Her lips thinned. She crossed her arms. “He was military. He would never do that.”
Misha sighed silently. He had decided to tell this story, so he was going to have to go through with it all.
“There was a hearing when it was all over. My mother remained on site. You know that, right? That she contacted the authorities and went with them.”
“Because she started the fire,” Rikki said.
“We’ll get to that,” Misha said. “But first, think about this. Because you know it, even if you don’t remember it. Your father’s death was justified.”
“Don’t—”
“Not justifiable,” Misha said. “The legal term. It was justified. The authorities checked. And you know it because my mother was never prosecuted, nor was anyone else.”
Rikki straightened just slightly.
“If you want, we can look this up. I know it’s in the information stream.”
He had checked after he saw her again, to make sure he was remembering everything properly. To make sure she really was that little girl who had trusted him with her life.
Rikki stared at him.
“Your father,” Misha said, “had sold the wrong information.”
The skin around her eyes tightened, forming slight lines.
“And so the Eyad government contracted with my mother. They paid her like you and I get paid, half to start the job, and half after the job was completed.”
Rikki swallowed visibly. Her arms were crossed so tightly that he could see the strain on her muscles.
“We watched your place.” He kept his voice even and calm. This was the voice he reserved for survivors, people who walked in on him after he had finished a job, people who didn’t always understand what he was doing.
Rikki’s eyes were wide. She watched him as if she expected him to grab her suddenly and hurt her.
“I was on leave from the Guild,” he said. “I went to school there, and it was vacation. On the vacations, Mother always made me go with her on jobs. She wanted me to know how ugly the work could be. But she was very good at it, and usually she finished the job quickly and easily.”
It was his turn to swallow. His mother had been the best at the work because she had been clinical, cold, efficient. Ruthless.
“But your father’s job, that wasn’t easy. Or quick.”
Rikki shifted slightly.
“Honestly,” Misha said, “it was exactly the kind of job Mother had wanted me to see. She figured if I was ever going to turn away from the work, a job like that would make me do it.”
And he nearly did. If it hadn’t been for Rikki herself, he would have. But he had known that if his mother hadn’t killed her father, Rikki wouldn’t have survived the year.
That had gotten him through the Guild training, through his own first botched job, through all the tough nights. Remembering the hard face of a little girl, bravely taking the “punishment” her father dished out, and vowing to survive it. A little girl who was breaking on her own. Who would have broken—and died—at that man’s hands, sometime in the next few months, as the stress made that man more and more violent, and made him care less and less.
“When the medical team arrived,” Misha said softly, “they treated you for several broken bones, for deep, deep bruises, and for a burn on your right hand. One of those bruises was on your stomach. It turns out you were bleeding internally.”
“You remember this how?” Her voice wasn’t shaking. It was strong. “I mean, you’ve done, what?, a hundred jobs in your lifetime, two hundred? Plus the work you did with your mother. How do you remember me?”
“I never forgot you,” he said.
She turned her face slightly, as if he had hit her. “Why?”
“Because,” he said as plainly as he could. “You’re the reason I do this job.”
He was bullshitting her. He had to be.
Rikki was pressed against the cabinets, the cool lip of the sink digging into her back. Her arms were crossed—one of the therapists from so long ago would have made her uncross those arms (
You
can’t hear with your arms crossed, dear. Your arms physically block the information
)—and her fingers were tucked into fists.
She was not the reason he had become an assassin. She couldn’t be. That made no sense at all.
“Me?” she asked.
“You.” His face was filled with compassion. “You probably don’t remember. You might not believe me.”
He seemed to be saying that last part more to himself than to her. She pushed even harder against that sink.
“Your bruises, those injuries, your broken bones,” he said. “We watched them happen.”
“Your mother did it,” Rikki said, even though she didn’t remember getting the bruises or broken bones. She remembered the doctors talking about them, the discussions in the case of how unusual they were. That was the reason Halina Layla Orlinskaya had been held an extra few days. The bruising. The broken bones.
And then Orlinskaya had been released.
Rikki knew that. But she remembered getting the burn. The worst burn, she thought. The horrible burn.
The one on her hand.
“My mother didn’t do it,” Misha said softly. “Your father caused those bruises.”
That first memory: Her father’s face, purple with anger, his eyes small and flashing, his voice lacerating:
You
don’t beg. You never beg
.
Begging
gets
you
nowhere. Stop begging, you little bitch.
Rikki closed her eyes against the memory, but it only became stronger. His hands, so big. His knuckles, so sharp as they connected with her cheek, the taste of blood in her mouth.
She opened her eyes, and saw Misha, watching her, as if everything depended on what she was going to say next.
“We watched him hurt you,” Misha said. “And I wanted to do something. Mother said we would do something. We had to give it time. I didn’t think we had time.”
Rikki crossed her arms harder, feeling them press against her rib cage, feeling the strain in her shoulders, her back.
“We planned the job. We were going to go in, and Mother would… take care of your father, and I would get you out, then call the authorities.”
