“Love you too, Mom.”
I hang up and press my phone face down on the vanity. The suite smells like salt and clean linen. Roman waits by the door with two white robes over his arm and the relaxed posture he uses when he wants me to relax. He doesn’t push. He offers a hand. I take it.
I don’t let myself think about the dark reality of what Mom and I talked about. According to Roman, today is for relaxation only. I’m not sure I’m capable of that, but I’m going to try, for his sake.
The path to the spa walks along a strip of sand and a fringe of palms. The lagoon is flat enough to be sky. Farther down the boardwalk, a fisherman lifts a line and lets it fall. Roman’s security is present if you know where to look.
A man who loves birds. Another who loves his phone. Fake tourists, real bodyguards.
The resort is all so normal I don’t know what to think of it. But I should stop thinking and enjoy the quiet moments we have. It’s just hard to do that when I know someone out there wants me dead, and he’s good at getting what he wants.
Inside the spa, air cools my skin and the light goes soft. A woman at the desk greets us by name and asks if we prefer silence or music. We pick music. We choose coconut oil—it smells like my favorite kind of cake. He signs the intake forms, and we follow two therapists down a peaceful hall.
The couple’s room is intimate, with candles and lowered lights. Two tables. Two baskets for clothes. Two glasses of water that sweat into round coasters. They tell us to undress and lie face down under the sheet. They step out. The door closes with a hush.
My robe falls away. My body remembers the weight of the last year and wants to keep holding it. I tell it to let go for one hour. I slide onto the table and fit my face into the cradle. The sheet is heavy in a way that makes me trust it.
Roman lies on the table beside me. His fingers reach under the sheet and find mine for a second, just a press that says he’s here with me. “It is no crime to relax, Mina.”
“I know. It just feels like one.”
“Take deep breaths and let your mind wander like you did with the sharks.”
He’s right. I know he is. So, I heed his advice, and my chest loosens. I breathe. The music keeps time with the fan. The therapists re-enter and the first long stroke down my back unhooks my shoulders from my ears.
I am as relaxed as I can imagine right now. I think that, and then I realize what sits under the thought, steady and bright. I am falling for my husband. It feels dangerous in a new way. It also feels like a choice I have been walking toward since the night I met him at Rope.
The therapist asks if the pressure is good. It is. Roman’s therapist works in silence except for a quiet instruction about breath. His inhale matches mine for a while. I am aware of his presence the way you feel the sun through a window. Not touching. Warming everything anyway.
Somewhere in the building a door bangs, and my body jolts. Then another. Voices move fast and low. The therapists pause. They look at each other. The one at my table says, “One minute,” and steps out. The other follows. The door hushes closed.
Roman is off the table before I lift my head. “Dress now. Robe over your clothes.” No panic. No noise. He is already moving into his pants.
“What is it?” I whisper, and I’m already on my feet. My hands shake, but they do what they have to do. Underwear. Bra. Dress. My fingers find the zipper the second time. Robe. He puts his on too.
He crosses to the wall that shares a corner with the adjoining room. It’s painted the same pale blue as the rest and holds a framed print of a leaf. He pulls the print down and thumps the plaster with his knuckles. He thumps again lower, listening. “Hollow.”
Male voices grind far away. My stomach goes ice-cold. “It’s him.”
“Yes,” Roman says. He does not look at me. He takes one step back and kicks. The plaster bursts, and white dust blooms and flakes down on the table. He kicks again, lower and to the side, opening a square big enough for a shoulder. He reaches in and grabs the crosspiece, then yanks until it snaps. He’s made a hole.
“We’re going through that, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“One second.” I stuff two pillows under the sheet on my table where my hips were and roll a towel into a head. I pull the sheet smooth so the shape reads as a sleeping body at a glance. I throw his sheet over the second set of pillows on his massage table. From the door, with adrenaline in your eyes, it will look like us.
The hallway explodes with a shout. A chair skids. I hear a voice I know down to the last vowel. Vitaly curses in Russian, fast and vicious, then switches to English for an insult that feels like aslap even through a wall. Roman’s jaw tightens. He tips his head toward the hole. I go first.
The plaster scrapes my shoulders. I get a mouthful of dust and try not to cough. My foot finds the baseboard on the other side. Another couple’s room, but with no one in it.
Roman follows. He is bigger, but he moves like a man who has broken through walls before. He pulls the sheet off one table and stuffs it into the hole on this side, then adds a second sheet until the break looks like a careless laundry pile against the baseboard.
We hold our breath and hear the outer door to our original room slam. Two shots crack. They are close enough to make my ears ring. I flinch. Roman’s hand finds the back of my neck and holds there. One second. Two.
Vitaly curses when he realizes his mistake. He shot our pillows, not us. How disappointing for him. There’s a thunk like his fist meeting the wall.
We do not move. Roman tilts his head, counting the distance between footsteps. Vitaly stomps further into the room, then back to the hall. Shouts rise near the front desk. A cart hits a doorframe. Someone runs. Two more voices argue about direction. One says “kitchen” and the other says “villa” and both are wrong. Roman waits for the one word he wants. He gets it when someone says “front” with certainty.
