Page 90 of Dirty Grovel

“I don’t know. But they’re all I have to count on. Unless you’re going to stand there and tell me that you put a gun to your father’s head and pulled the trigger…?” I pause, waiting for him to jump in. He doesn’t. “Did you?”

He waits an unreasonably long time before he responds. “No.”

“I thought so.” I keep my hand firmly on his. “Do you wanna give me some context?”

“I killed his only daughter and that robbed him of the will to live.”

“Jesus, Oleg. You didn’t kill anyone! Stop saying shit like that.”

He turns to me, the full force of those eyes boring into my soul. “You don’t know the whole story.”

“Maybe you should tell me the whole story then.”

But still, he hesitates, uncertain in a way I’ve never seen from him before.

“If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t push you on it,” I tell him. “But if you’re going to confess to crimes, then be prepared to explain why. Because I don’t believe you killed anyone. Your sister and girlfriend died on a boating accident?—”

“They died because I was foolish, reckless, and arrogant,” Oleg barks. “Yes, they died in a boating accident. An accident that was caused by an explosion thatIwas directly responsible for.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“I thought I was some kind of mad scientist of the sea. I used to play around with the engines, making little tweaks here and there, trying to improve the system. I took things a little too far one day and… Boom.”

There are goosebumps covering my arms. I know he can see them, feel them, but I can’t bring myself to remove my hand from his.

“Elise and Oriana were below deck in their cabin. Which happened to be right next to the engine room.”

“Oh, God…”

“I can’t say for sure what their last few moments were like. But they must have smelled smoke… must have smelled that something was burning. Before they themselves burned.”

I blink. Tears I didn’t even know had collected are sliding down my cheeks.

“I didn’t— There wasn’t enough time for me to do anything. By the time I realized what was happening, it was over. Theexplosion took out half the yacht. When we found their bodies, I couldn’t even tell which one was Oriana and which one was Elise.”

I want him to stop. I can’t bear to hear this.

But the fact that he feels like he can bear to go on makes me feel like I can bear to listen.

“That night was the first and only time I saw my mother lose control. You know how frigid and unemotional she can be. That veneer never cracked—not even once in the eighteen years I’d known her. But that night, she ran onto the dock, barefooted in her nightgown, screaming so loudly that it felt like the sky was shaking from the sound.”

My nails tighten around his arm. I say nothing.

“She would have run right onto the burning boat if my father didn’t stop her. She scratched and clawed at him, but he didn’t let her go. He held her until all the fight had left her.”

“Where were you?”

“Stuck flat on my face. The force of the explosion threw me right off the yacht and onto the dock. I couldn’t move. I could barely see except for shadows. One half of my face felt like it was melting. It wasn’t until later that I realized that that’s exactly what was happening.”

“God, Oleg,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around him. “What you must have endured…”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Sutton. I don’t deserve your pity.”

“What about my admiration then?”

He rips away from my arms. “‘Admiration’?” he growls as though I’ve thrown an insult at him. “Youadmireme for murdering my sister and my girlfriend.”

“You murdered no one,” I say furiously. “You told me the whole story. I know what happened now and what happened was an accident.”

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