The shadows, the movement inside the house, the feeling of someone who didn’t belong. Then the harshly beautiful woman’s face, the close-cut white-blond hair, the pale ice-blue eyes, suddenly appearing right beside Rikki, startling them both. The woman recovered first.
Don’t worry. We have not come for you. You will survive this. You will be Just Fine
.
The woman had spoken with a trace of an accent, and her words hadn’t been comforting. Then she had said, in a much harsher voice,
Misha. Do your job
.
Misha.
The movement in the shadows, the feeling of someone who didn’t belong. Someone beside her, brushing against her.
Rikki remembered that, the way he had been there, beside her. But he wasn’t beside her now. He was in front of her in her own kitchen. She stared at his face, so like his mother’s. Harsh, beautiful. Blue, blue eyes, but no ice. White-blond hair, tousled, not cut too close. Masculine features, compassion. The woman had had no compassion, even though her words had.
“Mother made the mistake,” he said. “Mother, who usually never made mistakes.”
Rikki frowned. He was standing too close, but she couldn’t back away. She was pressed against the sink.
“Mother startled you,” he said, “and you let out the smallest of sounds. She spoke to you, and beckoned me to get you out, but that was just enough to warn your father. He was prepared for us. He knew someone was coming for him. Someone had probably warned him. Or maybe he was just that smart.”
He was just that smart. Her father had been brilliant, everyone said so. But no one had liked him. She knew that too. That hadn’t fled her memory. The therapists asked her over and over again why no one had adopted her, why no one had been close enough to their family to show her some compassion.
My
daddy
doesn’t believe in friends
, she would say, until finally one therapist challenged her.
What’s wrong with friends?
the woman asked.
They
make
you
weak
, Rikki had said.
Later, she had told that to Jack. Twelve-year-old Jack. He had gotten mad.
Do
I
make
you
weak?
he asked.
She shook her head—then and now.
Misha was watching. He didn’t stop talking. Maybe he couldn’t.
“Your father was prepared,” Misha said. “He had some kind of laser weapon. He tried to talk my mother into leaving. Then he tried to bribe her. My mother wasn’t the kind of woman who took a bribe.”
The voices. Rikki remembered voices. And someone beside her, hand on her arm.
She willed herself to concentrate on Misha, on the here and now.
“Your father was the one who started the fire, Rikki,” Misha said. “He shot into a starter pile.”
The sharp smell of the house, the stuff he had put on the walls. She had hated it. It had given her a headache.
Why
do
we
need
it, Daddy?
He hadn’t answered her. He had simply told her to get out of the way.
Misha kept his gaze on hers. He wasn’t breaking eye contact. So she couldn’t either.
“He’d been prepared,” Misha said. “He used the laser to ignite the building. He thought that would make my mother run. My mother never ran. Not from anything.”
“Except the Kazan System,” Rikki blurted.
That broke the moment. Misha smiled. It seemed like he smiled with relief. At her comment? Or relief that she was listening?
Or was she reading something else into it?
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. She ran from them, to save her own life. Although she would have told you she quit and moved.”
Rikki shrugged. Semantics. She could focus on semantics rather than on what he was saying.
Because what he was saying disturbed her. So deep that it made her head hurt. Memories flooded into her brain—and they came with a whoosh. Not their own sound, but the sound of that fire, igniting.
With a whoosh.
Then the boy beside her said,
Holy
shit!
and grabbed her around the shoulders, pulling her against him, and her father, screaming
No, no, no
—the last
no
getting cut off in the middle, and the heat, surrounding them, enveloping them, the smoke rising, the boy saying,
Come
on, come on, we have to get out of here. I’ll get you out
, and pulling her forward. And she didn’t scream—Daddy! Get out, Daddy!—because she didn’t want to, she didn’t want him to get out, she wanted him to die, that horrible, horrible man, because then he wouldn’t touch her again, he wouldn’t hit her and hurt her and tell her not to cry—
Her knees buckled. She uncrossed her arms and caught herself on the side of the sink.
Misha took a step forward as if he was going to catch her, and then he stopped himself, clearly uncertain about whether or not he should touch her.
The bruising, the broken bones, so unusual for an Orlinskaya job, hadn’t been caused by Orlinskaya at all. But by Rikki’s father.
But that wasn’t what made Rikki block the memory. She hadn’t hidden from herself what kind of man he had been.
She had talked about it with her therapists—how he hadn’t had friends, how he hadn’t been very nice. (But he had been smart. A survivor, he said.
I’m going to teach you how to be a survivor, Rikarda
(that name she hated).
You
will
know
how
to
live
because
of
me
.)
She had blocked the memory because of that visceral hatred, that moment when she knew she should yell for him, protect him, get him out of there—and she hadn’t.
She wanted him to die. She wanted him to die horribly. And she made sure of it. She made sure he couldn’t escape.
She had killed him.
So of course, she went out and killed others. She was suited for the job because she knew how important it was.
Because she wasn’t good enough to do any other work.
“Rikki?” Misha asked, taking another step toward her.
She stood up, moved away from the sink, took a deep breath, then nodded at him.