He sighs. “I… I’m sorry.”
My eyes slide around the room, into the corners. There has to be a camera here. Some sort of set-up.
But Silas leans forward on his elbows, resting them on his knees. “The list I gave you. It wasn’t supposed to be…,”
He shakes his head as I stare at him. “It was a punishment,” he says hoarsely. “I wanted to – to hurt you. I was angry. But I never meant for it to go this far.”
I’m still fucking confused.
“Spit it out, Silas,” I whisper. “What are you talking about?”
“I made you ill.” His voice is low. “You’re not eating properly, not sleeping properly. Working your fingers to the fucking bone because of thislist.”
He holds it up like evidence, and I glance at the spiky writing. My head begins to ache. “You’re giving me whiplash, Silas. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To work? To bepunished? This is whatyouwanted.”
“Not like this,” he says quietly. “I don’t want… I don’t want anything to happen to you. Because of me. We can’t spend the next two decades like this, Stasi.”
We watch each other in silence. My heart thumps inside my chest.
“But you… you hate me.” My mutter drops into the space between us like a stone. “You’ve made that perfectly clear, Silas. Don’t try to tell me you don’t. I can see it in your face, even now.”
A myriad of emotions flash across his face. Yes, the anger is still there.
But there’s concern there, too. His hand shoots out as I struggle to prop myself up, sliding around my back, helping me keep my balance.
“Can you blame me for being angry?” His words are quiet, even as his fingers spread out, strong and sure across my back. “You don’t even know what your actions cost us that night, Anastasia.”
When I can focus, I turn to him.
“I was doing what I was told to do,” I say tiredly. “And in the end, I wasn’t going to do it, Silas. But when I asked you to help me, you threw me out like I was trash.”
He looks at me, grim and tired. “Maybe I was angry then, too.”
And look where it got us, in the end.
“Did you ever think that that night might have cost me something, too?” My small words send his eyes flying up to mine, even as they crease in confusion.
“What could it possibly have cost you?” His words are on the edge of disbelieving.
It’s on the tip of my tongue.
My family.
My future.
My freedom.
You.
But he doesn’t want to hear that. So I don’t say anything, and he sighs. “I’m… going to try to get past that night. But you still need to serve your sentence, Anastasia. This – right now - is about our own story. But it doesn’t change what’s happened with Ella.”
My eyes close. The hope I didn’t even realize I was holding onto shrivels inside my chest, curling up and blackening around the edges until it dissolves into ash.
How many more times before you learn, Stasi?
The words appear around the lump in my throat. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Our history is not the only issue between us. Not with the whole world pressing in around the edges. Everyone wants their pound of flesh from me, and Silas volunteered to deliver it.
