Page 90 of Vasily the Hammer

“I don’t know! Seriously, I am so freaking proud of you for quitting all the drugs, but I just need to make sure it’s safe for Artom, and little tins of pills aren’t safe. If you get stressed out with Artom— and you will, trust me— and you end up taking too many or just something that makes you loopy or–or–or I don’t know—”

“I quit for you.”

I tilt my head to the side, unsure if I heard him right. After all, he quit at a time when he thought he’d never see me again. Dima and I told Artom he would, but he didn’t know that.

He reaches up, not to grab me but to run a fingertip across my forehead and down my cheek. “My memories of you. Artyom, too. And what remained of my mom, my dad. Brooke. I don’t know if you remember this, but my girlfriend died with my dad. I was going to marry her. I think everything worked out the way it... the way it had to? But suddenly, I was in control of the lives of everyone I cared about, and all the people I’d lost along the way, they lived in my brain. I started with all the drugs to silence the voices telling me I was going to die, but then I needed the voices telling me how to protect everyone still living. And I needed the memories of you and everyone else to last the rest of my life. That’s really why I quit everything.”

He ruined everything.

Dima called him a coward. I called him a coward. We were both right. I know straight to my bones that he would take a bullet for me. He would step in front of a bus for Artom. He’d fight off wolves for Kseniya. But he is a coward.

I keep thinking I’m the weak one, I’m the one who’s living in my wallows, but nope, it’s Vasily.

“You are so stupid.”

He nods as though agreeing with me.

“No, you aresostupid!”

He smiles. It’s not particularly luminescent, but it’s as agreeable as that nod. “I am.”

“No!” I yell more loudly, not caring that his sister and Alex are out there, probably listening through the door. “You don’t get to say that. I do, not you!”

“Okay.”

I shove him. I’m not a violent person. I may have the tiniest fragments of myself, but I know I’m not a fighter. I’m not a runner either. I’m quick to cave because I just want simple and quiet. I want to work hard and make people happy and be safe and warm in my corner of the world. Still, I shove him.

“Stop!” I shriek, shoving him again and again until he falls back on the bed, and then I climb up on him, straddling his thighs so I can shove him again. “You ruined everything! We could have been happy. I loved you so much, and then you didn’t even say goodbye to me, did you? Did you watch my brother drag me off? Did you know full well that he was going to suck every penny he could out of me until I was nothing, a nameless thing shoved in a... in a... oh no.”

I want to be mad at only Vasily. That’s the only feeling I deserve to have right now. I want to scream and hit and blame and vent it all on him. I want him to hurt.

But my brother sold me to sex traffickers.

He sold me.

He sold me twice, and thank God Almighty that the first time he sold me, it was to Vasily’s brother, but Vasily took over, and he was so good to me. He loved me inFlagstaff.

But the second time Tony sold me? The amnesia was the best-case scenario, and the only thing I think that’s protected me from dwelling on the other scenariosisthe amnesia. And as the memories come back, so do all the things I know to happen to women who get sold, all the things I don’t know but I can imagine.

My sobs come so hard I can’t breathe. My diaphragm clenches hard enough to make me sick. It’s brutal, it’s ugly, it’s overwhelming. I have to anchor my forearms on Vasily’s chest just to hunch my back and curl in on myself.

“Why?” I wail. “He’s my brother. He’s all I have and he’s only ever hated me and why? What did I do to him? I just wanted him to love me, and why—don’t you touch me!”I shriek at the graze of Vasily’s fingers on one of my hands.

His hands fall away.

His deep sapphire eyes are so plaintive, so morose, so desperate to help me.

He’s my tormentor, my abuser, not in the physical way it looks like in the videos but in the mental way. The emotional way. Maybe Dima is right and what I wanted from Vasily wasn’t love but an out, but I can’t confirm my own thoughts, and I may never be able to.

I can’t simply change my lifestyle and preserve my memories.

I pound my fist on his chest one last time. “You dare talk to me—to me— about losing memories. You stole them as surely as my brother did. You stole six years of them.”

Vasily braves touching me once more, this time resting his giant hands over my tiny fists, bringing them together over his heart. I know I can break free, but I don’t. I’m so tired.

“I did, and I will forever regret that. But I will make it up to you every day of my life so long as you’ll let me,zvyozdochka.”

I shake my head. “No. I can’t trust you. You’re no better than Tony.”

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