My dark horse prince, p.17
My Dark Horse Prince, page 17
Mārtinš looks casual as he walks toward me, but nothing is ever casual with him. Or even if it is, you can’t enjoy it, because you’re always waiting for the moment it all changes. “You have a two-bedroom place, huh?”
I nod tightly.
“Why?”
I shrug.
“I asked why.” His voice is deceptively calm, but I can tell from his narrowed eyes and his clenched hands that he’s angry. He heard more than he’s admitting to hearing.
“It’s the apartment Kristiana had available,” I say.
“I said not to say her name in this house,” he says.
It’s not a house. Mom and Mārtinš live in a lousy little apartment, but I don’t point that out. I may have been unprepared to deal with him—I dropped by specifically because I thought he’d be gone—but I’m not stupid enough to intentionally provoke him. “Sorry.”
“You should move back here,” he says. “You don’t even have to run a lesson program here, and you won’t have to pay rent.” He eyes me from my head to my toes, and even though he’s never done anything sexual, it still feels appraising in a way that doesn’t sit well with me.
“I’ll think about it,” I lie.
“Come back tomorrow,” he says. “My friend was asking about you.”
“Your friend?” I ask.
“Danils,” he says. “You never should have left him.”
I’m surprised he’s putting it that way. The public story is that Danils dumped me, but I didn’t mind. I was relieved, to be honest. After I found out he was cheating, I disconnected, and after that happened, I realized what a mess our ‘relationship’ was anyway.
Not that his infidelity was an excuse in Mārtinš’s book. No woman should ever leave a powerful man, not for any reason, not even if he dumps her. Even if he cheats. No matter what, she should slink around forever, licking his boots and hoping he’ll take her back. “It’s too bad I had such poor judgment,” I say, hoping he can’t sense my sarcasm.
“It is,” he says. “But I think he might take you back yet.” He nods. “That was not quite what he said, but almost.”
Not for anything in this world would I go back to Danils, but I don’t say that, either. “I’ll let you know,” I say. “But I’d better get back. I have my first lesson in an hour.”
He scowls, but he doesn’t make a move to stop me.
The moment I’m out the front door, every muscle in my body turns soft. I very nearly collapse against the front door, drawing in ragged breaths, waiting for my heart to stop pounding in my ears and my legs to stop shaking.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” It’s faint, but I can still hear Mārtinš through the solid wooden door. He must be really angry.
My mom says something, but I can’t make out the words.
“I didn’t hear you ask her to move back. I told you Danils said if she goes back to him, he’ll hire me.”
Mom tries again, but it doesn’t seem to help.
Because the next sound I hear is a crash.
It’s not like Mārtinš has even been an amazing breadwinner, but with the sheer volume of belongings that he breaks, it’s a wonder they have any furniture at all. At least when he’s breaking things, he’s not hurting Mom.
In the end, though, there’s not much I can do. I keep asking her to leave him, but until she’s ready to do it, nothing will change. The only thing that happens when I visit is I wind up in the crosshairs. I call the police on my way back to Liepašeta. Hopefully, if he does start breaking more than lamps, the surprise arrival of the police for a sound disturbance will cool him down instead of riling him up.
Usually when I was around, a visit from the police would buy me a few days of polite behavior.
Sometimes it went the other way.
When Mom calls me the next morning, she sounds utterly drained. That’s not a good sign. “Can you pick up some food for me?”
That’s not either. Because when she’s black and blue, she can’t go out, but Mārtinš still expects her to make his dinner. “Mom.”
“Please?” He definitely beat her. Badly.
During my two-hour break, I drive out and pick up rye bread, lentils, smoked mackerel, sour cream, eggs, and a few fresh greens. It’s not a lot, but I don’t have much money to spare. There’s no way she’ll be able to pay me for any of it. He’s always expected her to perform miracles like she’s Jesus, blessing the loaves and the fishes.
I almost leave the bags on her front porch, but I think about the sour cream and the eggs and change my mind. I hate seeing her all bruised, but I’d hate if all the food I could barely afford went to waste.
I knock, and then I wait.
Horrifyingly, it’s not Mom who opens the door.
Mārtinš is spoiling for a fight from the second I see him. His knuckles are bruised and one of them’s bleeding. His eyes are bloodshot—which means he’s been drinking—and he has a little bit of spittle on his chin. He’s clearly been ranting, too.
“Here.” I hold out the bag. “My mom couldn’t go shopping, since you beat her black and blue.” When I’m not in the house, and my car is mere steps away, sometimes I have the confidence to get a little mouthy.
Which is really stupid. His face contorts.
Screw the sour cream. I should’ve dumped it and run.
When Mom stands up behind him, her face is more purple than flesh colored. “Mirdza, thank you.”
Fury and rage bubble up inside of me. “You’re a sick human being,” I say. “You should be in jail.” My hands shake. My blood boils. For one split second, I wonder what would happen if I hit him, for a change. Could he take a hit, or can he just inflict pain?
“Get out of here,” he says. “I’ll tell Danils what a pile of filth you are. Forget about that second chance with him.” He shakes his head and curses me under his breath.
