Page 42 of Last Hand

I push Mila’s swing again, watching her soar against the backdrop of mountains and sky, wondering if Rebecca’s words are just another false promise or if, somehow, there might be a path out of this nightmare that doesn’t end with all of us in graves. “Where are we exactly,” I ask when I catch movement. Igor wanders closer, Rebecca also noticing him.

“The fireflies out here are amazing,” Rebecca says, her voice soft as she glances toward the tree line where shadows are beginning to lengthen. The casual observation hangs in the air between us, so mundane it feels absurd. Fireflies. As if we’re on some family vacation instead of being held captive by a Russian mobster. I turn my head slowly to look at my mother, really look at her, and see the careful way she’s watching Igor from the corner of her eye while maintaining her easy smile.

“I never left you,” she continues in that same conversational tone, still pushing Anya’s swing. “I was taken.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. I falter in my rhythm pushing Mila’s swing, earning a small sound of protest from the child. I quickly resume the motion.

“What?” The question comes out sharper than I intended.

Rebecca keeps her eyes on the twins, her face arranged in the pleasant expression of a mother enjoying an afternoon with her children. Only someone watching closely would notice the tension in her jaw, the careful control in her movements.

“Do you think I wanted to leave you?” she asks, her voice still pitched for Igor’s ears while carrying an undercurrent of intensity meant only for me. “I was trying to help Emma. We needed money.”

I swallow hard, memories surfacing with painful clarity. Emma’s medical bills piling up on the kitchen table. Dad working himself to exhaustion with three jobs. The electricitygetting shut off because we couldn’t pay. The constant, grinding poverty that shaped my childhood.

“You never tried to come back,” I say, the words bitter on my tongue. “You could have tried.”

“Oh, I couldn’t have,” Rebecca says, shaking her head slightly. Her voice remains light, while her eyes meet mine with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “He would have killed you all.”

I miss a beat in pushing the swing again, my hands suddenly cold despite the warm afternoon.He would have killed you all.The matter-of-fact way she says it, like she’s commenting on the weather, sends a chill down my spine.

“I tried to warn your grandmother,” she continues, helping Anya pump her legs to maintain momentum. “When Mikhail bought this place, he brought me here. We traveled a lot, and when I realized where we were…” She pauses, watching Igor shift his position under the tree. “I escaped once. Stole a bag of cash from his basement. I dropped it to your grandmother.”

“You came back?”

Rebecca nods almost imperceptibly. “She was supposed to give it to your father. I knew I couldn’t stay because Mikhail would come for you. Igor found me in town and dragged me back; you were catching fireflies with your father in the backyard.”

I look toward Igor instinctively. He’s leaning against a closer tree trunk, scrolling through his phone, appearing disinterested while undoubtedly aware of our every move.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” I ask, more to myself than to Rebecca.

“Because I begged her not to. I told her it would put you all in danger.” Rebecca’s eyes follow Anya’s swing, while her attention remains on our conversation. “Mikhail broke my arm in three places for stealing from him,” Rebecca continues, her voice stillmeasured and calm despite the horror of her words. “I told him I lost his money in the river trying to outrun Igor. After that, he kept me in his room, chained to the bed.”

The image hits me with visceral force, Rebecca chained like an animal, at the mercy of a man capable of such casual violence. I look at her wrists again, at the faded marks I noticed the other day. Suddenly they make terrible sense.

“I finally gained his trust,” she says. “We left for Russia for a while. I got pregnant.” Her eyes flick to the twins, then back to me. “I tried to flee again, found myself locked back up, chained to the bed. He wouldn’t even let me hold them unless I was nursing them.”

The twins, oblivious to the horror story being recounted over their heads, continue to swing and laugh. Their innocent joy is a bizarre counterpoint to the nightmare Rebecca describes.

“Then we came back here,” she says, her voice dropping even lower. “This is the most freedom I’ve had, Fallon.”

My head twists to look at her fully, unable to mask my shock. This relative freedom being watched constantly, living under Igor’s control, having every movement monitored, is the best it’s been for her? The realization makes me dizzy. I’ve been imagining her living some glamorous new life while we struggled. The reality she’s describing is a prison more concrete than my bitterest fantasies.

“Grandma never gave dad the money” I tell her.

Rebecca’s laugh is soft and humorless. “Of course the bitch didn’t, she hated me.” She pauses, watching Igor carefully.

“Why didn’t you run to the police when you did escape, why go to grandma’s?”

“Mikhail has people everywhere. Cops. Judges. The kind of connections that make problems disappear.”

I try to reconcile this version of events with the narrative I’ve carried for years, the story of a selfish mother who chose drugsover her children, who walked away and never looked back. If what Rebecca is saying is true, is it better and worse than I imagined.

“Why would he take you?” I ask, the question that’s been lingering since her first revelation. “Why you?”

Something flickers across Rebecca’s face—a shadow of old pain. “I made a mistake,” she says simply. “I robbed the wrong man.”

The twins have started to slow their swinging, their energy finally beginning to wane after an afternoon of play. Anya calls out, “I’m tired, Mama!”

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