“Then you know why I’m never coming back.”
“You’re my wife.”
“I’m the daughter of the woman you murdered.”
“Both things are true.”
His hand comes up, and Anya flinches. He touches her jaw, tilts her chin up, and forces her to look at him.
“You’re still coming home.”
“I hate you.” Her voice breaks on the words, but she’s leaning into his hand, I can see it. I don’t understand what I’m watching, don’t understand how she can hate him and want him at thesame time, don’t understand why she’s not screaming for me to run. “I fucking hate you.”
“I know.” His thumb moves across her cheek in a slow stroke, and Anya’s whole body shudders. Bile rises in my throat. “And I’m still not letting you go. I told you I wasn’t leaving you. I fucking meant it.”
“You killed my mother.”
“Yes.” He says it softly, almost gently, and his other hand comes up to cup her face, and she’s crying now, tears running down her cheeks. “And I’m still not letting you go. Walk out with me, or I’ll carry you. Your choice, solnyshko.”
She spits in his face.
For a second, nobody moves.
The spit runs down his cheek, and Roman doesn’t wipe it away.
“Blyad, Anya.” He says it quietly, almost to himself, almost tender. “You’re going to make this difficult.”
“I’m going to make this impossible.”
“No.” His hand moves from her face to her hair, and his arm wraps around her waist, and suddenly she’s fighting, really fighting, not just pushing but clawing and kicking and screaming words in Russian that Mama would have slapped her for.
Roman takes every hit without flinching, takes the scratches and the kicks and the fists against his chest like they’re nothing, and when he lifts her off the ground, she’s still fighting, but her hands are gripping his shirt instead of pushing him away.
“You’re going to come home and hate me for as long as you need to, and I’m going to keep you safe whether you want me to or not, because that’s what I fucking promised.”
I lunge forward without thinking.
I just move, some stupid idea that forty-seven kilos of a fourteen-year-old is enough to stop a man who just broke down a door without slowing down. Something hits my chest before Iget anywhere close, an arm, one of the men stepping between me and Roman, and suddenly I’m on the floor with my lungs empty and my vision sparking and the taste of copper in my mouth from where I bit my tongue.
“MISHKA!”
Anya’s voice, screaming my name, and I push myself up on my elbows and see her over Roman’s shoulder because he’s carrying her now, actually carrying her like she weighs nothing.
Roman pauses and looks back at me on the floor.
And for a moment, his eyes aren’t on Anya anymore, and they’re just as terrifying as I thought they would be, flat and cold. When he speaks, his voice is different, harder, the voice of a man giving orders.
“Kolya.” One of the men steps forward. “Take the boy somewhere safe. Not Moscow. Somewhere Vadim can’t reach. Keep him there until I send word.”
“Da, boss.”
“If anything happens to him—” Roman’s jaw tightens, and the fresh scratches on his face pull with the movement. “If he gets so much as a fucking bruise, I’ll put you in the ground next to whoever caused it. Ponyal?”
“Ponyal.”
And something changes.
Anya stops fighting. Her face changes. She heard it too. The order to keep me safe.
