Chapter 36: Chapter 36

There are some moments in life that are too big to truly grasp. Too real. Losing my great-aunt was one of those moments—something brilliantly, blindingly harsh that is almost impossible to accept as real.

One minute, I had family living. The next, I was truly and utterly alone in the world.

Or maybe I wasn’t.

This, too, is one of those moments.

When those words come out of Milos’ mouth, I hear them, but I don’t really hear them. It’s too big a concept for my mind to accept, too foreign, like someone trying to tell you gravity isn’t real even as you’re falling, or that the tiger isn’t aggressive while it’s lacerating your trachea.

My first reaction is a gut one: he’s obviously lying, and this is all⁠—

Why.

That’s the second reaction: if he’s lying, why. He’s just told me he’s going to kill me by blowing me to hell on the very bridge where I lost my memory the first time.

I know that now. I’ve made peace with it now, even if I still don’t remember it.

There was no “drunk driver”.

My parents weren’t “spies working for the government”.

I opened a door on this island. I let Drazen’s enemies in, and they slaughtered his entire family.

I tried to flee over a bridge that stood where this one does now.

That’s what happened. And now I’ll die here, to pay for a sin I don’t remember.

But through all of that, and the explosive, gut-wrenching emotions that realization drags out of me, I’m able to fixate only on what Milos just said. Something that shatters all of that.

Your twin sister did.

A thudding, roaring sound grows louder and louder in my ears. At first, I think it’s the surf below. Or maybe that a truck is approaching, or a fucking train.

Then I realize it’s my pulse, wailing through my veins like a banshee.

I have a sister.

I…

Play with me, Annika! Come play with me!

Shh! Hide so Papa doesn’t find us! Don’t say a word. Let’s practice not being found.

I’m happy that I’ll never forget your birthday.

They’ll never separate us, Annika.

This is my invisible friend…

A screaming, guttural, animalistic sound rips me from the haze of half-remembered memories and whispered words. My eyes are staring, my body shaking and my mouth wide open.

That’s when I realize the sound is me.

“Fuck…”

I turn to stare at Milos with haggard grief blaring through my skin. He squints at me, his mouth open in surprise as he slowly shakes his head.

“You really didn’t remember, did you,” he breathes.

I blink, trying to wake up. Trying to drag my psyche out of whatever frozen lake it just fell into.

“Jebote,” Milos breathes as he stares at me. “I…I didn’t believe it. I thought there was no way you could forget everything⁠—”

The same cracking sound that makes Milos flinch rips my mind out of the frozen hole. I choke, gasping as my gaze yanks past Milos, ducked behind one of the bridge pylon posts, and into the darkness of the island. That’s where the bang came from.

Suddenly, he emerges from the shadows, like a black wraith. Like Death and all four horseman of the Apocalypse, with pure fury in his eyes.

Drazen.

He storms out of the shadowy mist with a rifle on his shoulder, his eye to the scope. His chest heaves, like he’s been running.

“MILOS!” he roars. “MILOS!!”

I want to call to him, but part of me is still frozen. I blink, still in shock as I watch Milos yank a pistol out of his waistband and then step out from behind the pole.

“Stay right there,” Milos grunts, leveling the gun at Drazen and lifting the remote detonator high. “You know what this is.”

“Yeah,” Drazen spits, not lowering the rifle as he snarls. “I know what that is.”

His fierce gaze flicks from Milos to me, staying there for a moment. I can feel my heart thudding as I lock eyes with him, my psyche thawing from its icy plunge slightly before he rips his eyes back to Milos.

“What are you doing, Milos,” he rasps.

“You were my brother!” Milos yells at him.

“I still am!” Drazen screams back.

Milos’ fingers clench and unclench around the stock of his gun.

“Blood for blood, Drazen,” he chokes. “Remember? That’s what we always said to each other those nights we were on watch, up in a ruined church steeple or an office building with a sniper rifle and binoculars.”

“That was war, Milos,” Drazen hisses.

“LIFE is war!” Milos fires back.

“We were fucking kids!” Drazen snaps. “We had no business⁠—”

“We’re not kids anymore, my friend.”

“Friend?” Drazen snarls incredulously. “You call yourself my friend with my wife tied up behind you, in danger that you fucking put her in yourself?!”

“She’s not your wife!!”

The words echo through the night like a slap.

