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Even after all these years, he still had power over her.
I feel like it is repeating itself with Elanee.
“Don’t grind your jaw,” she reprimands me.
I offer her a polite smile as I grab the tea again, having not realized I’d been doing it.
There are so many things I want to ask her about my father. So many times when I was younger that I mistakenly had, but I wanted an inside into his mind more than ever now. I’d played this game with him for so long now, thinking that I had the upper hand as I dominated and destroyed parts of his empire. But all along, he’d had something precious of mine, and I hadn’t even known.
“You seem distant today,” my mother casually says before taking another sip of her tea. I look up at her then. Into the same blue eyes I’d been blessed with instead of my father’s brown. Sometimes, I could see simply by her gaze when she was having moments of clarity. It was a rarity amidst her flighty or whirlwind type of days. When it did happen, it often reminded me of the serene, eerie sense of being in the eye a storm, right before everything was about to be destroyed.
Days like this when she sees and speaks clearly instead of confused and frightened. But I couldn’t share with her what hinders me, especially when it’d put her back into a spiral.
“Does it have to do with your father?” she asks.
My throat constricts. I hate how she reads me like that. Always has an unyielding sharp eye. How many years had it been since she’d mentioned him? Even acknowledged his existence.
“No.”
“You’ve always been a bad liar,” she says, staring into her tea.
Unfortunately for her, I’d become a very good one. But I supposed there were some things a mother caught onto.
It remains quiet for a few minutes when she says. “Stay away from that world, Dmitri. The Bratva is dangerous, and your father is the worst.” She’s looking at nothing in particular, and I want to bring her back to me, aware of how quickly memories trigger her. That exact same line is one she repeated to me as a child all the way through to my early teens when I realized I should stop asking about him.
When she begins that spiral, it’s often too hard to get her back, and right in front of me I can see her being pulled into horrible memories that not even I’ll ever be able to fathom. In a split second, her face shifts into Elanee’s, and I can’t help but be stricken with the same fear.
“I met a girl,” I say.
The haze snaps away as she looks at me, blinking multiple times, her attention suddenly clear. She can see me now. But it doesn’t take away the weight that rests on my chest.
“Really? What’s she like?” she asks, trying to force a smile.
Stay away from that world, Dmitri.
The Bratva is dangerous.
And your father is the worst.
I might’ve stopped asking about him then, but my hatred for him never stopped. The only thing I looked forward to growing up was becoming big enough to hurt him in all the ways he hurt my mother and me.
For almost thirty years, he’s haunted us, and my sole focus is to end this cycle.
Yet somehow, I’ve never felt weaker in my life.
Vulnerability leaves a distasteful impression.
34
DMITRI
Ilean against the doorframe with my arms crossed against my chest as I watch Katniss tuck my mother into bed. My mother has already begun sweating, and Katniss dabs a cloth on her forehead. I hope that her guess of my father’s involvement wasn’t the trigger, but I know it most likely is.
My grandfather places a hand on my shoulder. “Come, boy, let’s have a cigar.”
I’m reluctant to leave my mother, but know there’s nothing I can do for her. I can’t fight her monsters. Not here, anyway. At least we got through most of dinner and the evening, and I hope those memories are what she clings to from today.
I follow my grandfather to the rose garden courtyard that I’d only sat in with my mother hours before. He takes a seat and pulls out two cigars from his pocket alongside a flask. “What’s that look for? You think you got your drinking habits from college?” He smirks, takes a swig and hands it over to me.
