Chapter 22

The last few killings had been easy, easier than they should have been, but maybe killing lay in my blood like Adamo always claimed it lay in his.

Today was different though, and nothing about it would be easy. I felt even more nervous than before the very first kill. Adamo squeezed my hand, his gaze seeking mine, trying to determine if I was okay.

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. My emotions tumbled all over themselves, and I’d thrown up what little I’d had for breakfast. This was the summit I had to climb. Every kill until this point had been mere preparation for this day. When I’d talked to Dad yesterday, he’d offered to kill her if I couldn’t go through with it. Adamo, too, wouldn’t hesitate to take this burden off my shoulders, but I couldn’t allow either man to kill for me. This was between my mother and me. She was the one who’d sold me to the highest bidder, who’d ripped me away from my home and my father because she wanted freedom. Dad had never revealed the details of their relationship—until last night.

He’d met her as an escort but their sexual encounters had ended in my mother becoming pregnant with me, and my father insisting she kept me. Later, he forbade her to work as an escort, sent her into a rehabilitation clinic and forced her to live in his mansion, so I had a mother. He’d wanted me to have parents but my mother had never wanted to have me, to be a mom, to be clean. She wanted her life back and when it became clear my father wouldn’t give it to her, she used me as a means to punish him and to get what she wanted.

“Dinara?” Adamo asked, worried.

I snapped out of my thoughts. We were parked in front of the apartment building where my mother lived. She’d tried to run away yesterday after she must have found out about the murders, but a Camorra soldier had kept watch over her place. Now she waited for us to arrive. I wondered if she knew that she’d share the same fate as every other name on our list or if she hoped for mercy.

I grasped the door handle. “I’m ready.” My voice sounded resolute, determined, calm—the opposite of what I was feeling.

Adamo and I took the elevator up to the third floor then headed toward the last door on the left. A dusty, stale stench lingered in the corridor and the carpet had seen better days. Adamo knocked. I balled my hands into fists to stop them from trembling. I’d waited for this day for a long time but now I was terrified. A middle-aged man, the Camorra soldier, opened the door and let us in. Adamo went in first and I followed after a moment of hesitation. The place wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d thought it would be a sad, dirty place, but the apartment was clean and newly furnished with plenty of glass, fake marble, and golden décor. Black and white photos of my mother in lingerie hung at the wall over the white leather couch. I didn’t find a sign of myself anywhere in the apartment. My mother had probably forgotten about my existence.

When I spotted her, a shiver raced down my spine and the desire to leave became almost unstoppable.

Last time I had only seen my mother from afar. Now only a few feet separated us. I remembered that Dad had compared my beauty to my mother’s when I was very little, before he never spoke of her again. Beauty still lingered under her wrinkles and the frown lines around her mouth and forehead. She was dressed in an expensive-looking dress, with immaculate nails and hair. A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the glass table in front of her. Her eyes darted between Adamo and me, anxiety lining her face.

“Katinka,” she said softly, as if she was happy to see me, as if she had any right to call me by the name she’d ripped away from me.

“Don’t,” I seethed. “Don’t use that name. I’m Dinara now. Or maybe you want to use one of the many names you chose for me while you let one man after the other rape me?”

She blanched. I could see how she was trying to come up with something to say. She reached for the cigarette and took a shaky drag. I’d never smoke again. Her jittery energy told me that she needed something stronger than tobacco. Drugs. I couldn’t believe I’d followed in her footsteps and also fallen trap to addiction. I swore I’d never touch anything ever again. I’d never become the despicable woman before me.

“Dinara,” she began hesitantly. “I never meant for you to get hurt. I was in a bad state of mind. I was full of despair.”

I staggered closer to her, furious tears stinging in my eyes. “Despair?”

“Your father—”

Her familiar, too sweet, too strong perfume penetrated my nose, bringing up vivid memories that almost made my legs buckle. “My father forbade you from taking drugs. He wanted you to take care of me. He provided for you so you could be a mother to me. He gave you money so you didn’t have to sell your body anymore.”

“I never asked for any of this. I was happy with what I had.”

I swallowed hard. She didn’t seem guilty at all.

“I didn’t know what those men did to you. They hurt you, not me.”

