Page 31 of The Breath Before Forever

Vera glanced up at him where she sat at his side on the leather loveseat that matched the doctor’s current chair. Between them, an ornately woven rug took the brunt of her tapping foot’s beat. “Yeah, you could have.”

There was a reason that Vaslav had been able to easily—and quickly—get his mother handled in a way that she wouldn’t fight too much. It was a system that had followed her since childhood. Not even long sleeves could hide the jagged layers upon layers of scar tissue that had started to creep down the centers of his mother’s palms.

Every time, the same way.

The thing was, that tended to be a mode of suicide that worked well when done properly. Natalia always did, of course, but she also craved attention. She would die happily in it, in fact. So every attempt to die had come with the selfish cost of a witness to bear the brunt of her pain.

Was it twisted?

Sick?

Was she?

He needn’t answer the obvious.

“What matters,” Nannessa said strongly, breaking Vera and Vaslav’s silent staring contest and his spiraling train of thoughts, “and that I’d like to get back to, was what I initially said. We shouldn’t do this.”

“It’s already been done,” Vaslav replied, unbothered and calm. “Here we are.”

“I meant, a visit with your mother. Listen, you make my work weeks any harder than they already are, and I’ll ship your mother’s file to someone in the west wing. Bart said he wouldn’t mind, and frankly, he said personally that neither would you. I don’t want to do that though. So keep it in mind for the next couple of minutes, okay?”

The fact that she used the head director’s first name, the highest member of a faculty panel that ran and handled the proceeds and profits of Roseville, meant they were close enough personally and professionally to do so. It led him to believe she was telling the truth, and her assumption about how he’d feel to have his mother sent to a twenty-four hour locked down ward wouldn’t hurt his feelings a bit, either.

“I don’t mind dealing with Natalia, if she thinks she’s getting something over on you she’s happy. That’s like playing with babies for me,” Nanessa said, almost smirking. “But she had another episode on Monday—snatched a safety knife from a cook’s helper in the kitchen.”

“Why would she ever be in the kitchen?” Vaslav questioned.

“I don’t think that happened there,” the woman hedged.

Ah.

Natalia’s games never ended. Not even in the madhouse.

“What man was she conning?” Vaslav asked.

Nanessa sighed, shifting her legs one over the other modestly, but it still gave the uncomfortable truth away, and she smacked her tongue off her teeth. “He was new ... and young.”

“And fired, I hope,” Vera muttered.

Oh, good. She had been following along. Vaslav hated when people couldn’t fill in the blanks to a simple damned conversation.

“And fired,” the doctor agreed. “Anyway, since she’s been here, Vaslav, she’s clung to the cry of her injustice. To anyone who wants to listen, by the way. It’s your fault; you’ve locked her up; her son is a monster.”

All the while, Vaslav understood, making time to manipulate a young employee into getting her something dangerous so she could do what she wanted with it. Even in her sixties, Natalia didn’t miss a single beat.

“Where did she do it?” Vaslav asked. “That’s why she got the knife, yeah?”

Nanessa frowned. “Alone in her room, actually.”

Vaslav quieted at that statement.

Vera noticed. “Is that new, or something?”

He didn’t answer right away, and the way the doctor’s gaze flicked from Vera to his said she wouldn’t tell the truth, either, unless perhaps he okayed it. Really, he just needed a second to think.

“She likes to make a scene,” Vaslav said. “It’s a ... thing.”

With everyone.