“Alik stabbed Rodion because his father told him to. That’s what Alik said!”

The shaking of Kisa’s head grew faster. “No, no, no, no!” She staggered to her feet and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her feet suddenly stopped in the sand, and she asked, “And Alik? Wh-why did Alik stab himself and blame you? Why take you from me too?”

Every muscle in me froze and my heart thundered in my chest. Kisa saw my reaction and her arms dropped to her sides. “What?” she asked, her voice laced with dread, fear… anxiousness.

Feeling a sudden rush of protectiveness, I lurched forward and crushed my mouth against hers, Kisa moaning in surprise. Her hands slammed to my hard pecs, but her mouth moved against mine like she couldn’t resist what we had, the spark that was between us.

Pulling back, breathless, I pressed my forehead against hers, gripping tightly onto her neck.

“Luka… please… tell me,” Kisa begged, her voice barely a whisper.

Inhaling a ragged breath, I closed my eyes and answered honestly, “Because of you.” I opened my eyes, and Kisa backed away, her gaze searching mine. She was shaking her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He needed someone to blame and he wanted you, Kisa-Anna. He wanted you away from me.”

“No!” Kisa turned her back to me and held on to a nearby rock. Her head shook back and forth, and all I could do was to stand there watching her, every muscle tensed with the unknown… the unknown of how to be with her… how to make her feel better.

I stood there like a mute and watched her fall apart. But when a pained scream ripped from her throat and she fell to her knees, my feet seemed to move of their own accord, and I dropped behind her, wrapping my arms around her slight body.

“He’s… he’s troubled. He’s always been troubled with voices in his head. Urges to hurt people. He needed me, even then, he needed me to stop the urges,” she whispered. “He’s always been so possessive of me. But I never thought… I couldn’t have imagined…” Kisa’s breath hitched and she began turning in my arms. I froze, unsure of what she was doing, when she crawled on my lap and laid her head on my shoulder. I fought to breathe quietly, her actions making something within me warm, like her touch her closeness thawing the thick ice in my blood.

Kisa’s bloodshot eyes traced the graphic demons I had tattooed on my chest—a gift from the guards who wanted me to look evil to the Gulag crowd—and her breath blew against my neck, sending shivers down my spine.

“I can’t… I can’t take that he blamed it on you, my beautiful Luka, my best friend, my soul’s other half… because of me… because he wanted me…”

She sucked in a shuddering breath and her hand dropped to trace round my stomach. “That he would injure himself so… so… brutally to create such an impressive lie against you.”

I closed my eyes, trying hard not to lose grip of my rage at the thought of Durov and what he had done.

But that was shot to hell when Kisa said, “He never even let me grieve your death. He just swooped in and took me for his own. I was only thirteen. But I was his. My father didn’t complain, he was lost, and then a couple of years later my mama died of a heart attack—the pain of losing my brother was too much for her to bear. Papa’s only child was now with the only heir—it was the perfect outcome from such a horrific situation. And I was so numbed by grief of losing everyone I loved, that I never fought him. In fact, I was glad someone was there for me.”

Kisa lifted her head and pressed three kisses on my rigid jaw. “I had lost you… I didn’t care much about anything after that… until you saved me in the alley and my heart began to beat again.” She sucked in a breath. “I hadn’t even realized it’d stopped.”

Not knowing how to respond, I gripped her tighter.

“Luka?” she asked. I grunted a reply. “Where did you go? What happened?”

I narrowed my eyes and concentrated on my past. “Your father took me to his office, along with Alik’s.” My eyebrows pulled down, my head aching. “Someone begged for my life. Another man was in the room with us, I think, but I can’t make out his face.”

Kisa stiffened in my arms. “You don’t know who that man is? What he looks like?”

The man was older and maybe had light hair, but that was all I could see. I tried to keep going while I still had this memory in my mind. I was afraid if I focused too much on the man trying to spare my life, the whole memory would come tumbling down.

“He pleaded with your father to not kill me, but Durov’s papa wanted me dead. I…” My heart started pumping hard and I could feel my blood rushing through my veins. “I remember feeling fear, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Durov’s father was so angry that he intimidated me… He stole my voice with his glare. Gestured to me that he would kill me if I spoke. I was mute with shock. The man who tried to defend me started arguing with him, and… and guns were pulled.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, parts of the memory becoming grainy. “The next thing I knew, your father told me there would be no cops involved in my crime, in my murder of Rodion, but that I was going to be sent to the motherland, to Russia to a contact he had there. He told me I would be punished. He told me I would be in a prison for kids, doing manual labor on a farm deep in the Russian countryside… He told me I would never come back to Brooklyn.”