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“I’ll probably still want to kill him.”
She chuckles. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe you’re so angry with him because you love him?”
I grimace. “I… That’s not… He?—”
Mom holds up a hand. “Love isn’t something you can turn on and off like a faucet, sweetheart.”
I flinch. She said the same thing to me not long ago about my father.
“Once you and Arsen talk, you might realize that you do still love him. And you’ll have to make a choice: anger or love. Both are valid feelings, but only one will keep you warm at night.”
“How can I forgive this?”
“With time,” she suggests. “Forgiveness is never easy, but maybe that’s why it’s worth doing. If not for Arsen, then for yourself. For Nina.”
“What if I regret it?” I whisper. “What if I let him in again and he hurts me?”
“You’ll regret the things you don’t do a lot more than the things you do,” she says. “Trust me. I’ve lived a long life, and I’m leaving with no regrets.”
“What about those bangs you gave yourself before your high school prom? I saw the pictures. They were awful.”
She laughs, and for a second, she looks like herself—not sick, not dying. JustMom. “Okay, so maybe I have one regret.”
My smile wobbles, but I can’t stop myself from asking the question burning on the tip of my tongue. Maybe because I’m slowly starting to accept that we don’t have a lot of time left. “What about marrying Dad?”
Her smile grows wider as tears fill her eyes. “Oh, honey, of course I don’t regret marrying him.”
“Because you’ve forgiven him?”
She presses a kiss to my forehead, and my childhood flashes before my eyes. Peanut butter sandwiches and messy watercolors on the porch. Gloria Estefan on the radio and a lopsided hammock in the backyard.
“Because he gave me you.”
6
ARSEN
“We should’ve hidden the knives.”
Polina peeks through the front windows the same way she’s done multiple times per hour since I first told her I was bringing Laila and Nina home. “You’d deserve it.”
“On second thought,” I say, “maybe I should hide the knives from you, too.”
She sniffles proudly. “As long as you treat that girl well, you have nothing to worry about from me.”
I don’t say it, but even by that metric, I might have something to worry about.
Headlights turn through the main gate, and Kira appears behind Polina, poking her head over her shoulder to see through the front door. “Dominik just texted. They’re almost here.”
“Finally. I thought they’d be here hours ago,” Polina grumbles.
“She stopped to see Marie first.”
Not that either one of my men had given me any explanation. They were supposed to bring Nina and Laila straight from the airport to my doorstep. But, considering the circumstances, I’m willing to let this small act of insubordination slide. Call it an olive branch.
But as the gates open and the Escalade purrs up the drive, I have a sense my olive branch is about to be set on fire and flung straight back at my head.
Gedeon is the first one out. Polina and Kira pull him in for hugs. He nods at me from between their shoulders. The last couple months have left his hair shaggy and a dusting of stubble on his jawline. His eyes have changed, too, though fuck me if I can figure out how, exactly.
