“Get up,” I say, and my voice sounds wrong, scraped raw from the whiskey I’ve been drinking since I locked her in here, from the cigarettes I started again.
She doesn’t move.
She just watches me with those mercury eyes that used to go soft when I touched her, eyes that used to track my hands across her skin with hunger and curiosity and something that might have been the beginning of love before I salted the earth and poisoned the well and burned everything to ash.
“I said, get up.”
“I heard you.”
Her voice is hoarse from screaming or crying or both. She still doesn’t move, just sits there in my jacket with her bare feet tucked underneath her and her hair tangled from the pillow and her face pale except for the dark circles under her eyes.
I cross the room in four strides and grab the front of the jacket,myjacket, my scent on her skin, and I haul her off the mattress with hands that are shaking so hard I can barely keepmy grip. Just to make her look at me while I bleed out every truth I’ve been choking on since the day I signed that form.
She finds her feet, and she doesn’t fight yet.
“You ran from me.”
“Yes.”
“You took my passports, and you ran—”
“Luka’s passports.”
“He was preparingourescape.”
“Mmm.”
“You disobeyed—”
“Fuck your obedience.” She shoves against my grip, and I let her push me back half a step. “I don’t owe you obedience. I don’t owe you anything except the contempt you’ve earned with every lie you’ve told since the moment you forced that ring onto my hand.”
“You think I lied?”
“I think you married me knowing you signed my mother’s death warrant.” Her voice cracks on the word, and something shatters behind her eyes. “I think you touched me knowing whose daughter you were holding. I think you made me trust you, knowing exactly what would happen when I found out.”
“I knew.”
The admission lands between us, and she flinches like I hit her, actually flinches.
“I knew,” I say, and my voice breaks on the words. “Vadim showed me the file. I saw the name. And I married you anyway.”
“Why?” One word, barely a whisper. “Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t marry you because I wanted you.” The words come out harsh and ugly, and I hate every one of them, but she needs to hear this, needs to understand the timeline that led us here. “I married you because I was a coward. Vadim gave the order. I obeyed. I told myself you were just a contract.”
Her grip on my wrists loosens just slightly.
“And then I saw you. And you beat me at chess.” I step closer, and she doesn’t step back this time, just stands there with her chest heaving and her eyes locked on mine. “And then you started to look at me like I was a man instead of a monster. And then I touched your skin, and something that had been dead inside me for twenty years started to wake up. The sin wasn’t signing the form. The sin was falling in love with you after I did it.”
“You’re trying to make me feel sorry for you.”
“I’m telling you the truth because you deserve it, even if it changes nothing, even if you still hate me when I’m done.”
“I will still hate you.”
“Then hate me with all the facts.”
She stares at me, and I can see the war happening behind her eyes, the part of her that wants to run fighting against the part of her that needs to know.
