Only You (The Mephisto Covenant Series) Read Free

turned seventeen. I turned eighteen last February.”
    “Did the orphanage not know how old she was?”
    I shook my head. “They didn’t know anything about her. Either they made up a birthday for her, or her adopted parents did.”
    “Please tell me what happened .”
    His voice had softened . Noticing the concern in his expression and the light in his eyes, I realized what hadn’t been evident before. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
    “Does it matter?”
    It mattered a lot, but I didn’t say so. I wondered if Viorica felt the same about him? “How are you here? And why? No guy I know would come so far to get a girl’s stuffed animal repaired. There must be a million places you could have gone to in the States.”
    He barely blinked, but I knew he lied when he said, “I’m here for a family funeral. Jordan’s rabbit was torn up because of me, an accident, and she’s so attached to it, I thought it’d make her happy if I found where it was made and took a picture. I didn’t expect to find out so much, but now that I know, I’d like to have the whole story.”
    Why did he lie? I supposed he didn’t trust me any more than I trusted him. But he was in love with my sister, and since he had the bunny, she must feel something for him. He was determined to tell her about me. My only hope of convincing him to keep quiet was to tell him the whole bloody truth. When he knew, when he understood, he’d change his mind, I was certain.
    I focused on the button again and took a deep breath.
    Speakin g of it meant remembering. I hated him for coming to Romania, for walking into Gustav’s, for digging and asking and making me do this. I carefully drew a very old box from the deepest recesses of my mind and hesitantly lifted the lid. “My mother’s cousin, Nadia, was married to a horrible man named Emilian. We’d only been living there a week when he broke my arm. He’d get angry and lock me in a closet and wouldn’t give me any food for days at a time.”
    He clenched his hands into fists and I could feel anger roll off of him.
    I ignored it. “It’s said that very young children who are abused don’t know it’s not normal, because that’s all they know. So maybe if our parents hadn’t been so loving, I wouldn’t have understood how wrong it was. But I knew he was evil, and as much as I hated what he did to me, I couldn’t bear watching him torment Viorica. She was so happy, so sweet, and I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to her. So I took her and ran away.”
    “Where did you go? Where did you plan to go?”
    “ As you said, I was six. I had no plan. I just knew I had to get her out of there. Emilian was already pinching her hard enough to leave bruises. I sometimes wonder if God led me, because I took refuge inside a church that happened to have an orphanage. I hid there for two days, trying to decide if I should ask the priest for help, but I was afraid he’d call Emilian and we’d be sent back. I’d been watching what went on at the building across the street, the children in the play yard, and the nuns who looked after them. I realized those children lived there, that they had no parents, no family. So I took Viorica late in the night and left her on the doorstep, rang the bell, then hid to watch, to make sure the nuns took her in.”
    T he cars had long since passed, and I stepped off the curb, restless and anxious to get home. I wanted him to go away. I wanted to shove all of this night into a box and go to sleep and when I woke up tomorrow, it’d be life as usual.
    “Why did you leave her? ” Kyros asked. “Why didn’t you stay, as well?”
    If only that had been an option. “I knew if I didn’t go back and make up a story about Viorica, Nadia would search for us, and she might look where orphans live.” I stared down at the sidewalk as we traveled from one rundown part of Bucharest to another. The air was frigid, and I buried my hands deeper in the pockets of my