Chapter 4 Estranged Siblings ##4

• She knew she wouldn't have been able to get him away from her father and Gloria when she left, but she hadn't even tried. The day she fled from that house, she remembered his wide, frightened eyes watching her from the door leading to the basement, where his room was. When their father cursed at her, Andre fled to his room, and to her, it felt like he was abandoning her.
• She'd turned her back on her family as well when she left.
• Three years later, she took Andre back after his abuse.
• After the hours they spent at the hospital, the police took her and Andre back to their father's house to collect Andre's clothes and items because, for the short term, he was going to be in her care.
• When they arrived, their father, Pietro Volkov, was drunk but backed off sullenly when the police officers told him not to interfere. Andre went downstairs to pack while she remained in the kitchen. The moment the police stepped outside, Pietro returned to confront her. His rough voice was still clear in her mind.
• "I told you to never come back, ungrateful bitch!"
• Her temper flared as well, one of her father's gifts. "I wouldn't have had to come back if that fat cow you married hadn't sexually abused Andre! I guess you weren't man enough for her!"
• His backhand across her cheek caught her by surprise, and she was knocked to the floor after she crashed into the kitchen counter.
• Her rage exploded, and her split lip didn't prevent her mouth from firing another salvo. "So, your cowardice leaves you no other option but to strike women, little man?"
• Pietro roared and lunged at her with murder in his eyes.
• "NO, PAPA!" Andre yelled and tackled his father before he reached Cassandra. The two fell to the floor, but Andre was only trying to hold his father back from his sister. Pietro turned his frustration and anger on his son. He pinned Andre to the floor and punched his face.
• Cassandra tried to stop him and scratched his face before he slapped her off her feet again.
• He touched his cheek and looked at his bloody fingers before looking into her eyes. "I should have put you in the ground with Leslie."
• Andre tried to break free, but Pietro went back to hitting him.
• Cassandra stumbled out of the house and the two officers smoking by their cruiser saw her and came running. They rushed inside and pulled the man from his bloody son. She returned and gently touched Andre's shoulder. He turned bleary eyes toward her, smiled, then passed out.
• They went back to the hospital, and Andre had his nose reset once more. When the police interviewed her, Cassandra repeated what her father had said. The officers asked who Leslie was, and she explained.
• Leslie Punk was the woman Pietro married before Gloria. She supposedly left him after four years of marriage. One morning, the kids woke to find she was gone. She was friendly but not the nurturing type, preferring to spend most of her time tending her precious vegetable garden behind the house. Cassandra confessed to the police that she hadn't connected the disappearance to her father's forbidding them to work in the garden after Leslie went missing.
• As their previous home was in the neighboring state, the police contacted local authorities to dig up the garden. In the meantime, they gathered more information from Cassandra about Pietro's wives.
• Before Leslie, Pietro had been married to Eleanor Vandenstein, Andre's birth mother. Cassandra's memories of her were of a nervous woman, always worrying and never happy. She also didn't bond well with children, even her own. She suffered chronic weakness and ultimately committed suicide when Andre was five and Cassandra was nine. She recalled her father scolding the woman about how poor a mother she was compared to Cassandra's mother, Kira, and how prestigious the Marin family was back in his home country of Georgia compared to the Vandenstein's in America.
• Cassandra didn't understand then but now realized he was speaking of his wife's family, not his own, the Volkovs. She told the police she had no memories of her own mother as she must have been just a year old when Pietro emigrated to the States with her.
• The police continued their investigation while Cassandra brought Andre home from the hospital.
• Their first weeks together were rocky. Her guilt tormented her, and she had her habits and a small apartment. Fitting someone else into that led to short tempers and sharp words, but only from her. In a moment of weakness, the memory of how he fled from her when she was forced out of the house caused her to accuse him of abandoning her. She recalled how he dropped to his knees before her as he shook his head vehemently, fear in his eyes and tears on his cheeks. He apologized again and again, and her anger crumbled seeing his genuine distress.
• Adding to this pressure, the police investigation found Leslie's body where the garden had been. They also got a court order to exhume Eleanor, and a new autopsy discovered traces of poison throughout her body, proving she'd been slowly poisoned for years.
• Their investigation followed Pietro's journey to Poti, Georgia, when the police contacted the local authorities. They learned that a Kira Marin married Pietro Volkov against her family's wishes, had his child, and mysteriously drowned ten months after the birth. The death was listed as suspicious as she'd been a champion swimmer. Then Pietro disappeared with the infant.
• Somehow, the sordid tale of her father's trail of dead spouses leaked, and the press fanned the flames of sensationalism until the story became a larger-than-life tale of a rabid serial killer. Someone connected the dots to his latest wife, Gloria Davenport, who'd been arrested on sexual interference charges, and the story went supernova.
• The court had no choice but to put the two siblings into protective custody.