I couldn’t believe her audacity. “There are recordings of what happened. You are in many of them, telling me to be nice to those assholes. You recorded what happened. You knew, don’t pretend you didn’t!”

“I—I was drugged. Those men pressured me.”

“You can blame them or my father but you are the true monster, Eden. They at least didn’t know me. You should have loved me.”

She made a move as if to stand but Adamo sent her a warning look.

“I was too young when I gave birth to you. I didn’t even want to have a child,” she said, glancing from him to me. The cigarette between her fingers had almost burned down.

I pressed my lips together, remembering Dad’s words. My mother hadn’t wanted me. She’d wanted to get an abortion but Dad didn’t allow it. He wouldn’t allow her to get rid of his child. I didn’t resent her for not being ready for a child, not even that she’d wanted to abort me, but I hated her for how she’d used me, how she’d let other abuse me only so she could live the life she wanted. That wasn’t something I could ever forgive.

“A mother is supposed to protect her child from all harm, not throw it in its way. I loved you. I trusted you, and you destroyed everything. You ruined my life.”

She motioned at me. “You are here now and you look strong.”

“I’m here because of Dad, because he protected me.”

“Don’t become like him, don’t kill me, Dinara. I can leave the States so you’ll never have to see me again.”

“Maybe you can run from what happened but I can’t. It’ll always be a part of me.”

Mother slanted an assessing glance at Adamo, as if she wondered if he might be her salvation. She didn’t know him. He was the last person to expect mercy from.

“Did you ever have nightmares because of what you did to me?” I asked.

“Remo Falcone made sure I couldn’t forget what happened,” she said, but she didn’t say it as if this had caused her distress on my behalf. Her voice rang with self-pity. She met Adamo’s gaze. “He’s your brother. You know how he is. Have you told her?”

“Whatever my brother did is nothing in comparison to what you did to your own daughter,” Adamo growled, his eyes flashing with violence.

My own hunger for blood answered. I wasn’t sure why I was still talking to my mother. Maybe deep down I hoped she’d realize what she did, how she broke a young child’s trust and ruined my life, but I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of an honest apology. My mother was incapable of seeing her mistakes.

I took the gun from the holster under my leather jacket. My mother jerked to her feet with raised hands. “Please, Dinara. You won’t feel better if you kill me. You’ll be guilty.”

“Guilty?” I rasped. “As guilty as you feel for what you did to me?”

I raised the gun, pointed it straight at her head. Her frantic eyes searched the room for an opportunity to escape, to save herself. My finger on the trigger shook. I only had to pull the trigger to end this but I was unable to move. I wasn’t sure what was holding me back. I didn’t love the woman before me, but until this point, a tiny, silly part had hoped everything would turn out to be a big misunderstanding, that there was an explanation that would prove my mother’s innocence. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but my heart had foolishly clung to hope. I’d wanted to find a mother I could love, a mother I could forgive. The woman before me wasn’t that mother.

I turned away, unable to look at her. Adamo touched my shoulder, searching my eyes. “I can’t,” I said almost tonelessly, lowering the gun.

“Do you want me—”

“No,” I said quickly. I put the gun down on the side table.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed my mother approach us hesitantly. “You won’t regret it, I swear. Now that you decided to spare me, Remo will let me go, like you said. I’ll leave and never come back. But…” She licked her lips. “Your father will hunt me. I’ll need some money to reach Europe and create a new life for me over there.”

Adamo’s expression shifted to absolute fury. “Are you asking Dinara for money?”

Eden took a step back. “If she wants me to live and not have my death on her conscience, I need some money to escape Grigory.”

New tears pressed against my eyeballs. “Just like you needed money last time but back then you couldn’t ask me for it, so you sold me to old men who molested me.”

I began to shake, anger and utter despair battling inside of me. I ripped the knife out of its holster and whirled around. With a hoarse cry, I smashed the blade into her chest. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in a silent cry. Then she crumpled to the ground, taking me with her because I was still clutching the knife. I landed on my knees beside her. I released the knife, gripped her shoulders and began to shake her.

“How could you do this to me? How? How?” I screamed. My tears blinded my vision and my throat was raw from screaming. “How? Why didn’t you love me enough to protect me? Why?” I kept shaking her and screaming but she couldn’t answer me, and no matter what she’d have said it would have never given me the answer I wished for.

