Mikhail:
I didn’t mean to hurt you
Mikhail:
I’ll do better. Please don’t shut me out.
I hunchover the breakfast table, pinching my tired eyes at the offending screen as I fume at my bowl of cereal.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. This man’s first words to me were a plea not to report him to the police. I’ve always known his morality was skewed. I heard the implication of what he did to the man who drugged me that night at the club, and I was fucked-up enough to feel grateful that the predator was eradicated.
I never stopped to consider his capabilities.
It’s partly my fault.
Since I was a kid, I’ve always had this fantasy that someone would walk in through our creaky, worn-down doorway and shoot my step-dad in the head.
I knew it was wrong. I knew it made me a monster. But I couldn’t help taking relief in the idea that our tormentor would be dead. When the yelling and crying got too loud, I would run to the garden and stare at the dirt, picking the perfect place to bury his corpse and feed the hungry worms.
In my fantasy, it was pragmatic. Easy. There was no blood, no gasps of torture from a dying man. He would be there, yelling and hitting and then,poof, into the garden he went.
I’ve never shared the morose desire with anyone else because it wasn’t real. That’s not how men die. And part of me is aware that Mikhail knows exactly how men die. Orchestrates it.
And that buried desire might be why I’ve made certain allowances for his lethal history.
But if someone is willing to do something like that, it should come as no surprise that they’d cross other lines.
I double and triple check my phone’s privacy settings, but a string of fear still lines my stomach, and the more I pull on it, the more I wonder what other lines he has crossed. What he is capable of.
It doesn’t matter that he saved me that night. I need to sever the ties of this strange thing growing between us before it threatens to pull me under the waterline and drown me in its nefarious depths.
Cassandra
I’ve had an astoundingly unproductive morning.
It’s not necessarily my fault, though. How am I supposed to get any work done when all I can think about is the jackass who has effectively uprooted my calm, boring life?
Even as I think it, I know it’s not completely true.I’mthe idiot who stuck around to bond with the perpetrator and victim of a shootout. And I also can’t so easily ignore the way he took care of me when I was taken advantage of at his club. He could’ve just dropped me at a hospital. I would’ve woken up even more scared and panicked than I already was.
Basically, my mind is a big, chaotic ball of conflicting feelings, none of which are helping me finish my schoolwork.
I huff, standing from my desk and wandering to the kitchen for a procrastination snack. The fridge creaks open, summoning another groan from my mouth.
I want toeat,but everything in the fridge ismake.
I don’t want to make.
I slam the door shut with a petulant shove, just about to return to my academic prison sentence, when a soft knock rattles at the door.
I stroll over and swing open the hinge, assuming Veronica lost her keys again. Instead, I’m jolted by the familiar face and looming form dominating the porch.
Great. First, he stalks me. Then, hestalksme.
“What are you doing here, Mikhail?”
The anger from last night comes flickering back at his presence, and my voice takes on sharp edges and corners.
“Cass, I know you’re furious. You have every right to be.”
