She nods and lets her hand fall from my face.
I gather her against my chest and hold her while the rain pounds against the windows. Her body fits against mine like it was made to be there. I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe her in.
I have eight days left to destroy the man who’s been destroying her.
And I intend to use every one of them.
16
Daria
I wake up on the couch, covered with a blanket I don’t remember pulling over myself.
Gray morning seeps through the curtains. My dress is still unbuttoned, and the fabric is twisted around my waist where Pyotr must have arranged it to cover me before he?—
Before he… what? Left? Stayed?
I drag myself upright and look around, and there he is, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a phone glued to his ear. When he glances up and sees me watching, he ends the call without another word.
“How long was I asleep?” I ask as I rub my eyes.
“Six hours. You needed it.”
I pull the blanket tighter, suddenly too aware of myself.
Not my body; he’s seen that.
It’s the rest of me.
He’s still here. I don’t know what to do with that.
“Kira…” I look around.
“Natasha texted an hour ago. She’s fine. They’re making pancakes.”
I nod and glance at my hands. The skin around my wrists is pink from the ribbon, but there’s no bruising. He was careful. He’s always careful.
“Last night,” he begins. “You told me Bogdan wants you to betray me. To get information about Dmitri and the family.”
“I remember what I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me everything.” He rises from the table and walks to the couch before lowering himself onto the coffee table across from me. “I know about the accounts, the shell companies, and all the money moving through your name. What I don’t know is how it started. How he got his hooks into you in the first place.”
I stare at him for so long that my eyes burn. My throat feels like I’ve swallowed sand.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
I let out a long breath, and my shoulders sag. I’ve been carrying this alone for three years. Running. Hiding. Pretending that if I just stayed small enough and quiet enough, Bogdan would eventually lose interest and move on.
But he never loses interest. He just finds new ways to tighten the leash.
And now, there’s a man sitting across from me who already knows the worst of it. He knows I’ve been feeding information to someone working against his organization, and he’s still here, waiting for me to trust him with the rest.
“The accounts started before I even knew what he was,” I tell him. “Before I understood what kind of man I’d married.”
Bogdan’s cufflinks catch the light as he signs my name like it’s nothing.
