Chapter 80

In the end, all I could do was laugh and close the case.

“What makes you think I lost them, exactly?” I snorted later, still unable to stop smiling at him with a contempt that I didn’t feel was mine, but that filled every crevice of my interior. “What if I got rid of them on purpose? What would you think if I told you that all I wanted was to be free of your influence?”

I threw the plates, case and all, directly at his feet. He didn’t move.

“Don’t raise your voice. Everyone is still sleeping,” my father asked me, with a conciliatory but cold tone. He paused, and his voice became harsher when he added the following: “Tell me, Nikolai; do you think I’m angry with you?”

Oh, were we going to have that talk we’d been owing since December?

The furious, fight-hungry animal inside me howled loudly. Those sad plates meant nothing more to me than a vulgar dog collar that I was never going to wear again; I would never again give my father the privilege of holding