Page 115 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

“We were both sold to a bad, bad man. It was… It’s a long story.”

“If you were there with her, how did you get away?” Ernestine asks. Her question isn’t accusatory. Just curious.

“He—Taras was his name—he was going to shoot us both. But then, uh… someone arrived and killed Taras before he could kill me, too. I wanted to bring you Rose’s necklace and tell you what happened to her. I didn’t know if you’d ever hear the news otherwise.”

In response, Rose’s mother pulls me into a hug, thanking me.

“I also feel responsible,” I say, the words nearly lost in the tightness of her hug. “It was my plan to try to escape, and—”

“And Rose agreed to it, didn’t she?” Ernestine interrupts sharply, her eyes gleaming with tears.

I nod, tears of my own starting to well up.

She gives me one of the saddest smiles I’ve ever seen. “Then it isn’t your fault, darling, okay? Rose was a fighter. Some fights, you just can’t win.”

Her eyes are glistening. Her face is so unbearably sorrowful. Just decades and decades of misery compounded into her expression. She’s had a hard life—that much is obvious.

And now this, on top of everything else? It’s brutal. It’s unfair. So unfair that I start to cry. On her behalf. On my own behalf. On behalf of mothers everywhere.

No mother should lose a child.

I think again of Lukas, though I’ve been trying so hard not to. And the tiniest image of his little fingers wrapped around my pinky breaks me.

I start to sob. Ugly sobs that rack me from head to toe.

Ernestine pulls me into her embrace. We cry together for a long, long time.

Eventually, we pull ourselves together. It feels like we’ve bonded. In a soft voice, Ernestine tells me about the story of how Rose was taken.

“…The police wouldn’t do anything to look for her. They told me she must’ve skipped town, but I knew she didn’t. She would never leave her baby girl behind. I was able to talk with people who worked at the bar with her, and they knew the guy she left work with that day. He was apparently a known trafficker—not known to us, of course. From there, the trail went cold. I didn’t know if she was in New York, if she was overseas, if she was dead. I thought I’d never know. So in a way, you coming here has been a gift.”

“The worst gift ever,” I mutter.

Ernestine shakes her head. “I’m devastated Rose’s life ended this way, but at least we know. At least we can mourn her and maybe give her daughter something like a normal life. The poor girl has been waiting for her mom to come home for a long time.”

I don’t know what I expected from Rose’s mother, but it wasn’t this. Part of me thought she’d throw me out of the house the minute I told her the story. That maybe she’d refuse to believe me or think it was a trick or a scam.

Another part of me thought she’d try to hurt me in punishment for what I’d done. What I’d convinced Rose to do.

I never thought she would ply me with food and be the one offering comfort to me instead of the other way around.

Just then, the door opens. I turn and see who it is—and my heart plummets.

If I wasn’t ready to confront Rose’s mother, then I’m a million times more unprepared to confront her young daughter.

Seeing the girl there in the doorway is like a punch to the gut. It feels like looking at Rose herself. A younger Rose, of course, but still. They have the same flaming red hair, the same green eyes, and the same heart-shaped face.

She’s beautiful.

June’s backpack has sparkly pink straps and a rainbow key chain hanging from the zipper. When she looks from me to Ernestine and back again, her eyes are pinched together in concern the way her mother’s so often were.

She’s understandably suspicious of me. “Grandma?” she says in a low, quivering voice. “Who is this?”

I open my mouth to try and piece together some explanation that would make sense to this poor little girl. But before I can, Ernestine pushes herself to her feet.

“Stay there,” she murmurs to me. “Let me handle this.”

Selfishly, cowardly, I’m grateful for the intervention. I didn’t have any idea what to say.

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