Reckless.
The kind of mistake I swore I’d never make again when I found out the truth.
But I went to that cell anyway, demanded answers I wasn’t ready to hear, and wound up with my back against the wall while Tony reminded me why I fell for him in the first place.
I sit on the stone bench near the rose bushes and try to make sense of what I did.
The logical explanation is that I needed closure. I needed to confront him. The sex was just adrenaline and anger finding an outlet.
Except that’s not true.
I went to that cell because I needed to know if what we had was real or just a performance. When he looked at me with devastation in his eyes, I believed him.
So, I kissed him. Not because I forgive him, or because I trust him, but because I needed to feel something other than the hollow ache that’s sat in my chest since I watched him confess everything through the mirror.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
I turn to find Katya walking down the path in running clothes.
“Something like that,” I reply.
She sits beside me on the bench without asking permission. We’ve never been particularly close; she’s Dmitri’s wife, and I’ve spent most of the past two years in London. But something about her presence feels safe. Like she won’t judge what comes out of my mouth.
“You went to see him,” she says.
“How did you know?”
“I know the look. I wore it for weeks after Dmitri and I…” She stops. “After everything fell apart between us, and I had to decide what came next.”
I pull my knees up to my chest. “Did Dmitri tell you what Tony did?”
“He told me enough.”
“He destroyed me,” I choke out. “A hundred thousand dollars. That’s what I was worth.”
“But he didn’t go through with it.”
“Because he got caught. I figured it out before he could finish the job.”
Katya shakes her head. “He sabotaged the mission weeks ago, long before he was caught.”
I know this.
Dmitri explained it yesterday.
But hearing it again doesn’t make the betrayal sting any less.
“He still lied to me,” I point out. “He was playing a role this entire time.”
“Was he?” Katya asks. “According to what Dmitri told me, Tony confessed things about you that had nothing to do with the mission. Personal things. Observations that someone just gathering intelligence wouldn’t bother noticing.”
I pull my sleeves down over my hands even though it’s not cold. My throat feels tight, and I swallow twice before I can speak again. “That doesn’t change what he did.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Katya pulls up one knee and wraps her arms around it. “But it might change what you do next.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dmitri lied to me about a lot of big things,” she reminds me. “When I woke up with amnesia, he told me we were married. That I was an art curator who’d been in a car accident. He created an entire reality and kept me trapped in it while I recovered.”
