Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Past

“Where is he?” I demanded the day after Nicholai had been sent home, standing at the edge of my father’s study. It had taken me a full day to look at him without fearing I’d physically attack him.

Ruslana had continued fulfilling her duties as if nothing had happened, but each time I tried to ask her about Nicky, she either pretended not to hear me or made a show of washing the dishes and folding the laundry, as if she couldn’t possibly talk and perform her tasks at the same time.

Dad glanced up from his paperwork, dropping his pen and leaning back in his seat. “Sweetheart. Where’s your mother?”

“Take a wild guess.” I propped a shoulder against the doorframe, my voice barely a hiss. “It’s fashion week somewhere in the world. She is probably burning your money while bitching about you simultaneously.” Actually, she was at a yoga retreat, but I wanted to bad-mouth her. This was the first time I said something mean about her to make myself feel better. Weirdly enough, it didn’t work. The bitterness clogging my throat was getting sharper each day. Like a rubber ball with more bands. “Now answer my question—where’s Nicky?”

Dad rolled his executive chair back, gesturing for me to take a seat in front of him. I made my way to the chair, keeping my expression stern.

“Listen, Arya, there’s no easy way of saying this. But I suppose the truth is one thing even I can’t protect you from.” He scratched his cheek. “Let me start by saying I regret the way I reacted when I found you two. I cannot stress that enough. You are my daughter, and protecting you is my chief concern. When I saw him cornering you against the shelves, I thought . . . well, actually, I didn’t think. That was the problem. I acted out of pure paternal instincts. I would like to assure you that I later went to see Nicholai and expressed my remorse over my behavior. I am not a primitive man. Violence is beneath me. So first, let’s get this out of the way. He looked fine and well. A few scratches, but nothing more.”

I looked skyward, at the cathedral-style ceiling, to prevent myself from crying. I knew I couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done. More than that, I couldn’t get past that even if I wanted to. What I’d seen was a violent, mean man. A man I didn’t want as a father.

“You’re lying,” I said coldly.

“You think I’d lie to you?” He looked at me helplessly, a different man from the one I’d witnessed yesterday beating Nicky to a pulp.

“Yes,” I said flatly. “You’ve done much worse to Nicholai.”

“About that.” Dad considered his next words. “Sweetheart, I just . . . I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I know you and Nicholai were close. But after I went to apologize to Nicholai in person, he made a request I couldn’t deny. You have to understand, I only did what he wished for me to do because I felt so guilty. And . . . well, I couldn’t exactly turn him down, in case he’d use what I’d done against me. I had our family to think of. You can’t just stay here with your mom on your own.”

“What did you do?” My voice was so cold shivers ran down my back.

“Arya . . .”

“Spit it out, Dad.”

He closed his eyes, letting his head fall into his hands. This week was the first time I wondered if Dad wasn’t all good. The idea was too much to stomach. He was, after all, my only family.

“He asked me if I could buy him a one-way ticket to his father, who lives in Belarus. I agreed.”

The world around me spun, though my feet were still rooted to the ground.

Nicholai. Gone.

“He wanted to start over fresh somewhere else. Live in a place where he didn’t have to be holed up all summer next to temptation. It was killing him, sweetie.”

I was about to throw up. The bile hit the back of my throat, the sour taste exploding in my mouth. I swallowed it all down. The anger, the shame, the disappointment. Most of all—the humiliation.

So this was what a broken heart felt like. Being stabbed in the soul a thousand times. I was never going to date. Ever.

“He said he doesn’t want to spend his summers here anymore?” I blinked rapidly, narrowly avoiding breaking down in tears. Dad covered his face with his hands, propping his elbows against his desk. He couldn’t see me like this.

“I’m sorry, Arya. I’m sure he cares about you very much. He just doesn’t want things to be . . . complicated. I can respect that. Although I did try and persuade him to stay. Mainly for Ruslana. He is her only son, you see.”

As I digested all of this, I felt my hands shaking in my lap. The sense of betrayal robbed me of my breath. Even though Nicky and I only had the summers, those summers kept me afloat. They filled me with all the good stuff. Made it easier to face the world.

“You’ll forget about him. Right now, it seems like the end of the world, but the truth is, every hello ends in goodbye. You’re so young; you won’t even remember him.”

“I’m going to ask Ruslana for his number,” I heard myself say, ignoring his words. My pride was bruised, but not speaking to Nicky ever again was worse than a tarnished ego. Dad ran a hand over his salt-and-pepper mane, blowing out air.

“She won’t give it to you,” he said sharply. Then, to soften the blow, he explained, “Ruslana is trying to mend the relationship with Nicholai, and right now he wants nothing to do with the Roth family. Rightly so.”

“Because of what you did?” My teeth chattered with rage.

“No. Because he thinks you did this on purpose. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

This felt like another blow, this time to the place where my soul was tucked. Between the breastbone and the stomach.

“Do you have his father’s address? So I can at least write to him?” I asked, my voice steely, squaring my shoulders. I wasn’t going to give up. Nicky had to know the truth.

“Sure. I’ll write down the address for you. Take it easy when you write to him, okay? Don’t be mad or anything. I feel terrible about how everything unfolded. Hopefully he’ll be able to find his place there.”

No. Hopefully, he’ll crawl back home. To me.

I wanted Nicky to fail.

To admit defeat and come back.

That was the first time I discovered love had another side. Dark and barbed wired. Rusty nailed and full of pus. Poisonous, like me.