I released her and curled up, my face buried in my hands, which were sticky with her blood. I sobbed and shuddered. “Why didn’t you love me?”

Adamo knelt down beside me and wrapped an arm around me, pulling me against him. “She was a monster and never deserved to be your mother. You are lovable and I love you.”

I froze against him, sucking in a shaky breath. I lifted my face. I must have looked a mess with blood, tears, and snot on my face but Adamo’s expression was full of love. “You love me?”

“Yes, even if I’m breaking our keeping it casual pact. I don’t care. I won’t hide my emotions. I fucking love you and you better deal with it.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “I love you, too.” I kissed Adamo but when I pulled back his lips were coated with blood. My eyes sought the corpse of my mother right beside us. Her blood was slowly spreading under her body and her lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling.

I sagged against Adamo, adrenaline fading and leaving a strange sensation of emptiness. I’d done it. We’d done it. Killed every single tormentor on my list. Even my mother. I’d expected euphoria and relief, and there was a flicker of relief but stronger was the uncertainty. What now? All my life, I’d thriven to uncover my past and then to punish those who’d abused me. Now that I’d succeeded, I had to focus on my future, on new goals and figure out what I really wanted.

I reached into my jean shorts, and took out the crumpled piece of paper, dotted with blood. I’d kept it in my pocket since we’d started our path of vengeance.

We were done with our list. It seemed forever ago that we’d killed the first man on the list. Every second of every day had been dominated by thoughts of revenge. It had occupied my every thought, my night and days, and now, that we’d reached the end, a feeling of “what now?” took hold of me.

Adamo stroked my back. Neither he nor I made a move to get up from the blood puddle gathering around us, soaking our clothes. It was still warm. “It’s over,” I whispered, almost awed.

Adamo kissed my temple. “Now you can move on.”

I searched his eyes, wondering what we would do now and if it would be as easy as he said.

I glanced at my mother. No, at the woman who had given birth to me. She wasn’t really a mother and had never been.

“The clean-up crew will deal with her. You can forget she ever existed,” Adamo said. “Let’s get out of here.” He got up and held out his hand to me.

I nodded, even if I still felt trapped in a daze, and allowed him to pull me to my feet. Adamo called the clean-up crew and led me toward the door. I chanced a last look at my mother before I left. I’d wanted her dead and I didn’t feel any regret over killing her, but the euphoria and sense of freedom didn’t come yet.

We returned to our hotel and entered the building through a back entrance because we looked rough covered in blood as we were. The staff turned a blind eye to our state. Las Vegas and especially our hotels were under our total control. Everybody who worked for us knew better than to show interest in suspicious behavior.

Dinara headed into the bathroom and I followed her. She hadn’t said anything since we’d left her mother’s place.

She sank down on the edge of the bathtub and kept looking at her blood-crusted fingers, flexing them as if she didn’t trust her eyes. After our last few killings, euphoria and excitement had been our dominating feelings. With every crossed-off name on our list, another weight seemed to have lifted off Dinara’s shoulder. Not today though. I perched beside her. “She deserved death.”

“By our standards, definitely,” Dinara said.

“Not just by our standards. I think many people would agree she deserved to die after what she did.” Social norms and average morals were something neither Dinara nor I had many experiences with, but child abuse was a crime most people wanted to see punished as harshly as possible. “Do you regret killing her?”

Dinara finally looked up from her hands, her brows puckering as she considered my question. “No. I don’t feel any remorse. I would have kept thinking about her if I’d known she was alive. I could have never really moved on. And not just that. If I’d kept her alive and suffered because of it, Dad would have taken matters into his own hands eventually. He would have moved heaven and earth to kill her in your brother’s territory and that would have only caused trouble. I don’t want our families to be at war.”

“It’s not like we’re at peace right now.”

“Not at war either. As long as we ignore each other, there’s a chance for us to be…” She trailed off, her expression shutting off.

I grabbed her hand. “For us to be together,” I finished. Dinara’s eyes bored into mine. A few tiny blood splatters dotted her cheeks and forehead, her hair was a mess, and her skin was pale, and yet she looked more beautiful than anyone I’d ever seen.

“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “What now? I feel as if there’s a void opening up before me right now where a purpose had been before.”

“Now we take a shower and get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow we return to camp.”

