the man I had known when I was growing up. The one who hadn’t been eaten alive by the temptations that surrounded him, the way he cared for me and loved me and protected me.
I knew that man would never have dreamed of doing what my father had done to me. He would have been horrified at the very thought of it, horrified at the notion of selling me into the property of men he didn’t even know. I sometimes found myself wondering if he even remembered what he had done to me, or if he’d just woken up one morning to find me gone with no idea what had happened.
Or if he knew. And he just drank himself into a stupor to live with the guilt.
The floorboards creaked behind me, and I jumped, turning around to see Maxim standing there, looking at me.
"Mind if I join you?" he asked. I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to have him so close to me, when all I could think about right now was my father.
But I supposed I would have to tell them about what had happened to me at some point or another. I had been growing closer to both of them physically—whatever that meant. If they were jealous of each other or not, I had no idea, and maybe it was time I did the same thing emotionally.
"Sure," I replied, gesturing to the seat next to me. He planted himself down a few inches from me, giving me my space. He seemed to sense I was all up in my head right now, and I appreciated the distance.
"Something on your mind?" he asked me. I lifted the wine to my lips, taking a long sip. Could I tell him? I knew it would change how he looked at me. I knew it would probably give him reason to be furious with my father. There was still a part of me that wanted to protect him from the anger I was sure would come crashing down on his head if I came clean, but still …
"Yeah," I confessed, glancing over at him, then looking away quickly. "I … I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad."
He tensed as though he had some idea what I was going to say.
"You have?" he replied, his voice even, almost pointedly so.
"Yeah," I sighed. "I … I’ve never spent this long away from him before. I … I’ve been really worried about him."
"Worried?" he prompted. "Why?"
I hesitated. Shit, did he need to know all of this? I wasn’t sure if there was any way I could spin this that would make me sound like anything other than a victim in this, and I didn’t want them looking at me like that. I didn’t want them seeing me as some girl who needed saving, even though that was basically exactly what they had done to me …
"He’s … He’s got a problem with drinking," I continued, finally, carefully. "He’s been an alcoholic for a long time. And on top of that, gambling, drugs, shit like that. I used to take care of him, make sure he got to bed okay, that he didn’t burn the house down with cigarettes or something when he was passed out, but now I’m not there …"
"I’m sure he can take care of himself," Maxim replied. All at once, I felt my eyes filling with tears, catching even myself off guard. I shook my head, my face crumpling.
"No," I replied, the word coming out like a sob. "I don’t think he can …"
"Hey, hey," Maxim murmured, leaning over to put his arms around me, holding me close. I pressed my face into his chest, clinging to him for dear life, like he was the only port in this crazy storm I was trying to navigate. Well, him and his stepbrother, at least.
"It’s okay," he murmured to me. I clung to him, sinking my fingers into his arms, making sure he was really here, and he wasn’t going to vanish into thin air on me.
"It’s not," I sobbed, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. "He … He was the one who did this to me, Maxim."
