founded Zavtra Tech, I tried to get her to move here, to San Francisco, promised her an apartment where she’d never have to see me, excellent medical care at Stanford, but she wouldn’t come. Her little brother did, though.”
Realization dawns. “Katya.”
“Yes. I might have failed her but I’d not fail her brother. He is now a U.S. citizen and is like my own sibling. As for my father, I developed a computer supervirus, one that targeted his companies, his vast financial empire—the thing that he valued more than anything else. Within two years, he was on the brink of total economic ruin and collapsed of a heart attack. Thus, without pulling a trigger, I avenged Maryska and myself. The bastard deserved to suffer more, but in the end, my only regret is that he didn’t know for certain it was me. Oh, I am sure he suspected. But I never had the satisfaction of telling him.
“And so,” he says wryly, “you got your bedtime story at dawn, pretty Bethanny. And now go, walk away and know you possess my darkest secrets. Everything that rots my heart.”
“Stop. Your heart isn’t rotted. You had an awful childhood and look what you overcame, how you succeeded.” But even still, uncertainty niggles at me. Will I ever understand him, what he has faced? I thought my own parents were the worst things ever, but they could win Mother and Father of the Year in comparison.
“I need you to go.”
“But do you want me to?”
“What I need and what I want are vastly different things, Bethanny. Please. Leave. I need to go bury the past, but I’ll never be able to get rid of the ghosts.”
“I can’t walk away, not now, not when we stand on the edge of everything.” I throw myself against him, my tears wetting his shirt. “This, you and me, it wasn’t for a night. It can’t be.”
“What we had wasn’t a night.” He cradles my face. “It was a lifetime.”
“Then give us a chance. Give me a chance. Go if you have to, I understand that, but I don’t understand you shutting the door on the possibility of us.”
He brushes his mouth over my forehead. “You deserve so much more than me.”
“No. I don’t. I’m not perfect. My best friend died because we were bickering in the car while she drove. She was being moody, not talking and shutting down. I yelled at her to open up, suspecting she was dealing with so much more than she was letting on. She started to tell me her story, then clammed up, said that I didn’t understand. Those were her last words. And in so many ways, she was right. There is so much I don’t understand about the world and how it works. But I do know one thing, that the connection between you and I doesn’t just happen. We can’t let this moment slip away without seeing if maybe we are destined for greatness.”
“I don’t deserve—”
“Stop. You deserve good things. And so do I. So did Pippa and Maryska. You deserve more than to live out your life amid sterility with only a fish for a pet.” It strikes me then why Koroleva is perfect for him. He can’t touch her.
“What do we owe the dead?” he murmurs.
“To live our best truth. And mine is that I want to stop waiting to live. Who knows when our chapters will end? None of us know how long our stories will last. All we can do is make sure the pages are filled with life.”
“And you think we can write a happy ending?”
“I don’t know, but I’d rather try than not.” I kiss him then, hard, fast, and furious. “Go deal with your past and I’ll be here, waiting in your future.”
Chapter Twelve
Z
I am gone for ten days. Katya and I cremate Maryska’s wasted body and scatter her ashes at Blue Lake on the outskirts of Kiev, a place we once spent the happiest of afternoons not long before I left for boarding school, perhaps the last truly happy day in her life. We then fly to Moscow, to the cemetery where my father is interred. As I stood in front of the stone, I waited to feel anything. But none of the old anger and hatred rose within.
Only Bethanny’s reply to my question, “What do we owe the dead?” rang through my head.
“The truth.”
And the truth was that I didn’t want to be ruled by the past anymore. Ghosts surely have