“Hey, Dad?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Don’t bother talking to me. As far as I’m concerned—you’re good as dead.”

That night, I wrote Nicky my first letter. It was four pages long and consisted of an apology and an explanation of what had happened that day. I added some pictures of us too. Taken at the pool and in the park. For some reason, I was terrified that he’d forget my face. I handed Ruslana the letter, already stamped, watching carefully for her reaction. My housekeeper’s expression remained stoic as she assured me she would send it in the mail.

Two weeks later, I sent Nicky another letter. This time, I accused him of things. Of ignoring me, of betraying me, of turning his back on our friendship.

The entire time, Dad tried worming his way back into my good graces. Showered me with gifts—a new camera, tickets to Wicked, a handbag most grown women would find too lavish—but I didn’t relent.

The following week, I sent Nicky a third letter, apologizing for letter number two.

The more time went by without a reply, the more my desperation grew. I felt homesick, panicked, swollen with guilt and indignation. If he decided to discard me so easily, maybe he deserved my pestering. My pride—already as fragile as a thorn crown—was torn into ribbons. All I wanted was to speak to Nicky. To hear his voice. To see his lopsided grin once again as he quipped at me with another sarcastic remark.

I spent the first four months of my freshman year writing to him. His answer arrived in the form of an unwelcome present the day before Christmas: all my letters, stamped with my return address, still sealed and unopened.

And so, finally, I broke.

He didn’t want to talk to me. Hear from me. Be reminded of my existence.

Meanwhile, Dad was lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on a chance to reconcile.

“I’m so sorry,” he would say. “I would do anything to make this better.”

The months had passed, but my anger hadn’t. I barely saw my dad that year, making plans every evening and weekend and not including him in them.

One day, when the Nicky-shaped hole in my chest felt particularly hollow, Dad walked past my room on his way to the master bedroom. I was flung over my bed, staring at nothing.

“What’s so interesting about it?” he asked. “The ceiling.”

“No better view in this rotten house.” I sounded like a brat, and I knew it.

“Get up. I’ll show you a view.”

“You’ve already shown me plenty.” We both knew I was referring to Nicky. Dude was still taking over my every thought.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Dad coaxed, his voice pleading.

“Doubt it.” I huffed. While my anger toward him had not diminished, I’d also come to realize that I didn’t have anyone other than Jillian to lean on. My high school friends were casual, and my relatives lived far away.

“Give me a shot.” He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “You’re either going to give it to me today or next month or next year. But I will make you forgive me. Make no mistake about that.”

“Fine,” I was surprised to hear myself say. “But don’t think we’re going to be cool with each other after or something.”

He took me to the Met Cloisters, to see medieval art and architecture. We strolled shoulder to shoulder, silent the whole time.

“You know,” Dad said when we got to the tomb effigies, “there are more of those in Westminster Abbey. My favorite one is of Queen Elizabeth the First. I could take you to see it, if you’d like.”

“When?” I demanded haughtily. At some point during that year, being awful to him had become like eating. Just another thing on my agenda.

“Tomorrow?” He lifted his eyebrows, offering me his cunning Conrad Roth smile. “I’m free tomorrow.”

“I have school tomorrow,” I supplied, my voice thawing considerably.

“You’ll learn plenty in London. Lots of history.”

And so, after a year, I cut a corner and added Dad back into my life.

We made the Cloisters a monthly thing.

London didn’t change me.

Neither did the trips to Paris, Athens, and Tokyo.

I was still obsessed with everything Nicky, hungry for crumbs of information about him.

I changed tactics from constant preoccupation with him to spurts of questions and pestering. I could go weeks without speaking about him, then spend a few days asking about him nonstop.

Ruslana explained that Nicky was happy in Minsk. That if he didn’t answer, it was because of his busy schedule. Dad was supportive, but every time I tried to ask him to check on Nicky through his private investigator, he refused, saying he was doing it for me. That I needed to move on. That he hated seeing me all wrapped up in my fixation.

Maybe there was something wrong with me. Could love make you sick? I supposed it could. I’d watched my mother mourning my brother my whole life and didn’t want to pine for someone who’d never return.

Still, when I turned sixteen and got my second first kiss from Andrew Brawn, all I could think about was that he wasn’t Nicky.

But I knew pushing Dad into doing something was impossible. Besides, I had to pick my battles. Mom was barely with us anymore. My only steady family was my father, and I didn’t want to ruin it by fighting over a boy who didn’t even bother writing back to me.

The years flowed like a river, drowning me in all kinds of firsts with boys who weren’t Nicholai Ivanov. First seven minutes in heaven (Rob Smith). First make-out session under the bleachers (Bruce Le). First boyfriend (Piers Rockwysz) and first heartbreak (Carrie and Aidan from Sex and the City, because let’s admit it, Piers was great but not Aidan great). Nicky always sat there on the sidelines of my conscious, making each boy I dated fall short. I wondered how many girls he’d kissed over the years. If he still thought about me when he touched other girls, his hands slipping under their shirts. It felt crazy that I couldn’t ask him. But maybe lucky, too, because a big part of me didn’t want to know.

And so, when I turned eighteen, the first thing I did was make a call to Dad’s private investigator. David Kessler was the best in Manhattan.

David came back to me four weeks after I asked him to look for Nicky, informing me of his death.

I didn’t get out of bed for three days, after which the fear of turning into my mother outweighed the misery of knowing he wasn’t alive.

From that point forward, I vowed to forget Nicholai Ivanov had ever existed.

If only it were that easy . . .