Chapter 6 - The Man Who Came Back
Matteo survived.
The bullet passed through his shoulder without hitting bone, though the doctor delivered the news with enough warnings to make it clear that Matteo had been lucky.
Sloan sat beside his hospital bed for two days.
She did not leave except to check on Carla.
Carla had a concussion, bruises, and a fury that impressed even Arthur.
“I am going to become a nurse,” Carla told Sloan from her own hospital room, “and then I am going to learn exactly where it hurts most when you punch a man.”
Sloan smiled for the first time in days.
When Matteo woke fully on the third morning, he found Sloan asleep in the chair beside his bed.
Her head rested against folded arms. Her face was pale beneath the bruising on her cheek.
Matteo watched her for a long time.
Then he reached over with his good hand and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
Sloan woke instantly.
Her hand was around his wrist before her eyes were fully open.
Matteo winced.
She released him.
“Sorry.”
“You sleep with your guard up.”
“I sleep at all?”
“Barely.”
For a moment, they looked at each other.
Then Sloan’s eyes dropped to the bandage on his shoulder.
“You got shot because of me.”
“No,” Matteo said. “I got shot because Viktor fired a gun.”
“That is not how responsibility works.”
“No,” he replied quietly. “But blame can become another kind of prison if you let it.”
Sloan looked away.
The door opened.
Arthur entered with a man Sloan had never seen before.
He was thin, exhausted, and older than she expected. His dark hair was nearly gray. A deep scar ran across his left temple.
But when he looked at Sloan, she knew.
Nikolai Orlov.
Her father.
The room seemed to lose all sound.
Nikolai stopped in the doorway.
“Anastasia.”
Sloan stood so quickly the chair scraped against the floor.
“Don’t.”
His face crumpled.
“I have searched for you.”
“Eighteen years late.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“You left me.”
“No.” His voice broke. “I put you in a place I believed was safe. I was trying to draw them away.”
“You left an eight-year-old girl alone behind a bus station.”
Nikolai closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“You knew Viktor would come.”
“Yes.”
“You knew our house was going to burn?”
“I knew there was danger.”
“And you still used me as part of your plan.”
The words sliced through the room.
Nikolai looked as though he had been struck.
“I was a coward,” he whispered. “I believed I could control monsters because I was one of them.”
Sloan’s tears came hot and furious.
“You don’t get to apologize and make it better.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to call yourself my father because you finally found me.”
“I know.”
His voice did not rise.
He did not beg.
And somehow, that made it harder.
Nikolai reached into his coat and removed a small wooden box.
Inside was a photograph.
Sloan at six years old, missing a front tooth, sitting on his shoulders at a carnival.
On the back, in her mother’s handwriting, were four words.
Keep her out of darkness.
Nikolai’s hands trembled.
“Your mother made me promise,” he said. “I failed her. I failed you.”
Sloan stared at the picture.
Then she closed the box.
“I can’t forgive you.”
Nikolai nodded, tears slipping down his face.
“I would not ask you to.”
“But I don’t want to hate you forever.”
His breath caught.
Sloan looked at him, at the broken man who had once seemed larger than the world.
“You can testify,” she said. “You can tell them everything. Every name. Every crime. You can spend whatever years you have left making sure no other child loses a home because of men like you.”
Nikolai bowed his head.
“I will.”
After he left, Matteo watched Sloan carefully.
“You did something difficult.”
“I did something unfinished.”
“That is sometimes the same thing.”
Sloan sat down again.
Her hand found his.
“I’m tired,” she whispered.
Matteo threaded his fingers through hers.
“Then stay.”
She looked at him.
“I don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to know today.”
Outside the hospital window, dawn began to touch the city.
May you like
For the first time in eighteen years, Sloan let herself believe she might not have to face it alone.
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