I’m stupidly desperate to do something.
With every single fiber of my being, I want to hurt this man who has done nothing but damage my poor, widowed mother, but right alongside my rage is a very real, very old fear.
But something new occurs to me.
I have no idea what would happen if I struck him in the face, but even if I can’t beat him, even if he handles pain just fine, maybe seeing him hit me would galvanize my mother. She might leave him, finally.
But it’s a lot of maybes.
And I already know what happens if I drive away. I’ll be safe. It’s also what my mother would want. So even though it pains me, I step back and pull my keys out of my pocket. I’m less than one step away from my car when I hear it.
My mom’s whimper.
He didn’t close the door all the way, so this time, I can hear everything. His cursing. His demeaning verbal attacks. His accusations that she wanted me to come over here and intervene for her. “You called the cops,” he says.
“You can check my phone,” she says. “I didn’t.”
“Then you sent your daughter a message somehow,” he says. “You made her call them.”
I’m a little embarrassed that we never thought of that. We should have had some kind of message, something we could say in front of him that meant something else.
But the sound of his fist against something soft, the splatter-thunk sound of my already purple and horribly damaged mother being beaten again by her husband, it takes the almost equally balanced rage and terror inside me and it tips the scales just enough.
Before I have time to even think about what I’m doing, I push through the almost-closed front door, and I grab the busted lamp off the ground. I don’t stop moving. While Mārtinš is staring at me slack-jawed, while my mother watches in abject horror, I stride toward him, lift my arm, and slam it downward, aiming for his ugly face.
But I don’t succeed.
The lamp’s a wooden block with a shattered glass bulb on top, and it would really hurt if it smashed into his jaw. His hand, however, seems to have almost no trouble stopping me.
And then he laughs.
I’ll never forget that sound.
Laughter should be bright, and happy, and infectious.
This was infectious alright, but in the same way that tuberculosis or the bubonic plague are. It’s certain death to all joy. He drops my mom’s hair, which he had been holding her up by, and stands. “Look at this. Your little girl finally came to play.” Faster than I thought possible, he yanks the lamp from my hand and slaps it against his free hand. “And you even brought me a toy.”
I think if I hadn’t grabbed the lamp, things might have ended differently. I might not have been beaten as badly. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.
As much rage as I held inside, as much pent-up fury and repressed hatred as I had, Mārtinš apparently had even more, and he’d had years and years of practice converting that rage into meaningful action.
It’s the lamp, in the end, that he uses to shatter my femur. By then, that horrible pain’s just more noise. I don’t know who calls one-one-nine to report the emergency. I don’t know what the paramedics who come to get me look like. I do hear my mother telling them that I got in a fight with her after she broke my lamp.
It’s so ludicrous that I start to laugh, but even that slight effort on my part causes my split lip to bleed profusely, flooding my mouth with an iron taste and choking me. I spit it on the disgusting rug I’m lying on, and I stare right at Mārtinš. “He hit me,” I manage to say. “With that lamp. My mom did nothing.”
After that, I pass out.
When I wake up, I’m in a hospital bed, all alone. I call out, but no one comes. It’s just me and a beeping machine. I don’t even realize that my leg doesn’t work. I just look around, call out another time or two and go back to sleep.
Almost ten days later, when I’m finally discharged, my leg in a cast after a sequence of three surgeries, my sister Adriana’s the one picking me up. “The police still haven’t come by,” I say.
“And they won’t,” she says. “Mom has given several statements that you two had a fight and that she hurt you. Mārtinš gave one that backs up her story. Your only option will be to press charges against her, but she says you started it. Since you’re the aggressor, they’re not inclined to do much to her.”
I can’t speak at first, as her words sink in.
Deep down, I always thought that if it came down to it, my mom would pick me. That helped me survive years of watching Mārtinš beat on her. If she had to, she’d protect me. If he ever threatened us, she’d leave him, because in the hierarchy of her love, Adriana and I came first. I believed that.
But now my leg’s shattered. My face is swollen like a balloon, and she hasn’t so much as come by my room or brought me flowers.
And she lied to cover for him, the man who did this to me.
“We need a code,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think to do.
“A code?” Adriana snorts.
“If I ever call and ask you to get me Polish sausages, I need help. I need you to call the police. I’m in trouble. Someone bad, probably Mārtinš, is going to hurt me.”
“You hate Polish sausages,” Adriana says.
“Exactly,” I say. “That’s why it works. It’s not something I’d ever ask you to do, but no one else will know that.”
Adriana smiles. “I like it.”
She helps me struggle into the passenger seat of her car. “As soon as I can walk again,” I say, “maybe we should take a self-defense class.”
My sister shakes her head. “Screw self-defense. I’m taking Krav Maga. I’m not going to protect myself. I’m going to beat any man who attacks me into a Polish sausage.”
I never do take those classes, but Adriana does.
14
It takes days for us to deal with the fallout from the way Grigoriy handled Yevginiy’s appearance. I’m forced to lie to the local police and say that after I left, Grigoriy went back inside to look for some things I thought I left behind. Luckily, the mafia had already taken care of any video camera feeds, presumably through the good doctor as well. They probably did it so that no one would have evidence of them murdering me.
