He is very large. Very still. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, the kind of face that was put together with intention. Very angular and controlled, with nothing soft about it except perhaps his mouth, and even that is pressed into a line right now that doesn't invite the word soft. He is wearing a suit jacket and shirt with no tie, his collar open, and he radiates the authority of a man who has never once had to announce that he's in charge of a room because the room already knows.
A strange kind of relief moves through me from having stopped moving. My feet have been carrying me through the city for however long it's been, and now they've stopped the weird tension in my body has stopped with them. Like a machine that's been running too hot and has finally, reluctantly, been switched off.
"She texted me at eight," I say.
My voice still sounds wrong to me. Like a recording of myself made in a bad room.
"Sasha. She said she was going to be late to the club and could I do her a favor on my way. Pick up a piece of jewelry she had left at her uncle's house because it was on my way."
The memory tries to surface and I press it back down. Not yet. I can't do the whole thing yet, I can only do it in pieces, in the order my mouth decides to release them.
"I got there just before nine. Knocked. He answered. Told me to come in, he was just cooking dinner. Said the earrings were in a box, but he needed to wash his hands." A pause. "So I followed him through."
He's watching me with an expression I can't read. There's something moving behind it, but it's controlled in a way that gives me nothing to orient by. No pity, which I'm grateful for, but the very complete and focused attention of someone who is listening to every word and also to everything underneath the words.
"He was cooking," I say. "Onions. Garlic. The smell was—" I stop. Start again. "It was very normal. He said Sasha had called him, and the box with the earrings was on the kitchen island, I just had to grab it."
I look down at the water. The glass is still trembling fractionally in my hands, so I wrap my fingers tighter.
"He was between me and the door."
I say it like that. Flat, clinical, like a stage direction, because it's the only way to say it and keep the door shut on what comes after it.
"He said I might as well stay for a drink. I said no thank you. He said—" My mouth tightens. "He said it wasn't a question."
Silence.
Across the desk, Iosif doesn't move. Doesn't make a sound. The absence of response is so complete and so careful that Iunderstand it's intentional. He's giving me the space to keep going without the interruption of his reaction, and I find I can use that. I find it's easier, with no sound coming back at me, to let the words keep coming out.
"I tried to go around him." Past tense. Keep it past tense. Keep it over there, in the room it happened in, not in this one. "He grabbed my wrist.”
“I dropped the earrings," I add absently, only just remembering now.
I look at my wrist. The marks are there, purple and obvious. The specific pressure of fingers that closed and didn't let go.
"He told me to just be good. You obviously want it if you’re dressed like this. I pulled away. He didn't let go. He forced me against the island.” I look down at my dress with a frown, remembering the sound of the fabric as it tore under his other hand. The one that wasn’t wrapped around my wrist.
“I reached for the counter because I needed something to hold onto, something to steady myself against, and my hand—"
The door in my mind shudders.
I'm pressing my back against it as hard as I can, but something on the other side is pushing.
"My hand found the knife."
I close my eyes for one second. Just one. Then I open them and look at him and say the rest of it the way you pull a plaster off. Quick, before your nerve goes.
"It was a chef's knife. It was just on the counter. I didn't — I wasn't — I grabbed it because my hand found it and I was trying to make him let go of me, I was trying to make him stop, and he didn't stop, he didn't—"
I breathe in.
"He fell," I say. "He let go of my wrist, and he fell."
Silence again.
I realise my hands are shaking badly enough that the water is moving in the glass. I set it down on the edge of his desk because I can't trust myself to keep hold of it, and I press both palms flat against my thighs the way I've been doing all night, because it’s the only control I have left.
"I checked," I say, and my voice does something strange. Warping briefly, before I pull it flat again. "He was... There was a lot of blood. I checked. He wasn't—" I stop. Try again. "He was already gone. Or close enough that I couldn't—"
