Chapter Fourteen
6 YEARS AND 9 MONTHS EARLIER, MOSCOW
“How do you feel?” Lyudmila asks softly, perching on the edge of my bed. “Can I get you anything?”
“Painkillers,” I mumble, squeezing my eyes shut against the stabbing agony behind my eyelids. “More painkillers, please.”
Everything hurts. My fractured wrist, my slashed forearm that required twenty stitches, my bruised ribs and stomach, and most of all, my head. It’s the aftermath of a concussion, the doctors told me. I must’ve hit my head during the car accident, the one that injured me and killed my mom last week.
They don’t know anything, of course. There was no car accident. My injuries are from the fight with my father, and the concussion is from when he threw me against the wall and I blacked out. Also, these injuries aren’t t
