Page 64 of Chained Fate
Something that the dark hollow inside me recognizes in him as a mirror of itself, I realize with a jolt.
“Alexei…” My voice shakes as I reach for him.The biting cold is seeping into my body now, chilling me down to the bone.“Why didn’t you believe me when I said I loved you?”
His lips press together.“Alinyonok…”
“No, listen.”I grip his hand in both of mine.“You’ve always been able to read me.You knew I wanted you before I could even admit it to myself.All along, you’ve known me better than I’ve known myself.You would’ve known if I were lying.You would’ve felt it.So why didn’t you believe me when I told you I loved you?When I finally admitted the truth to you and to myself?”
He doesn’t reply, but his nostrils flare, the cords in his neck tensing as if he wants to say something but can’t.
“Tell me.”I bring his hand to my chest.My eyes burn because I can feel it in him, the struggle, the pain buried so deep that unearthing it feels unbearable, untenable.“Please, Alexei, is it… because of your father?”
He flinches like I’ve struck him with an arrow, and I know my hunch was right.There’s something there, something beyond simple grief—not that grief is ever simple, especially with families like ours.
I don’t push him further.He’ll speak if he’s ready.And if he isn’t?—
“She was seventeen when it happened.”The words that emerge from him are filled with such raw torment that it’s all I can do not to shrink back under the weight of it.But I don’t.Because it’s my turn to be strong for him.To support him under the weight ofhistrauma.
“We didn’t know, Ruslan and I, not until we found her diary some weeks after her death,” he continues, his voice like gravel scraping over glass.“But we should have known.The signs were there, in hindsight.Ksenia was always shy, choosing to hide away in her room with a book rather than go out and party.But that year, a few months before her eighteenth birthday, she started to emerge from her shell.She started wearing high heels, short dresses, the works—and for some reason, he couldn’t bear it.”
“Your father?”I venture cautiously, and Alexei nods, his face so dark it’s terrifying to watch, like a funnel cloud about to turn into a twister.
“He came to her one night to castigate her for her choices.He couldn’t deal with the fact that his daughter was growing up, turning into a woman.”Alexei’s face twists.“Right before he died, he called me.Tried to justify his actions that night, to tell me how sorry he was.Said he’d been sleep-deprived and on pain meds for a slipped disk in his back, that he got confused and thought she was our mother.But even if that was true, it doesn’t change what he did—and what it did to her.”
My stomach clenches into a tiny ball.“What did he do?”I ask softly, though I have an awful feeling that I know.
“He raped her.”Alexei looks like he wants to vomit.“He pinned her down and fucked her like she was one of his hookers instead of his daughter.She wrote…” He clenches his teeth, his lower jaw working from side to side before he continues.“She wrote that she didn’t fight back.That when he reached for her, she just froze.Because she was so stunned, so disbelieving.Even after it was over, she told herself that it was a bad dream, a nightmare, not real.She didn’t tell anyone that it happened—just wrote about it in her diary and then hid that diary in her personal safe, where she thought no one would ever find it.And no one would have… if she hadn’t died in that car crash.But she did.And now that I know, now that I’ve read that entry, I wonder if…” Alexei takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut.When he opens them, they burn with pure torment.“If that crash was actually an accident, or if she?—”
“No.”I squeeze his hand tighter against my chest.“No, Alexei, don’t.Don’t go there.She was amotherby then.She had Slava.She wouldn’t have?—”
“You don’t know that.”His hand is painfully tense in my grasp.“She was never the same after that night.She retreated into herself, became more of a recluse than ever before.Ruslan and I didn’t know what happened and she wouldn’t tell us, so we thought it was some teenage girl thing, and we just… let it go.”He lets out a harsh laugh.“Can you believe it?We just fucking let it go.”
“Oh, Alexei…” My heart bleeds at the naked agony on his face.“You couldn’t have known.He’d never abused her before, right?”
“No, not like that.He tried to spank her once when she was six, but I put a stop to that.”
I try to imagine it: Alexei, himself still a child, going up against his terrifying father.It must’ve taken a spine of steel.But he did it.Because that’s the kind of man Alexei is and always has been—ruthless, determined, and fiercely protective of those he loves.
The kind of man who’d violently stalk a woman for a decade… and then go without sleep for weeks in order to nurse her through brain surgery and radiation.
I open my mouth to tell him again that he couldn’t have known, that this was in no way his fault when he adds grimly, “Ruslan thinks Slava was her way of getting revenge on our father, in any case.”
I blink, caught off guard.“Slava?Her son?”
Alexei nods darkly.“Ruslan thinks that’s why Ksenia went to Nikolai’s party and hooked up with him.Getting pregnant from a one-night stand—it was so out of character for her.She didn’t date, didn’t go out with anyone.And then to randomly hook up with your brother of all people?It never made sense to us.”
“Nikolai did say he wore a condom that night,” I say, recalling the conversation when he told us all about Slava’s existence.“He swore it must’ve been either defective or tampered with.I didn’t think about it much at the time, but…”
“But maybe she’d actually tampered with it.”Alexei’s lips form a tight line.“Because she wanted to get pregnant.To show my father he couldn’t control her.Or to prove to herself that he hadn’t damaged her beyond repair.Or… fuck, maybe because she was just lonely and depressed.”
“Or maybe she just wanted sex, and my brother is a good-looking guy,” I say as lightly as I can manage.“Her going to that party could’ve been a sign that she was healing from what happened and was ready to venture out into the world again.The condom could’ve just been defective, so her first outing got her knocked up.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
But Alexei doesn’t look like he believes it, and frankly, neither do I.
What happened to Ksenia takes more than a couple of years to heal from.Maybe more than a couple of decades.
It’s the kind of trauma that ripples across generations and touches everyone in the family one way or another.The kind that twists and warps your worldview, making you doubt everything and everyone.Making you question your most basic core convictions—such as that family doesn’t hurt each other.That love can’t be cruel.