Surprise crossed Dinara’s expression as if she hadn’t even considered the option of returning to camp.

“You want to return to camp, right?”

A tired smile spread on her face. “It’s the only place I want to be right now.”

I woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed. Searching the room, I found Dinara in front of the panorama windows. She let her gaze stray over the flickering lights of the Strip below us. I got out of bed and joined her. A lost look lay in her eyes, as if she were looking for an anchor to hold on to. I touched her back and she gave me a tired smile over her shoulder.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

She shook her head with a small frown. “No, not really. I just feel a little lost. I’d thought I’d kill the past by killing my abusers, but it still lingers in the back of my mind, not as prominent as before but still there.”

Healing would take more than killing her mother and abusers, and above all, it would take more time. I led her back to bed and we lay down, my arms around her waist. I could feel the unrest in her body.

“Maybe you should talk to Kiara,” I said eventually.

“Your sister-in-law,” she said, starting to pull away. Her defenses rose into place. “And why should I?”

“Because she experienced something similar.” I hadn’t discussed this with Kiara, but she was one of the kindest, most helpful people I knew, so I was sure she’d help Dinara.

Dinara swung out of bed, her back to me. She took a cigarette from the packet and slipped it between her lips but she didn’t light it up. Instead she scowled at the tip. She flipped the lighter almost angrily and finally lit up her cigarette. I sat up as well so I could see her face but she was squinting at the burning tip. Finally, she turned to me, her eyes hard. “And what would that be?”

“She was abused by her uncle when she was a kid.”

Dinara let out a bitter laugh and took a deep drag of her cigarette, blowing out the smoke slowly. “Did her mom get cash for selling her little daughter too? Was she raped by a dozen guys, sometimes while her mother watched?”

“I know you didn’t experience exactly the same but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand the trauma you went through. Maybe talking to her will help you.”

She glowered at me. “Do you handle trauma the same way Remo or Nino do? The shit that happened in your youth, the death of your mother? No, you don’t. But for some reason people think that all rape victims are the same, as if we all deal with the shit the same way. As if all of us want pity and be coddled as if suddenly we’re frail.”

“I don’t coddle you nor do I fucking pity you, and I most definitely don’t think you’re frail.”

“But when you found out, that’s exactly what you thought.”

Anger rose in me. I snatched the cigarette from her mouth and snuffed it in the ashtray. “I didn’t fucking know what I was thinking. I was shocked by the shitshow Remo lay down at my feet.”

Dinara rolled her eyes. “You were shocked by what you saw? I lived that shitshow.”

I ran a hand through my hair with a sigh. I grabbed Dinara’s hand and to my surprise she let me, even allowed me to link our fingers. “I know. Fuck, Dinara, I want to help you.”

“And you are, and you already did by helping me take out these assholes one after the other.”

“You think that’s enough?”

She stared into my eyes, not saying anything for a long time. “I don’t know but it made me feel better, at least temporarily. I guess I’ll just have to determine what I want now, and how to live with the demons I can’t kill as easily.”

I could see a weight falling off when we left Las Vegas behind. The city would always be associated with painful memories for her. Linking our fingers, I caught her attention. She gave me a distracted smile.

“Do you feel different?” I asked.

“Different than before we started our vendetta?”

I nodded.

She considered that. “Yesterday I would have said “no”. It felt as if I was falling into a black hole, but I’m starting to realize what we accomplished. The people who hurt me and other girls are gone. My mother is gone and they can’t ever hold power over me again.”

“You’ll feel even better after the upcoming race.”

Her smile became less tense. “I really missed racing. I never thought it would grow on me so much.”

“You never thought I’d grow on you so much either,” I joked, wanting to lighten the mood further.

Dinara rolled her eyes but then she leaned over and distracted me briefly with a kiss. “You caught me by surprise. That won’t happen again.”

“I already have your heart.”

“You do, now you’ll just have to keep it,” she said teasingly. She sank back against the seat, her shoulders relaxing for the first time since yesterday.

“Now that I have it, I won’t give it back.”

Dinara’s gaze became distant. “We’ll just have to convince our families.”

“It’s our life. They’ll have to accept our choice.”

Dinara gave me a look that made it clear it wouldn’t be as easy as that. I knew she was right, but we’d already gone through so much and I wouldn’t let anyone tear us apart.