Zoya | Laia (relinquished) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-08-08 18:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, * terri, c: zoya marshall |
WHO: Zoya Nikolaeva and NPC Ivan Nikolaev
WHEN: A few hours after this
WHERE: Alex and Annie's house.
SUMMARY: Zoya is finished with her father's games.
WARNINGS: Language and betrayal.
It had taken Zoya hours to feel as though she had solid ground beneath her feet again. Her conversation with Elijah had left her reeling, and she had replayed parts of it in her head over and over again. He had thought that she moved on with someone else - possibly before she’d even left him - and he had come back for her. The former couldn’t have been further from the truth, but she had never known about his visits to Duluth. From what he said, the only contact that he’d had with her family in that time had been her father, and just thinking of him made her stomach turn inside out. Her parents had never particularly given her their favor. Their mother was sweeter and more agreeable. Zoya at least got on decently with her through most of her life, though she could never say that she felt as though she was a doted upon daughter, for Alex had always been the apple of Vera Nikolaeva’s eye. Mikhail had always been the favorite of their father, and he was quick to dismiss Alex as foolhardy and soft whereas Zoya had been less significant because he would never allow her to inherit their family company. Yet, over the last few years, he had made some small effort to show her he cared. At least, that was what she had thought. He had told her so many times how wonderful it was to have her home and how proud he was of her coming back to work for the company, even if it wasn’t in a leadership capacity. He had reassured her a hundred times that she had made the right choice in coming back home, though it wasn’t a secret to her that he had never quite approved of her marriage to begin with. The fact that Elijah had tried to fight for her was a shock, and despite her father’s less than pleasant demeanor, the fact that he had willfully deceived the both of them blindsided her. She felt the betrayal sink right into her heart and she knew that if what Elijah had said was true, her relationship with her father had been permanently scarred. She would never be able to forgive or overlook such a slight. Not when he knew exactly how miserable she was all this time. Whatever love or trust she had for her father over the last few years had been a lie, and that was almost as bad as him turning Elijah away from her. Sitting on the edge of the guest bed mattress in Alex’s house, Zoya held her phone between both of her hands and looked warily at her reflection on the black screen. It was no easy task to make this call, and she knew that it might destroy everything she had ever thought about her father. Even still, she had to know the truth. The wondering was going to drive her insane, and she wanted to hear the confession from his lips, even if it might as well be an admission of hating his youngest child. Swiping her thumb over the screen, she unlocked the phone and pulled up his contact. She hit the call button and cleared her throat as she lifted the phone to her ear as it rang through on the other end. She could hear the moment that it was picked up. There was a little bit of shuffling, a small pause, and then she could hear the smile in his voice as he greeted her in his native Russian tongue, “Good afternoon, princess. Have you worked out your flight to come home? We can send for a car to the airport for when you arrive.” “No...no, dad,” she refused to slip into the Russian tones that he preferred and was so familiar with, sticking strictly to English, “I talked to Elijah today.” There was a huff of indignation on the other end of the phone, and the sound of a pen being put down on his desk. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see him, “Has he still not given you the divorce that you asked for? Those D.C. lawyers are good for nothing. We’ll send word from one of our lawyers in Duluth--” She pushed forward, talking over him with steel running through her words, “Have you been lying to me...all this time? Three years, dad. Three years, and you didn’t mention a single time that you’d seen him, and yet he’s seen you at least twice that I know of. He came to Duluth, and I want to know exactly what you told him.” “You would believe him over me?” Ivan attempted, an edge of anger in his tone, though she did not let it cut through her as it might have a few days ago. “He was fairly convinced you had told him the truth, and I want to know what version of it you gave him, papa. I deserve at least that much from you,” she pressed, trying to brace herself for what might come next. “The first time he came, I told him you did not want to come down to see him. You left him, so that was the truth,” Ivan sounded righteous even to her ears. “And when he was calling