In our room, I removed her blood-stained clothes and sat her down in the bathtub where she didn’t speak as I washed her. I was careful to avoid getting her bandaged arm wet, and then dried and dressed her in the long sleeve she always steals from my drawer.
She fell asleep within moments after I laid her down, exhaustion evident in the pallor of her skin.
I wanted to take us to the Orlov, but that doesn’t feel safe, either. I settled for posting more security around the building and Leo downstairs.
As I watch her now, I know it could’ve been so much worse. She’s alive and breathing—my fighter—and I have failed her.
How many times, and in how many ways will I fail her before one of us dies? Because isn’t that just the way of this life? Failing upwards until someone knocks you from your position? The only way out is death; there is no witness protection for us, no escaping to a quiet island where we won’t be found, only her hands covered in blood alongside mine.
I let her sleep for a few hours while I handle today’s disaster to the best of my ability.
The men entered through the balcony; they were on the side of the building under the guise of cleaning the windows. The real window cleaners for the building are scheduled for tomorrow, so the day manager wasn’t surprised that they wanted to do the job a day early.
The security records note only that Elise entered in the morning, ventured briefly to the balcony to make a call, then came back inside to finish her meal preparations. Shehadslid the padlock back when she stepped inside, but it hadn’t gone all the way, and this offered the single vulnerability that was needed to let the intruders into the apartment. One fucking lock.
They knocked Elise out, and it could’ve been much worse for her, but she got away with a bump on her head and a slight concussion that she’ll monitor tonight. Sasha found a black backpack in the pantry with a crude handful of tools and knives along with zip ties and rope. Ostensibly, they planned to restrain and torture Marianna—for what, I do not know. She is sure that they would have killed her if she hadn’t killed them first.
They made the remarkable mistake of underestimating her, one I imagine whoever sent them will not repeat after today.
I’m staring into the fire crackling in the fireplace when she pads into my office yawning. The color in her face is livelier than it was when she went to sleep, and that’s a relief.
She surprises me by not lying out on the couch like she usually does, but instead nudging my knees apart and dropping into my lap, her head on my chest. She must be feeling really unwell to seek such closeness, but I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her closer still then take a deep inhale with my nose pressed into her hair.
I think this is for my benefit more than hers, but the way she sighs and rubs her face on my chest tells a different story.
“Vanessa says we can stay with her if you’d feel safer,” I say, though the thought stresses me nearly as much as the thought of staying here.
Marianna yawns again. “Seems like they were after me specifically, so no, thank you.”
I pull her closer, like she might disappear if I don’t hold onto her.
“I’m sorry you were scared,” she says. “Those men weren’t good fighters, only large.”
She doesn’t say what I know we’re both thinking. How one of them almost had her, and a ring of bruises has blossomed on her neck to prove it.
“You are a good fighter,” I agree. “I just wish you didn’t have to be.”
“Everyone should know how to take care of themselves,” Marianna says. I say nothing, stewing in the anguish that’s been bubbling in my empty stomach and making my whole body tense. She pushes off of me to look at my face, and I won’t meet her eyes, though I feel them on me. “Are you...angry with me?” she asks.
“Not with you,” I say. “You shouldn’t have to defend yourself in our home.”
“I didn’t have a choice, it was me or them, would you have rather I?—”
“No,” I say so definitively, and so loudly that she recoils. “Of course not. You almost—” I cut off and shake my head. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
Her eyes narrow and I know that in this I have somehow said the wrong thing again. Common practice for us. Her posture stiffens and she crawls off of my lap to stand. I feel the loss like a punch to my gut.
Doesn’t she see how I’m dying here? How this is my fault for putting her in danger at all?
“Do you resent me?” she asks.
“Never.”
“All I’ve brought you is frustration.”
The crackling fireplace to her left is no match for the flame consuming me. I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“How could I resent you? When it is me who cannot keep you from this? In our own home, Marianna.” My face cracks, and I feel a welling behind my eyes that I haven’t in so long. Like the anguish in me is seeking release through my tear ducts.
