Unforgiving Saint by Brook Wilder

Author:Brook Wilder [Wilder, Brook]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholae Palatina, Inc.
Published: 2024-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

29

EDEN

“I’m not sure what to call you,” I say plaintively. “Zakhar or Dad?” His hands tighten around the wheel as he drives us away from Manhattan and toward a safe house somewhere in North Jersey.

I glance up at the rearview mirror and watch Nikolai in the back seat. He stares out the window, but he’s listening. He’s holding his jaw so tight it looks like it might crack into pieces. He’s been ignoring me since my outburst, and a wedge of silence is slowly forming between us. I don’t like it, but now’s not the time to coax him out of it. I’ll wait until we have some time alone at the safe house.

“What do you want to call me?” he asks, his voice tight as he stares straight ahead at the highway.

I shrug my shoulders, knowing he’s watching me from the corner of his eye. “Do you have a preference?” I ask lightly, sounding like a brat, but I have a right to be pissed. Why are they acting like I don’t?

“Eden, I’m still your father,” he replies firmly. “That hasn’t changed.”

I fold my arms tighter over my chest. “But I’ve changed,” I mutter.

I glance up at the mirror and see a slight smile playing across Nikolai’s lips. I have no intention of letting my father off easy now that he’s back in my life. He has done some awful shit, and I will remind him of it daily. He won’t be the one to tell me what to do, not anymore. Not after discovering he’s not the straitlaced, law-abiding citizen he pretended to be.

“So, was it all an act?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” replies Zakhar.

“I mean when I was home at night under curfew, were you out somewhere, playing target practice with people’s lives?”

“Eden,” his voice warns me, but I continue.

“Do you even get the hypocrisy?” I demand, but I don’t wait for an answer. “You kept me in that house, telling me to be a good girl while you were out in the streets, killing people for the Bratva or the Mafia. Who knows which one? No wonder people call you a traitor.”

“Eden.” Nikolai’s calm voice shuts me down. He stares at me in the mirror, that cool gaze freezing me in place, and I know I went too far.

I relax my arms and hold my hands in my lap like a child who has been scolded. And it makes me angry. Suddenly, the tension between them is dumped on me. What did I do wrong? Do they realize how unfair it is? I have a right to be pissed, and they’re ganging up on me. I guess the Bratva sticks together no matter how shitty they act. The scenery blurs as I hold back angry tears.

Nikolai places his hand on my shoulder and rubs circles gently against it, and my father doesn’t say a word. The gesture calms me, and maybe that’s all I wanted—for Nikolai not to hide his feelings now that my father is here.

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