Protective

Oh, Mikhail...

Lana

We had been together a little over a year now and I was ready to tell Dmitri.

I had been dropping hints to my brother that I had been seeing someone. I'd tell him I was being taken shopping rather than going. I'd come home with gifts from Yeremy, sure to flaunt them in front of Dmitri.

But still my brother refused to ask any questions.

One time I was so desperate that I let a condom fall out of my bag and he acted as if he was blind, but I was sure he had seen it.

Still he said nothing, so here I was. Cleaning out my old room at my father's to move into my new apartment in the city—which was really just a ruse. I planned on spending all my time in the house Yeremy had built and I had decorated. The apartment was for my father's sake. I certainly wasn't ready to tell him.

But I was ready to tell Dmitri, which was why I had ordered him to help me move out.

To be fair, I wasn't exactly helping aside from telling the maids what I was keeping and what I wasn't. I had Dmitri load all the boxes into my car.

I was sitting in a chair and filtering through the old chest I kept buried in my closet.

I hardly spent any time in my room the past year. I had been working almost day and night at Icon which had tripled in monthly subscribers thanks to me and my genius.

If I wasn't working, I was with Rose or with Yeremy obviously.

But for the most part, I rested my head in my brother's apartment because it was closer to the city which meant it was closer to Icon. I was doing that until one day I came home to him and a woman in bed.

He started helping me look for an apartment the next day.

"Lana are you actually still going through that?" he asked, lifting a box into his arms.

I shrugged, pulling out a key.

Oh, my.

I excused myself from the maid and practically ran into my closet to open up the chest where I kept my father's journal's.

I was clearly blessed that the man had not realized they were missing but more than that, I couldn't believe I had forgotten that I never finished reading them.

I was getting to the point in their story where she died and I didn't think I had the heart to read that, especially not a year ago. The journals had ended with this one. I suppose my father couldn't bring himself to keep writing them after my mother passed.

I sighed, picking up the last journal and flipping to the date I had marked off.

It was the day my mother died, the last entry. We were still living in Russia then.

Diana is excited to take the children to the library she had just had built for the poorest in the city. She was quite the philanthropist and I suppose she wanted to teach our children to do the same.

I smiled in spite of the bubbling feeling of dread in my chest. As I scanned the pages he stopped and started abruptly I could see his penmanship begin to falter.

My father's lettering was graceful but this was hardly legible.

It all happened so fast. How could I have done this? My beautiful wife gone, my children motherless—just like me. I did not intend for this to happen, I did not want for this to happen. I loved her truly, I did.

I did not want for her to die. I did not mean to kill her.

Oh, God. How could I have killed Diana?

What?

Was I reading this right?

No, I must've have misunderstood.

Three times, I reread it and each time my heart sunk deeper into my chest.

My father killed my mother? That couldn't be.

"Lana all the boxes are in your car. What are you doing in here," Dmitri asked, barging into my closet.

"What are you reading?" he asked peering down at me anxiously—I must've looked crazed.

"Are you alright?"

I nodded and shrugged all at the same time, barely looking at him, but managing to hand him to the journal and point to the paragraphs that I had just read.

I watched him closely. Watched the realization sink into his face as quickly as the darkening of his eyes.

"What are we going to do?" I barely choked out, "Dmitri this can't be true!"

He looked at me, his demeanor softening just a bit, but yet his eyes were filled with thoughts of murder.

"We're going to leave him," he said, as if he had it all thought out in his head, "We'll bide our time for a year or two. We'll wait for the opportune moment, and then we will escape from him forever."

"We can't do that," I shook my head, "He'll find us!"

I stood up, grabbing the journal, "We should just ask him—

"No," Dmitri said, angrily grabbing me by the arms, "If you confront him he'll kill you, Lana."

I shook my head, thoughts of disbelief running through my brain, "He wouldn't. Father would never hurt us..."

That wasn't true. He had hurt us already. Dmitri worse than me, but he had hurt us both. He was capable of that.

If he could kill our mother, if he could abuse his children—then maybe it wasn't so far off. Maybe killing us wouldn't be so hard.

After all, he was Mikhail Petrov, son of the brutal Feliks Petrov. He had always been taught to slaughter his enemies and if he learned that I knew the truth—that would make me an enemy.

"We'll run," Dmitri repeated, his grip slowly loosening on my arms, "We have to run. Pretend you never found this, Lana. Promise me."

"Dmitri, I—

"Promise me," he said again, his eyes no longer full of murder but replaced with fear.

My brother, scared? Was it of losing me?

No. I have seen what he looked like when he was afraid of that and it didn't look like this.

This fear was different. He looked so vulnerable, so frightened.

But that made sense didnt it? For a monster like him.

The only thing monsters like my brother were afraid of were bigger monsters and the world only knew of one that big.

He was my father. He was Mikhail Petrov.

- - Fin - -