I float around the corner of the instrument and toward where he’s seated on the piano bench. “Compensation for what?”

“For removing her from our lives.”

I suck in my breath, but Kolya doesn’t seem to notice. “What does that mean?” I ask. “‘Removing her from your lives…’?”

“She used to spend most summers in the south of France. One day, Otets told us that she wouldn’t be coming back.”

“That must have been hard on both of you,” I say, feeling the heartbreak of their childhood as if it were only hours old. “Having her leave like that.”

Kolya shakes his head and pins his fingers down on the keys. One note, another, another, until a song starts to take shape. Music flutters up into the air, and for a moment, I close my eyes and feel my body respond to the sweet notes. He touches the piano like it’s his lover. Like he touches me.

Then the music stops abruptly. The notes strangle in the air. I open my eyes and look down at Kolya.

“It was a lie, June,” Kolya tells me. “My mother never left us. She was taken.”

18

KOLYA

I wonder if June even realizes that her hand is on my shoulder.

Her hazel eyes are filled with an awe that’s decaying quickly into dread. To be honest, I have no fucking clue why I’m telling her any of this. It happened so long ago that the memories have fused with my skin and taken up permanent residence there.

I don’t need to relive it.

I certainly don’t need to repeat it.

And yet here I am, sharing this part of my past with a woman who doesn’t even know what she’s taking from me.

“What do you mean, ‘s-she was taken’?” June asks, her voice dropping low as if she’s afraid we’ll be overheard.

“My father decided he’d had enough of her. He took her and sold her.”

“H-he sold her?” June gasps. “His own wife?”

“That was the thing about my father: you thought he had boundaries, and then he shocked the world by proving he had none.”

“But… how do you know?” she asks. “Did your father tell you?”

“He confessed it,” I admit. “Just before I killed him. But by that point, I’d done some digging. I suspected enough to ask him the right questions.”

“And he admitted that he trafficked his own wife?”

“She had the audacity to sleep with another man,” I say. “When he found out, he decided to punish her for it.”

She sinks onto the bench next to me. I slide down to give her a little more space, but I stay close enough so that I can feel the body heat rise off her skin.

“You said you suspected…?”

I nod. “As I got older, I asked more questions. The answers I received didn’t match up. Then one day, I heard my father’s two closest Vors talking. They were laughing about ‘using’ their don’s woman.”