Page 132 of Ruby Malice

“But he’s learning how to cope. I’m teaching him how to fight off his delusions and—”

“Delusions?”

Everything else fades away. All of my attention snags on that word.

“Yeah, delusions. Or hallucinations,” she offers. “That’s the best explanation I have. But he sees them when he gets upset. If there’s a loud noise or he gets frustrated or anxious, he starts seeing things.”

“What kind of things?”

“A monster. That’s how he describes it. A monster with a black hole for a face.” She shifts uncomfortably, her hands wrapping around her midsection. “Before we came down to the beach, he was upset. I told him he was safe in the house, but he started talking about the monster. He was really scared, and I just wanted to help him. I thought coming out here would help.”

I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to breathe through the rage building inside of me. “So my brother was in the middle of a breakdown, and you decided to set him loose in the fucking Pacific?”

“I didn’t set him loose! We just went for a swim. And he was fine until you came out screaming and swinging your arms like an angry gorilla.”

“Which I wouldn’t have done if you’d told me he was having flashbacks this morning.”

Rayne opens her mouth to respond and then stops. Her eyes narrow. “Flashbacks? What do you… What kind of flashbacks? Flashbacks to what?”

“To his accident.”

She stares at me for a few seconds before she shakes her head. “Kirill, that’s—He was talking about a monster with a hole in his face. That’s not real.”

Grimacing, I raise my hand like a gun and point my finger barrel directly between her eyes. Rayne recoils in confusion. “What are you—”

“Perspective,” I interrupt. “Pretend it’s a gun.”

“Kirill, no.” She tries to move my hand away, but I hold it steady. “Stop it. Stop messing with—”

“Imagine this is a real gun,” I repeat. “What can you see, Rayne?”

“I see you pointing a stupid finger gun at me.”

“You see my body. But can you see my face?”

The frustration hisses out of her like a fire after being doused in cold water. Her expression falls. “No, I can’t see your face. I see your finger. Or, in this case… the gun. If it was real, then I would see the… the barrel of the gun.”

“In other words, a black hole where my face should be.”

Rayne steps back and claps a hand over her mouth. For a few agonizing seconds, she’s silent and shaking. I hate watching her suffer through that.

But some pain can only be borne alone.

Some pain, no one else in the world can take from us.

“Who… who did that to him?” she croaks after a while. “When did—How old was he?”

“Twelve.”

Ilya as a scrawny pre-teen appears in my mind. He had the same goofy smile, the same bright green eyes, the same gangly length, though he hadn’t filled out with muscle yet, so he was all floppy hair and clumsy limbs. I don’t understand—didn’t then, and still don’t—how anyone could hurt him. Let alone the person who should have loved him most in the world.

“And it was our father who did it.”

“Oh my God. Kirill…”

“He held a gun between his eyes and scared the hell out of him. Then—” I force the words out of my mouth even though every one of them is barbed and rusted. Rayne needs to know what she’s facing. “He bashed his head into the floor. My father used his own hands to crush the skull of his twelve-year-old son. He nearly killed him.”

Tears well in Rayne’s eyes. Part of me wants to reach out and comfort her. I want to draw her close and tell her it will all be okay.

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