Author's Preface
F or almost fifteen seconds, Alexei didn’t react. He moved finally, nothing but a small twitch of his fingers against the blanket. “You’re her father?” Quiet. Barely audible in the silent room.
Kellen’s vision blurred. Something close to panic reared in his chest. Burning, desperate. And all he could do was sit there on the floor facing the bed. Put his face in his hands and keep breathing. “Just tell me what happened to her,” he whispered.
“She got sick.” Alexei’s voice was light, thin. He raised his head a little, but still wasn’t facing Kellen.
“Is she dead?” Another whisper.
“Yes.”
Kellen’s hand slipped across his lips. The first hot tear hit his fingers. He didn’t move, eyes pinned on the floor. “She died of a sickness?”
Alexei nodded. His arms shifted, locked slowly around himself.
“What kind of sickness?”
“I don’t know.” A whisper. Alexei’s lips pressed to a thin line, then relaxed with a small tremble. “They refused to let her see a doctor. I—I’ve seen the sickness in dancers before. They always die.”
Kellen swept his face with his hands a second time. Blinked and tried to breathe. “She got a sickness from one of your dancers?”
Alexei was silent for a long moment. “No.” Quiet. “She was one of my dancers.”
Kellen’s fingers froze across his chin. Another hot tear skidded down the side of his face. “How old was she?” His voice cracked.
“She was seven when she was given to me,” Alexei whispered. “She was a companion for me. A little sister. She was fifteen when she started working in the club.”
A surge of adrenaline lit Kellen’s nerves the moment Alexei’s words sank in. He stood up, paced toward the kitchenette. Touched a hand to his forehead and turned back. It was hard to breathe. It was so hard to breathe. Like the air simply wouldn’t come. “Fifteen?” Four seconds. “You—You’re—No. She—She would have turned fifteen last year. You said—You just said―” He sucked in a weak gasp. “She was alive last year? ”
“She was alive four months ago.” The six words seemed to hang in the air. “One week, four days…”
A weak exhale escaped Kellen’s throat. His fingers lifted feebly to his neck. “Skyler Eastland? She said her name was Skyler Eastland?”
“We called her Blue,” came Alexei’s quiet response. “She had blue eyes and black hair.”
Kellen’s back sank against the wall. How. How the hell. It repeated in the abyss in his mind over and over again. For a year and a half, he had combed Winchester. The four years after were spent on the surrounding area. The years following looking into any flimsy lead he found—telling himself he knew she was gone, but still refusing to give up.
And for all nine of those years, she had been right here in Winchester. Right here, leading a captive life alongside this boy sitting in front of Kellen.
Anger welled up in Kellen’s chest so suddenly, it threatened to physically choke him.
The fact that there might have been more he could’ve done.
That if he had only looked harder, longer.
That XI had been on his radar the entire time, and he still failed her.
That he was staring into the face of someone who was somewhere between partially and wholly responsible for Skyler’s captivity, that she had never escaped, that she had died of a sickness that might have been treatable.
Four months ago.
Four brief months ago.
“Are you telling me the goddamn truth right now?” Kellen breathed.
Alexei nodded wordlessly. It hit with cold, weakening realization: that person. The restraint marks still healing on his wrists. The bruising on his neck, visible with the makeup washed off. The youth of that body and face. He couldn’t be more than five or six years older than Skyler. He had been a child, too, when he met her. And a blindfolded, abused, and manipulated adult when he tried to save her.
“What was she like?” Kellen whispered.
Alexei’s lips parted on a soft breath. “Amazing. Crazy.” His voice faded, becoming barely audible. “She was smart, sarcastic, downright evil sometimes.” Tension crept across his face. Something Kellen had not expected to see: pain.
“She loved coffee,” Alexei whispered. “The kind that smells up the entire apartment. Disgusting…peanut butter on celery.” Alexei’s voice fully broke. His hand lifted to his lips as a hushed sob cut his throat. “She would move my things around when she was mad at me. Leave shit on the floor for me to trip on. She bought herself a Valentine teddy bear every year. A pair of fluffy socks every Christmas. Scented candles and a closet full of a million quilts because she couldn’t decide what color scheme she liked. Dream catchers.”
Silence.
“Dream catchers?” Kellen whispered.
“She said you always had one with you. She kept one over her bed. Figured out how to make them from scratch and had some of the dancers sell her handmade ones at the club for her. Back when she was too young to dance.”
Too young to dance. She hadn’t lived to be old enough. Kellen’s fingers brushed through the tracks across his face and settled over his lips. He lifted his stinging eyes to the ceiling. “Did she ever try to get out?”
Alexei was silent for a long moment. He swept a hand across his cheek. “She was marked. They would’ve found her if she tried to leave.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “But we talked about it, sometimes. She wanted to live in Florida. A house down a gravel road in the middle of a swamp where no one would find us, not even the postman.”
A faint exhale left Kellen’s chest. “She remembered that?”
“She said there were crocodiles.” A weak, faltering smile touched Alexei’s lips. “But she wasn’t afraid of crocodiles. She said you shot and killed a crocodile with a 9 -millimeter once, because it scared her mom.”
Kellen said nothing.
“I don’t believe that story,” Alexei muttered.
Silence claimed the room. Guns and dreamcatchers. It made sense, Kellen reflected in the quiet. It made sense that those were the things his daughter remembered him by.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Kellen whispered. He pushed away from the wall.
“Kellen Eastland.”
Kellen’s footsteps stopped short at the bathroom entrance. Heart pounding weakly in his chest, he looked back at the boy on the bed.
“Kellen, you should know you have something Exey wants. Make sure no one else affiliated with Exey figures out who you are.”
I don’t know what the fuck you mean by that, Kellen thought as he entered the bathroom and shut the door. He stripped off his shirt. And for a moment, he was left staring at the mirror, eyes fixed on the locket hanging from his neck. Fuck. It broke. Slow, creeping, like a crack spreading all the way through. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His jaw locked, breath rationing. Four months ago. Four months. Only four months.
Kellen’s fingers shot out for the sink faucet, and he switched it on. He sank back against the opposite wall and crumpled to the floor. His fingers sank into his hair, face in his arm. His breath released on a full sob. Choked, suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. The air wouldn’t come. Like he was drowning. Underwater. The brine water ripples closing off his only source of oxygen.