My voice rasps in my throat, every word becoming more painful.
Polina’s face twists, her mouth turning down at the corners. She lunges for me at the chair in the center and grips my jaw. “Don’t speak about him.”
Her face is wild, her blue eyes wide and panicked. That hit a nerve.
“You really did love him, didn’t you?”
There’s a cracking sound that rips through the room. One of the guards yells out.
The ceiling appears above me, the sole lightbulb painfully bright.
Pain blooms from a dull throb at the back of my head.
My temples ache, my vision becoming hazy. I try to shake my head and needles shoot down my neck.
I try to suppress the sob, but it comes out as a kind of wail.
One of the guards hauls me back upright, the room spinning back into focus and I realize what happened. Polina pushed me back. Straight onto the concrete floor.
Hot liquid drips down my back in a sticky rush. I know it’s my own blood, but I can’t feel the pain anymore.
The room is coming into softer focus now, the harsh light fading away.
Polina is murmuring to one of the guards. It looks like he’s trying to calm her down, but that’s got to be my imagination.
“You weren’t supposed to do that.” The masculine voice is deep and commanding. He sounds like he’s scolding her. “She has to stay in one piece.”
Confusion registers faintly, but my brain is turning so slowly that it takes a few minutes to register.
These are Polina’s guards who kidnapped me from my bed this morning. They’re hardly going to scold her for cracking my skull open.
Sleepiness takes me over, and one of the guards rushes in front of me, shining a torch in my eyes. “You’ve really done it now, Polina,” a voice says, the words floating through my brain in slow motion.
41
ARTYOM
No one seems to understand my urgency.
They weren’t there when Nina returned. They don’t understand that things are different now.
She’s not going anywhere of her own accord, which means that someone has taken her.
Ivan comes back with nothing. Franka Orlov hasn’t seen her. There’s no sign of a struggle in our rooms. No cars entered or left the Estate until everyone arrived for the vote in Vanya’s formal meeting room.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Which leaves me roaming the rooms of the Estate, desperately searching for any sign of where they might have gone.
The Estate is quiet, apart from the meeting with Vanya. She’s been cracking the whip to get everyone there.
Polina’s wing of the house is particularly quiet, even her guards gone. I’ve hardly seen her since Denis’s death, but I’m sure she’ll be at the meeting today.
She’ll be clinging to the last shred of her relationship with Vanya like a lifeline, because that’s her only remaining link to power.
Valentin calls me just when I’m at a loose end, about to drive out to sweep the surrounding area.
“You’re supposed to be at the meeting with Vanya,” I greet him.