out for me? What excuse did you give for why I would not see him?” “That you needed space and time away from him, and that if you wished to speak to him, you would reach out to him,” this was through gritted teeth, as though he was tiring of her questions. “I never heard him calling for me. The house is not that large. Why?” Her questioning was almost clinical, but she wanted every bit of the truth. “For Christ’s sake, Zoya,” he grumbled, and she wondered for a moment if he might just hang up on her. “Tell me why,” she insisted, her words almost a snarl, and that seemed to surprise him. “Because you weren’t here. Your mother had dragged you to some movie you didn’t want to see,” Ivan admitted finally, though it seemed to cost him greatly to spout such truth and that was what made her certain that it wasn’t just another lie. Her anger was stoking steadily, but she hadn’t even gotten to the worst part yet. “You never told me that he came. Why not?” “Because he didn’t deserve you. He never did. You ran off and married him far too young, and then you ran home to us, unhappy and broken hearted. I was not going to let him hurt you again so swiftly. You did need time away from him. Time to realize what you wanted and time to heal at home. You stayed here, Zoya. You did not go back,” Ivan’s reasoning might have made sense to him, but it was just an excuse for taking her own choices away from her. Perhaps he knew on some level that she would have left again to follow Elijah, and he wanted to keep her in Duluth. He had lost Alex to Dunhaven, too, so he had been doubly happy to have her home where she belonged. “You don’t get to make my decisions,” she snapped, pressing onward again before she could lose any momentum, “And what do you have to say for the next time that he came to Duluth? He was under the impression that I was with someone else. You and I both know that to be a bald faced lie, so what? I want to know what you told him.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and she pressed her lips together to keep herself from demanding yet again. Perhaps he was debating the merits of telling her the truth or maybe he was coming up with another lie, but she knew enough of the truth to be able to make it out for what it was, “I told him that you had met someone else, and that if he really loved you, he would let you have a chance to finally be happy after so much misery.” The anger that she had felt simmered into a full blown rage, and Zoya gripped her phone so tightly that she thought it might crack open, and she hotly needled, “Why? Why would you do that?” “You will move on, Zoya. You could be happier with someone else. Someone more present and more successful. You just haven’t given yourself a chance. You will never be happy with him in that dead-end town. I was keeping you from more heartbreak. Certainly you can see that.” Ivan’s voice was chastising now, as though all of his actions had been completely valid and hadn’t added to the misery that had taken over the last three years of her life. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, do you?” she asked hollowly, a humorless laugh passing her lips, “You might have ruined any chance we had at reconciliation, and I wanted to go back. He is the love of my goddamn life, and no one that you can set me up with is going to change that. If we do get divorced, I won’t marry again.” “I was doing what was best for you, Zoya. You will eventually see that, when you’ve had time to clear your head,” Ivan seemed to ignore what she was really saying, and she could imagine his lifted chin and hard-set gaze, so certain in his path. “You can’t even imagine how this feels. You have ruined our relationship. I am going to return to Duluth to pack up my apartment, and God help you if you try to speak to me when I talk to mom. I will never forgive this. You’ve finally driven all of your children away, Ivan Nikolaev. I hope you’re fucking happy with that because you can take your well-meaning lies and carry them like a stone in your heart all the way to your grave.” She didn’t want to hear what he had to say next, so she hung up the call. Predictably, her phone rang with his name and picture a few moments later, and she declined the call, marking it to be added to her auto-reject list. This detour of missing her flight in Dunhaven had been a blessing in disguise. Perhaps nothing in her life would ever look like it did four years ago, when she could still remember being deliriously happy. She might not ever patch things up with Elijah. She might not be able to redeem herself for the wrongs that she had done. But she could start over. She could return to Dunhaven - a place that she loved - where her brothers and their families lived. She could try to find some kind of even ground with her husband so that maybe they could look at each other without feeling a knife in the heart, if nothing else. Her unintentional visit had just turned a lot more permanent. |