Page 97 of Filthy Lies

“Mom—”

“No, let me finish while I can think straight. Goodness knows those moments are getting rarer and rarer.” She clutches my hand harder. “Men like Vincent, like Grigor—they love with their entire being. It’s terrifying in its completeness. It’s why I ran from Grigor. I wasn’t strong enough to be loved that way.”

“But you think I am?”

“I think you’re stronger than I ever was,” she replies. “Strong enough to stand in the fire without being consumed by it.”

Tears burn behind my eyes. “I don’t feel strong. Most days, I feel like I’m barely holding it together.”

“That’s exactly what strength is, baby girl. Holding it together when everything wants to fall apart.” She tugs at my hand, pulling me closer. “Vincent is darkness, yes. But he’s also something else entirely when he looks at you and Sofiya. And that something else… it’s worth fighting for.”

“Even if it means living in his world? With all its violence and danger?”

“Even then.” She licks her dry lips. “Because the alternative is living half a life, the way I did after I left Grigor. Always looking over my shoulder, always wondering what might have been.”

A sob escapes me before I can swallow it back. “I’m scared, Mom. You’re going, and Sofi is—is— She’s just soperfect,Mom, and I love him, too; I love him so much it blinds me to what we’re becoming.”

“Oh, Rowan.” Her frail hand cups my cheek. “Love doesn’t blind you. It gives you new eyes.”

The door opens, and Vince returns with Sofiya, who’s now calmer, sucking contentedly on her own fist.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

I wipe my tears quickly. “Fine. Just having a mother-daughter chat.”

Mom beckons him closer. “Bring my granddaughter for one more snuggle before I get too tired.”

Vince places Sofiya back on the bed. Mom strokes her chubby cheek, her eyes drinking in every detail as if committing them to whatever memory remains.

“Take care of them, Vincent,” she says suddenly. “They’re the best parts of me.”

“With my life, Margaret. With my life.”

That night, as Vince and I stand over Sofiya’s crib watching her sleep, I finally voice the question that’s been burning in my throat.

“Do you think she’s right? That you and Grigor are similar in how you love?”

Vince’s jaw tightens. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never spoken to the man about anything other than territorial disputes and body counts.”

“But hypothetically,” I press. “Is it possible two men who hate each other could love in the same devastating way?”

He turns to me, eyes darkening. “It’s not how we love that matters, Rowan. It’s what we’re willing to do for that love.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “And I’ve only just begun to show you what I’m willing to do for mine.”

36

ROWAN

Mom died today.

She slipped away in the liminal space between night and morning, when the world feels malleable and death is just a long hallway from one room to another.

I was holding her hand when her fingers went slack, when her chest rose one final time and never fell again. It was peaceful—a sigh, not a scream. Nothing like the violence that’s become the soundtrack of my life.

I keep waiting for the breakdown. For the moment when my knees will buckle and my soul will leak out through the cracks in my carefully constructed armor.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s just this hollowness, this vacuum where grief should be. As if part of me already knew she was gone long before her heart stopped beating.

---