“Don’t.” The word comes out of me before I can stop it. “Roman, don’t—”
He doesn’t lower the gun, just says, very quietly, “Close your eyes, solnyshko.”
I can’t. My eyes are fixed on the gun barrel catching fluorescent light, on the faded Orthodox cross painted on the warehouse wall, on the icon of Saint Michael visible through the office window.
Roman pulls the trigger.
The shot cracks through the warehouse. Alexei’s head snaps back, and the chair tips over and crashes to the ground.
Then silence.
There’s this small, ugly part of me that’s actually relieved the screaming stopped, and I don’t know what that makes me, but it scares me more than the blood does.
My stomach heaves.
I barely make it to the corner before I’m vomiting, everything coming up in a violent rush while my knees hit the concrete. I can’t stop. My body just keeps going until there’s nothing left, and I’m dry heaving over a floor that probably has worse things on it than my breakfast.
My vision starts going grey at the edges, and I think Roman says my name, and then everything goes dark.
* * *
I come back to the smell of blood and cedar and the sensation of being carried.
For a few disoriented seconds, I don’t understand what’s happening, just that I’m pressed against something warm and solid and moving. Roman is carrying me down a corridor with lights buzzing overhead, and his arms are tight around me.
I can smell the blood on his shirt. I can feel it dried on his forearms where they’re pressing against my back.
“Put me down.” My voice comes out hoarse, and my throat burns from the vomiting, and I’m struggling against his grip before I even finish the sentence. “Roman, put me down, I can walk, put me the fuck down—”
He doesn’t stop walking. “You passed out.”
“I don’t care, I can walk, I don’t want you touching me right now—”
His arms tighten for just a second, and his jaw clenches against the top of my head. He sets me on my feet in front of a door with his hands hovering near my elbows.
I step back from him so fast I almost trip.
“Don’t. Just—don’t.”
I can’t look at him long enough to identify what he’s thinking because every time I do, I see him crouching in front of that chair with the pliers in his hand, and my stomach threatens to revolt again.
The doors open, and I step outside and walk as far from him as I can get. Roman follows me with his right hand in his pocket and his face completely blank as he falls in step with me.
His wedding ring still has a streak of dried blood on it.
I stare at it for the entire walk to the car.
By the time we get back to the mansion, I’ve stopped shaking enough to walk on my own, but Roman stays within arm’s reach the whole time. I hate that some part of me finds that reassuring.
Galina takes one look at us and disappears into the kitchen without asking any questions. I make it to my suite and close the door behind me before my legs give out.
I try the balcony handle.
Locked.
I spend the next few minutes running through every escape route I can think of, calculating guard rotations and how long itwould take me to get to the nearest airport if I could somehow get past the gates.
I’m not going to use any of them. I know that.
