Or Petyr.
I shake my head. Of course Petyr didn’t come. Even after I bared my heart to him—again—he doesn’t want anything to do with me.
Yesterday, he felt our child. I thought that might have mattered to him. That it might have changed something.
But I was wrong. With Petyr, I always turn out to be wrong.
So here I am. Same prison, new day.
“We’re coming in,” Luka announces through the door. His voice is flat, already tired. I can practically smell the Tums on his breath from here.
“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask, but the door’s already opening.
Two of Petyr’s security guys file in with a big, horizontal box. Probably not a guillotine, but a girl can never be certain.
“Careful with that,” Luka scolds.
So it’s fragile.Can’t be anything from Petyr, then. That man hasn’t known fragility since he was in diapers.
I’m already starting to wonder if it’s a haunted mirror to make my nights worse, but then the guys unpack the box.
“A… TV?” I peer from the edge of the bed.
I blink, but the image doesn’t disappear. Not a fever dream, then.
Petyr’s guys set it up on the dresser. It’s small enough to fit, not that a huge plasma screen would have made things that much better.
Luka’s crew sets it up with twin scowls, like they’re gracing me with the seventh wonder of the world and don’t think I deserve it.
Joke’s on them. I don’t think I deserve this, either. What I deserve is fresh air and real answers.
Belatedly, I realize Luka’s carrying something, too. “Here,” he says, and sets it down on the bedside table.
I consider snubbing it and turning the other way to continue my beauty sleep. But curiosity gets the better of me. “What’s this?”
Luka just jerks his head towards the box, as if to say,Look for yourself.
I pick it up and lift it to the light.
“An e-reader?”
Luka clears his throat. “Petyr said you’d need something to do.”
I arch an eyebrow. “A TV and a Kindle. Wow. Next thing you know, he’ll spring for cable. Maybe even Wi-Fi, if I behave.”
My joke lands like a brick.Tough crowd.
I turn the box over in my hands. Now that I’m actually looking at it, the packaging is pretty self-explanatory.
It’s definitely more thoughtful than the TV. At least with this, I can read something that isn’t drier than Anya’s oatmeal.
But it’s still not Petyr. It’s still not an actual conversation.
And it sure as fuck isn’t freedom.
Despite that, I open the box and pull it out. I’ve always wanted one of these, but I never let myself entertain the thought. All my spare change went into my business fund.
Which then became my runaway fund. Which I drained to get away from Petyr.
