Page 124 of Essence of Fear

How simple that sounded.

She didn’t think it was.

“I idolized him for a long time,” she said quietly.

Their father, she meant.

Kolya sighed. “That doesn’t change anything.”

He always saw things as black or white … a lot like Pav, too. Their minds were either made that way or broken that way. She couldn’t say quite the same about hers, but she would try to look at her brother’s pain in the same way he did, if only for him.

It wasn’t about her, after all.

“Do you want me to start again?” she asked, hitting the trigger on the machine and making it buzz.

Kolya chuckled. “Might as well.”

Viktoria went back to work. She’d taken a chair and room in her friend’s shop so that she could get out of the apartment more often. She never went back to her house—put it on the market, and watched it sell faster than she’d thought was possible.

Tattooing felt like home, though.

It was familiar.

An outlet.

She was halfway through the black and white cupola when Kolya cleared his throat and drew her attention to him again. She’d never known her brother to be very chatty—he simply wasn’t the type—but he seemed to have a lot to say today.

Or maybe he was like her …

Making an effort to be better.

Trying to do better.

Who fucking knew?

They were still Boykovs, right?

“What?” she asked.

“I heard, from a little bird—”

“Maya,” Viktoria said instantly.

Kolya scowled. “I did not say it was my wife.”

“Your wife is the only one who gossips to you because she is the only one you allow to gossip around you. You would never tell her to shut the hole in her face like you tell everyone else because then she might cry.”

His cheek twitched. “Maya never cries.”

“Because you have killed people for making her sad, Kolya.”

“But was I wrong, though?”

Oh, my God.

She had to send up a prayer in that moment to give her the strength not to laugh at her brother. She might have done exactly that if Kolya hadn’t looked entirely serious staring at her while he waited for a response. He literally thought it was a perfectly acceptable thing for him to kill someone simply because they upset his wife.

In fact, he’d do it for less.