THE GATEKEEPER

He moves closer, standing right beside me, my shoulder against his arm as we look out together.

"We all wish there were things we could change about our past. Things we've done. Things done to us. Unforgivable things. But that guilt serves no one."

"I can't just put it away. If I did, I'd stop caring. And I feel like I barely care for anyone or anything anymore." Tears clog my voice.

"I..." Maykl seems to be struggling. "There's something I've done, Kira. After I killed my father. I don't regret that crime. He would have killed me if I didn't defend myself. But I didn't understand how it worked. The pakhan made me believe the brotherhood would take me in." Maykl waits so long to speak that I know he must be wrestling with his memories.

"But they require initiation. A price to pay to become one of them." He shifts away from me, like he doesn't want to contaminate me with his crimes. "I didn't know what a cost that initiation would have on my soul."

I finally turn. He's pulled me completely out of my own turmoil. The need to comfort him rises-a surprising but sweet sensation.

"What was it?" I ask softly.

He faces me and works to swallow. His eyes are haunted. "An execution. A man who owed them money and tried to pay with counterfeit currency. I was-" he draws a breath. "Thirteen years old. They put a gun in my hand and pointed me at him. I had to prove myself. If I didn't...I'd be on my own."

I reach over and pick up his hand on the rail of the dock. "Not your only killing, though, right?" I trace the X's on his knuckles.

He shakes his head. "No, but...the one that ruined me."

I feel the heaviness and constriction of his statement like a cloud of darkness in my lungs. "You're not ruined." Somehow, I'm sure. Absolutely positive.

But he shakes his head. "You don't know." He looks so pained. I squeeze his fingers. "You don't know who it was."

I suck in a sharp breath suddenly picturing the worst. A child or old lady. Someone completely defenseless. "Were they innocent?"

"No. He was mixed up with bratva business. He tried to cheat his way out of his debts, I was told. And it wasn't the first time." Maykl searches my face. What he seeks, I don't know. I feel the magnitude of it, though.

He's not doing a great job of cheering me up, if that was his intent.

I blink back tears. For him. For me. For Anya and Mika. "Why are you telling me this?"

He drops his head and shakes it. "I lost the point. I meant to tell you that guilt serves no one. My guilt can't change what I did. Questioning that choice won't change it. Nor will stopping myself from experiencing the rest of this life. The guilt serves no one. It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't heal any wounds-it only makes them fester.

"So you were thirteen when you joined the bratva?" I ask.

"Yes."

Thirteen. The same age I was when Anya was taken by the bratva to pay my father's debt.

"You were just a kid. You didn't know any other way out of your situation." I nod. "You did what you had to do to survive."

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I would've died inside if the bratva had taken me instead. Sought out drugs to numb the pain, the way Anya did. To believe I would've done better is naive at best, arrogant at worst. Besides, Maykl's right. The guilt doesn't bring back the dead.

I can only move forward. Live in the present.

I tug his hand. My fingers are chapped and numb in the cold. I have gloves in my pockets but didn't bother putting them on. "Let's go back. It's done."

Maykl clasps my hand in his, and then slides it into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket.

We walk back to the building in silence. Together. Apart. Somehow entwined in a way I don't understand.

In this moment, I don't need to understand it. I'm content to just walk by this man's side. Receive his warmth and strength. The vulnerability he just offered me to match my own. For the moment, I'm going to surrender. He knows where Mika is. He showed me a picture.

Maybe everything led me to this moment. To exactly where I'm supposed to be. In some cosmic arrangement of our fates, I was taken prisoner by the one person who could help me.

And then I feel Anya. Not the pitiful woman who overdosed, but young Anya. The one who tried to protect us both with a butcher knife.

She had warrior energy then. Same as mine.

And it feels like she's here with me now. Right by my side.

It feels like a promise that everything is going to be okay.

Maykl

I'm reluctant to put Kira back in the handcuffs when we return to my apartment. She stands at the window for a while, looking out at the lake, and then she walks into my kitchen and starts opening cupboards.

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"I want to bake," she declares. "Anya is the one who taught me to bake. Do you like tea cakes?"

I swallow my surprise. "Yes."

Russian tea cakes are my favorite, not that I've had one for years.

"Do you have any powdered sugar?"

"I'll order some. What else?"

She rattles off a short list, and I order it to be delivered from the local grocery store. Forty-five minutes later, one of the soldiers knocks on the door with the ingredients. Another thirty minutes, and my apartment is filled with the delicious scent of warm vanilla and sugar.

I wanted to tell Kira.

About her father.

I tried.