Page 60 of Scarlet Secrets

Magda sends me a narrow-eyed look but leaves, and Alina sighs. She gets up to try to comfort him.

I want to do that, but even looking like I’m going to move closer sends him into hysterics and screaming for his fucking mother.

“Eat your damn toast and quit crying, Sasha,” I say, “or you’ll go hungry.”

He lets out a high-pitched wail and starts to thrash around as he cries, and Alina gathers him to calm him, but the child’s just in his own world of tears and screams.

“I mean it, Sasha. Eat or you’ll have that served for dinner and lunch and tomorrow’s breakfast until you do.”

“Demyan.” The quiet condemnation in Alina’s soft voice irks me, and it cuts deep. Her eyes are puffy and I’m pretty sure she’s been giving Sasha a run for his money on the crying game, but unlike him, her tears are warranted.

“Leave it,” I say, guilt biting at me. “He needs to learn.”

“He’s only two, Demyan. He’s just a little kid, and he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He’s in a big, strange place, and his mother’s gone. He’s scared.”

I glare at her. Yeah, I’m fucking aware of that, but am Imeant to let this woman take my child again? Am I meant to let her get away with what she did? This boy hates me because of her, and it rips my fucking heart from my chest. And that’s on her.

He would know me if I’d been there from the beginning, and he’d have the world. I can give him the world. But…

“She did this, Alina.”

My sister’s quiet a long time, and she tries to offer Sasha a toast soldier, but he shakes his head and utters a watery, “Mama.”

“Demyan…” She pauses, and I try to quell the rising anger. Not at my sister or the boy who both break my heart and make it want to burst, but at the woman who robbed me of him for two fucking years. “Demyan, I get it. Your anger and your pain. But your reaction and punishment with Erin is…”

“Unwarranted?”

She sighs. “No, I get it, but as warranted and justified as you might be, can’t you see how unfair this is to Sasha? He’s two. He’s clearly terrified. He doesn’t know us.”

My hand clenches hard on the table.

“Right or wrong, we’re strangers and the only reason he reacts to the women is we’re the closest he has to his mom right now.”

“He’ll—”

“What? Get over it?” Alina shakes her head. “I’m barely hanging on but even I see the wrongness. You’re not unreasonable. You’re not…” She swallows, looks at my son, then at me. “He clearly needs his mom and you’re going to do long-term damage by keeping them apart. I know you know that.”

Her words are sharp, poisoned barbs and they hit deep. The anger in me is swirling, looking for an out and I can’t lash out at Alina. But she also doesn’t get to speak to me like that.

“Mind your own fucking business, Alina. How I handleErin and my son is my decision, my choice. No one else’s. When you have kids, you can make decisions for them.”

The silence is damning and the expression in her eyes, like I punched her, is devastating.

She pushes back her chair. “That’s never happening, is it?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I lashed out, Angel. I didn’t mean that. I’m just?—”

“No, Demyan. No.” And she utters a sob, turns, and runs out.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. When did I turn into this monster? I’m exactly the failure that my father saw.

Only a monster demands a small child eat or go hungry. And only a monster tells the sister he loves insensitive shit about having kids. Her fucking fiancé’s dead. The man she planned to spend her life with was excited about starting a family with, whom she loved with her whole heart is gone, and then I go say fucked-up shit to her?

“Olga.” The maid isn’t here. I raise my voice some more and she comes running. “Get him to eat his breakfast and keep an eye on him.”

I take off after Alina.

She’s in her room, crying like she’s Sasha’s other half, that inconsolable note I’m fast learning is there, in her voice.

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