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“Have a safe flight, Emily.”
“I will. And please, have as much fun as you still can on this trip without me, okay?”
She clutches me tight, and I wonder if she’ll ever let go. Finally, she releases me, putting her hand on the hood of the taxi waiting to bring her back to the hotel. “Text me when you land.”
“Like you won’t just creep on my flight details online,” I smile.
Nadia’s smile smooths as it hovers between becoming a frown. “Just do it, okay?”
“I will,” I assure her.
Hooking my hand on my bag, I drag it through the airport. My eyes zero in on the Hello Kitty bag tag, and I feel tears threatening to pour from my eyes again.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You can’t cry right now.
The flight is packed,and boarding becomes a blur of bodies and multiple voices overlapping each other. I’m in my own world, acting on instinct as I make my way to my seat.
“Mama! Aspetto!”
A bell-clear giggle shakes me from my stupor. Across the way, in a row of three, is a small girl with her face pressed to the window. Her curly brown hair is pulled into two space buns, but the slightly older girl beside her has left hers wild and loose. They look so much like each other.
Their mother, in the aisle seat, leans over to peer out the window. She smiles at both of them and says something in Italian. Whatever it is, it has both girls laughing with her.
She leans over and kisses them both on the forehead. Across the row from them, her husband leans over and musses both girls’ hair.
I can feel their love from where I sit. But it doesn’t make me smile the way it does the little girls. Watching a family together like this, happy and thriving and whole, is killing me.
Olivia and I never saw our parents like these little girls do.
I brace myself as if the plane is already in the sky. My muscles tremble with such violence I bite down in a desperate search for stability. The engines begin to turn, and the girls cheer. They get louder when their mother reaches over to wrap her arms around them both in a hug.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
But I can’t stop myself anymore.
Wet droplets fall onto my joggers. I scrub at the damp marks, but the floodgates have opened and can’t be closed again.
Everything that was sealed away starts bursting through.
The two little girls turn silent as they watch me. Their wide, curious, ever-innocent eyes remind me too much of a time when I still had my sister in my life.
Olivia and I would have done the same: gawk at the strange woman sobbing on the plane. We would have felt bad because she was sad … and she was alone.
I don’t want their trip to be marred by my misery. Turning away, I lean into the window, curling on myself with my hood over my face. My tears stain the fabric, remaining wet against my cheek as a constant reminder of what I’ve lost.
And what I’ll never get back.
10
KONSTANTIN
Sima is waitingfor me outside of the Zebra Club by the time I arrive. The neighborhood around the establishment is quiet now that morning has come. And to my mounting fury, there’s not a goddamn person to be seen.
Without bothering to kill the engine, I step out of the Lamborghini and slam the door shut.
“My pakhan,” Sima greets me with a quick bow and hands me a submachine gun along with a belt of grenades.
“Where the fuck is he?” I demand as I chamber a round. “Did he even pick up the fucking call?”