Ironically, the idiot doc’s actions prevented his own murderer from being caught.
Grigoriy had the presence of mind to dump the dagger he used into a vat of some kind of cleaner and then knock it over sideways, leaving no trace of his fingerprints on the murder weapon, which was marked with the sigil of Yevginiy’s men anyway.
The local newspaper finally reports the deaths of the eight mafia members and the American surgeon this morning.
ST PETERSBURG MAFIA KINGPIN MURDERED BY AMERICAN
On Friday of last week, in a shocking turn of events, the man rumored to be leading the mafia in Saint Petersburg, one Yevginiy Stepanchikov, attacked a local hospital. An American physician who had been taking bribes from Mr. Stepanchikov fought with him, presumably regarding a payment dispute. Both are now deceased, but prior to his passing, the physician killed seven of Stepanchikov’s associates. Nothing has yet been discovered about the nature of their relationship or the method by which the physician was able to accomplish such a feat. Authorities suspect he employed the use of some kind of paralytic to carry it out.
The police officially cleared Grigoriy yesterday, and he’s no longer being supervised or considered as a suspect. I wouldn’t have minded him being behind bars for longer, but Kris and Aleks were quite distressed, and that made me sad. They’ve done so much for me—I can’t really blame them for being worried about another friend.
In my heart, I know that Grigoriy thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting me. I’m not even angry with him, not really.
I’m just terrified of him.
“But how can you just leave?” Kris asks.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” I say. “I really and truly do, but I need to get back home quickly. I don’t have a lot of time before Brigita starts selling my horses.”
“I’ll call John and have him go get them,” Kris says.
“That would be great,” I say. “I would love to know they’re back at your barn, but I still need to get home. I have a life there. I’m so happy that you found Aleks, but I can’t just relocate to Russia.”
“I understand,” Kris says. “I was planning to head back soon, anyway.”
“That’s a relief.”
“The thing is.” Kris drops into a chair in the corner of my room. “The guys don’t want you to leave. . .unless they come along.”
Not this again. “We’ve been through this. I know Grigoriy can’t use his powers without my help, but—”
“It’s not even about that,” Kris says. “You aren’t safe.”
“I’m never safe,” I say. “I’ll take my chances.”
“The mafia bosses always report to someone else,” Kris says. “That means Yevginiy had a boss, and he didn’t bring all his people. You even said there were more people on the train that day. One of them could come after you, or tell his boss who to come after.”
“So could your magical men—the ice and fire people.”
“It’s electricity and fire,” Kris says, as if that sounds less insane.
“I can’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder,” I say. “I live a small life, and I’m ready to go back to it. Surely the mafia people would know that if I was going to talk, I would have. And the magical people will come after Grigoriy, so him coming along actually makes me less safe, not more.”
“But he can’t defend you unless he’s with you.”
“It’s a real conundrum,” I say. “I get it. Without me, he has no magic. But with me, he draws the bad guys to me.” I shrug. “I suggest he stays close to Aleks and hopes his buddy can keep him safe.”
“If we all stay close, then I can help Aleks when they come.” Grigoriy steps through my destroyed doorway, pushing the door open as he does. “I think we should all go back to Latvia.”
“You’ve never even been there,” Aleks says. “So you can hardly say you’re going back.”
My palms start to sweat, my heart rate spikes, and my hands start to shake the second they step into my room. “I believe I’ve been quite clear.”
“I have an idea,” Grigoriy says.
“Actually, it was my idea,” Kris says.
I feel a little betrayed. If it were anyone else, I’d just get a train ticket and leave on my own. But it’s Kristiana, my best friend, and she’s having ideas about how to convince me to let them tag along. “What?” If I sound a little terse, I think I’m justified.
“You aren’t scared of him as a horse.” Kris shrugs. “Shift him and let him stick around in horse form.”
“In horse form?” I ask.
“Shift him now,” Aleks says. “We’ll drive back to Latvia with him in a trailer.”
“I’m sure he’d love—”
“It’s fine,” Grigoriy says. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll spend however long I say as a horse, because you scare me as a man?”
He nods.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Some of our happiest moments at the beginning were when Aleks was a horse,” Kris says.
“I’m not going to wind up engaged to Grigoriy,” I nearly shout. “I wish you’d stop comparing us.” I can’t bring myself to look at him. I know he’ll be hurt, but I just can’t. Every time I see his face, I see him dragging that knife across the doctor’s throat. I can’t help my shudder.
“Change me now,” Grigoriy says. “See if you feel better.” His eyes, when I glance that way, look tortured.
“Fine.” I point. “Go out back. I’ll be there in a few.”
He and Aleks both disappear, leaving Kris to smooth things over, I assume.
“You could have warned me.” I sound a little petulant, but Kris understands. She saw me at the hospital after Mārtinš beat me. She gave me a place to live, and she knows I didn’t leave her compound for months after I was released from the hospital.
