“You look tough. Are you tough?”
I shrugged in defeat. “I don’t know.”
“You either are or you’re not.”
I thought about my answer. “I survived being kidnapped.”
He gave me a short nod. “Then, yeah, you’re tough.”
“Does that mean you’ll talk to me?” I was desperate for answers. To questions I couldn’t articulate.
He leaned forward with both arms on the table. “Axel is currently in prison.”
I froze, stunned. Fear immediately followed. “In Russia?”
“He asked me to organize the annulment. I returned to Russia last week for him to sign. All that is left for you to do is sign the papers and mail them back to the law firm. Everything is paid for, and they will file.”
Axel had already signed?
I opened the document and flipped to the back page. There was his signature in bold strokes.
“He signed,” I said.
“Axel returned to Russia to bear the cost of his decisions.”
“He’s in trouble?” The nightmare that Axel was in prison was just starting to wash over me. “Because of me?”
“He’s been given the option of an alternative assignment or prison. Neither are nice choices for him.”
My mind raced, tripping over ideas and thoughts. “We have to save him.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face, reminding me of Axel. “At this point, the only person who can save Axel is himself.”
“There must be something we can do,” I implored. Anguish, fear and something unnamed were churning inside of me.
“You living your best life is the best thing you can do for him right now.”
I refused to accept that. “No.”
“Your freedom is the reason why he’s there.”
Tears blurred my vision again as the truth of his words washed over me. I knew what he was referring to. I remembered Sergei’s lifeless body at the motel.
He had killed for me. He’d crossed the border, given up his job to save me.
“Do you think our marriage meant anything to him?”
His response was quick. “I know men don’t take the hard paths because they want to.”
“Why do they?”
“Because they have to.”
Because they have to.He knew, that night at the airport, what he was facing. I had thought he was meeting me back in Canada, but he had been trying to tell me that he had to go back.
I need you to treat this like goodbye.
Except there was no part of my being that could bring myself to erase Axel from my life. I had married him and he had become my husband, and now I had lost him.
