“I can be different. With family,” he said, the significance of his words not lost on me.
Vasile, who’d rounded the car and opened the door, touched my shoulder. I went to stand, but he put his arms around me gingerly and then scooped me out of the car.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
I nodded, and then he set off, moving quickly but somehow managing not to jostle me.
He moved up the stairs with the same speed and tenderness and then lay me on our bed, carefully arranging me.
“I will bring your medicine later. Rest,” he said.
Then he leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead and was gone in a blink.
Those few minutes in his arms had been the most comforted I felt since that awful night, but now, back in the house I hadn’t known if I’d ever be able to face, in a home that was more empty than it ever had been, I was alone, cold.
And I knew that he blamed me for what had happened, knew that Vasile was lost to me.
Vasile
A few hours after I’d brought Fawn home, I followed the sound of Sorin’s voice to the front door, saw him standing with his body blocking the portal, his face set in a scowl.
“Why are you here?”
“I came to see Fawn,” Esther said.
“She’s not feeling well.”
“She asked me to come.”
I hadn’t known that, but I had expected her sooner or later.
“Sorin, let her pass,” I called.
He stood aside reluctantly, scowling down at Esther. But she paid him no attention and instead turned her eyes on me. I’d seen her many times since that first one, and this was the only occasion when I hadn’t been able to read her emotions completely. She was veiled, hidden, but I thought I saw pity in her eyes.
And blame.
The blame I could take. The pity I wouldn’t abide.
“Why are you here?” I asked, not bothering to modulate my tone.
“She asked me to bring this.”
Esther’s voice was bland, devoid of her natural attitude. The surest sign that something, something else, was wrong.
“And who let you up here?” Sorin asked, standing close enough to touch her, his stance intimidating.
She didn’t seem bothered, and instead casually tossed over her shoulder, “I can be persuasive.”
She tightened her grip on the black bag that she held, and I focused on it, suddenly suspicious.
“What is that, Esther?”
I stepped toward her as I spoke, and she looked up at me, eyes still hooded, her grip on the bag tightening.
“It’s personal,” she said.
Sorin snatched the bag out of her hand and opened it.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked.
He looked into the bag and then handed it to me. I stared down and then I opened it and glanced inside. I closed it immediately and handed it back to her. She had thinned her full lips into a harsh line, her expression grim.
“What’s that for?” I asked, hating the raw note in my voice.
Esther sighed. “She has to do something with her milk when she’s not at the hospital.”
The words were another stab in the chest, a reminder of how wrong things were, of how my baby wasn’t home with us where she should be. I watched as she brushed past Sorin and walked up the stairs.
When she was gone, I gestured toward the den and he followed me.
“Those fuckers are gonna get what’s coming to them,” Sorin said, pacing around the den with the pent-up energy he’d thankfully managed to suppress while with Fawn.
I stared at him, and he stopped, looked back at me. “What are you waiting for? It’s already been days. You have to hit and now!”
“What have you and Priest found?” I asked, surprised I managed to say anything at all. When I wasn’t thinking about Maria, hoping with a fervor that almost scared me she would live, vengeance was at the fore of my thoughts. It wouldn’t take away Maria’s pain, Fawn’s, even my own, but it would set some things right, and I nearly salivated at the thought of getting it.
“Ashmore.”
Just the sound of his name sent me into a near blinding rage.
“I’d assumed as much,” I finally said. “He had help.” I knew that had to be true as well because Ashmore wouldn’t have risked it alone, but I wondered who else I would soon make suffer.
“Yes he did. Seems your little meeting with Vargas was a distraction.”
“Vargas helped him?” I asked.
It didn’t matter, wouldn’t change either of their fates, but I wondered why. What made Vargas agree to forfeit his life for Ashmore’s gain?
“He owed Ashmore’s old man a favor. It has been collected.”
“Were any of the other clans involved? Anyone else?”
Sorin shook his head.