Page 123 of Emerald Malice

“How can you know that?”

“I’ve watched you with Misha,” he says. “I’ve seen how patient you are with him, how protective. You’re just as much of a force of nature as your aunt, Natalia. You just don’t know it yet.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.

We round one corner, then another. Eventually, we link up with the highway and settle into a droning, thrumming cruise.

“She reminds me a little of my own mother,” Andrey finally says, cutting through the silence again. “Back when she was young.”

My head swivels in his direction. Has Andrey Kuznetsov actually volunteered information about his personal life? Is there some kind of invisible torture taking place that I’m not aware of?

I sit very still, as though the slightest movement will send him retreating back behind his protective barricades.

“Arina had the same kind of maternal softness. It made you underestimate just how shrewd she really was.”

“Arina,” I repeat under my breath. “What happened to her?”

“She’s been a patient at Drogheda Mental Institution for the past eleven years.”

“Oh my.” I draw in a breath. “I-I’ve… seen it a few times. On walks. It’s a beautiful property.”

“From the outside, maybe,” Andrey says flatly. “But at the end of the day, no matter how beautiful, a mental institution is a mental institution. She’s trapped there.”

Something about the way he says that makes my heart ache. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry.”

He swallows like he didn’t mean to say that and, honestly, I’m not so sure I was meant to hear it. Just to be safe, I pretend like I haven’t.

But I can’t stay silent, not when my curiosity is fit to burst. “Do you visit her often?”

“Not as often as I should.” He swallows again, like this whole conversation is surprising him as much as it is me. “But I try to go as much as I can. I just don’t know how much good it does her.”

“Can she recognize you?”

“Some days, yes. Other days, she thinks I’m… someone else.”

“Who?”

Those steely silver eyes flash to my face and then back to the road. “A man she fears and despises. The same man that’s responsible for her lifetime sentence in Drogheda.”

I don’t know how, but I already know the answer to the question I’m about to ask. “Your father?”

Andrey nods. “My father.”

He says it with so much venom that I find myself reaching towards him, fingers outstretched, longing to give him some kind of comfort. My hand lands on his thigh, close to his knee. He doesn’t acknowledge my invasion of his space—but he doesn’t throw me off, either.

Progress.

“Does she know you’re going to be a father?”

Andrey’s hands twitch on the wheel. “I did tell her,” he rasps. “But I’m not sure she can process new information anymore. I’m not sure she’ll remember.”

“But you told her. That makes a difference.”

“Does it?” He looks at me like he genuinely wants to know.

I nod firmly. “You haven’t given up on her. Whenever she’s lucid—whenever she’s herself again—she’ll know that. In her heart, even if not in her head.”

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