Something snaps in my head. An ice-covered river breaking. A door splintering. A wall collapsing.

They’ll never separate us, Annika.

They’re going to.

No. I won’t let them.

You have to. You have to let me go. I’m the one that must do this.

Please. Don’t leave me.

I’ll never leave you. You’re my sister.

Your invisible friend.

I think I have to go.

I love you, Annika. I won’t leave you there.

I know you won’t. I love you, Tatjana.

When my eyes snap open, and reality comes crashing back into me like a truck, something claws into my heart.

A truth I’ve always known, but never remembered.

A half-forgotten dream.

An imprint of a memory.

It’s not me.

I’m not Annika.

I’m not Drazen’s wife.

“Her family, Drazen!” Milos screams. “Her fucking family betrayed⁠—”

“We were all betrayed!” Drazen roars back. “You! Me! Your father! My father and my family! Her and her family!!”

He keeps his hand on the rifle trigger, his eye to the sights, and reaches into his pocket with his other hand and yanks his phone out to hold it high.

“I have proof, Milos! Vadik played us all! He was in hot water with the Iron Table. They were catching on to his backstabbing. With the union of my family and hers, and with Yelizaveta being Mihajlo’s godmother, he was worried about his seat!” Drazen shakes the phone in his hand. “I have hard evidence, Milos!” he pleads.

“My father…” Milos chokes. “He lived through so fucking much! What they did to my sister! To my mother! He survived all of it, and served your father his entire life⁠—”

“Milos—!”

“And then died because of her! Her family!”

“No!” Drazen roars. “No, Milos! The attack…that was Vadik! Those were his men, made to look like her father’s to make it look like a war between my family and hers. Vadik’s men came for her family and slaughtered her parents the same night, pretending to be my father’s men.”

My throat squeezes closed.

The acrid smell of smoke fills my nostrils.

The cracking of timber beams. The screams. The staccato tap-tap-tap of gunfire.

The fire everywhere, singeing my hair and blistering my fingers as I scramble to open a door.

The boom I feel in my very soul as the whole world goes end over end. The window shattering as I fly through it, punched out into the night in a belching hail of blood, glass, and fire.

Oh God…

“Milos!!”

Drazen’s voice grabs my mind by the collar and yanks it back from the darkness of memory.

Milos is shaking as he holds the detonator up high.

“Don’t do this, Milos!” Drazen roars.

“I…I have to,” Milos whispers. “I⁠—”

“Don’t make me do it!” Drazen hisses. “Don’t you fucking make kill you.”

Milos smiles weakly. “We do what we must, my brother. You choose your path.”

He smiles a cold, faraway, resigned smile.

“I’ve chosen mine⁠—”

The harsh crack of the rifle splits the night. The impact of Drazen’s bullet slams Milos’ body backward. I scream as the detonator falls from his hand as his body goes tumbling backward to topple onto the pavement stretching over the bridge.

Drazen is running to me before the body even lands. He throws the rifle away, his eyes blazing with madness as he charges over. I sob when he gets to me, his arms circling my body as he buries his face in my neck.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he chokes fiercely. “I thought you’d been taken from me.”

I’m sobbing as he yanks a blade out and starts cutting my ropes free—one arm, then the other, then my torso. He hauls me over the guardrail to safety, wrapping his arms around me as I collapse into him.

“We will go together, my brother.”

The two of us whirl. The color drains from my face as I see a bleeding, pale Milos stretch his hand out and wrap his fingers around the remote on the ground.

“Like it was always meant to be…” he gurgles, blood dripping from his mouth.

It feels like everything goes into slow motion. Drazen grabs me, throws me over his shoulder, whirls and starts to fucking run for the Elba side of the bridge, away from Milos. My stomach bounces against his shoulder in a thudding, syrupy slowness as time simply comes to a stop.

I watch as Milos’ eyes close, his arm drawing the remote against his chest as his lips mumble a prayer.

Oh God…

The world goes white and orange. It’s utter silence as the bridge bubbles and surges under us, until suddenly, liquid fire belches out in a howling roar that deafens the whole world.

Drazen keeps running. My body bangs against his shoulder as the explosion surges outward in all directions like a Chernobyl nightmare.

And then suddenly, everything splits.

Gravity turns off.

Heat slams into me, fire, rock, and metal punching me into the darkness as the bridge collapses beneath us.

And the darkness and the black surf below swallow me whole.