"Maybe." I allowed myself a small, sad smile. "But I've waited this long. I can wait longer."
I left her on the terrace, closing the door softly behind me.
***
I watched her on the monitors until well past midnight.
She'd retreated to her new rooms—the bedroom adjoining mine, separated by a door I'd promised never to open without her permission. Through the security cameras, I watched her tear the pins from her hair, watched the carefully constructed style fall apart around her shoulders.
She stood before the mirror for a long time, staring at herself in the wedding dress. Then, with methodical precision, she unzipped it, stepped out of it, and left it pooled on the floor like a shed skin.
She showered—I switched off that monitor, granting her what privacy I could—and emerged in plain cotton pajamas, her face scrubbed clean, her hair damp and tangled.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and cried.
Great, heaving sobs that shook her whole body. She pressed her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound, but I could see the shape of her grief in the curve of her spine, the shake of her shoulders.
I'd done that. I'd broken her like this.
And the worst part—the part that damned me more than anything—was that I would do it again. Would tear apart her life, force her into marriage, make her hate me with every fiber of her being.
Because she was alive. She was here. She was mine.
And whatever it cost us both, I wasn't letting her go.
I switched off the monitor and sat in the darkness, listening to the silence of the house around me. Somewhere on the other side of a wall that felt like miles, my wife was crying herself to sleep.
Tomorrow, she would hate me. And the day after, and probably every day for months or years to come.
But tomorrow, she would also wake up alive. Safe. Protected by my name and my resources and my obsessive, unforgivable love.
Chapter 9 - Gaby
I woke to sunlight and silence.
For a disoriented moment, I didn't know where I was. The bed was too large, the sheets too soft, the light falling at the wrong angle through windows that weren't mine. Then I saw the ring on my finger—platinum and diamond, catching the morning sun like a tiny imprisoned star—and everything crashed back.
Married. I was married.
I sat up too fast, my head spinning. The bedroom was elegant and unfamiliar—cream walls, dark wood furniture, French doors leading to a private balcony. My things had been arranged on the dresser and nightstand with careful precision: books, toiletries, the few personal items I'd been allowed to keep from my old life.
The door to the adjoining room—his room—was closed. I stared at it, waiting for it to open, for him to appear and make whatever demands a husband made of a wife on the morning after their wedding.
It stayed closed.
Minutes passed. Then an hour. Yelena knocked softly and entered with a breakfast tray—fresh fruit, yogurt, coffee prepared exactly how I liked it. She set it on the table by the balcony and smiled at me with that patient kindness that made me want to scream.
"Mr. Chernov asked me to tell you he'll be in meetings most of the day," she said. "But he hopes you'll join him for dinner this evening."
He hopes. As if I had a choice. As if anything about this arrangement involved my hopes or preferences.
"I'm not hungry," I said.
"Of course." Yelena's smile didn't waver. "I'll leave the tray in case you change your mind."
She left, and I was alone with my fury and my confusion and the ring that felt like a brand on my skin.
***
