“I heard about what happened.”She set the tray on the side table and turned to face me.“Maya’s beside herself.Poor Winston.”
Guilt twisted in my stomach.I’d been so focused on my own fear that I hadn’t thought about Maya, alone in her suite with her grief.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s with Sophie.They’re having tea.”Marjorie paused, her hands smoothing her apron in that familiar nervous gesture.“Alice called earlier.She wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Who’s Alice?”
“Mr.Antonov’s housekeeper.”Marjorie’s voice was careful, measured.“We’re old friends.Known each other for years.She’s good people, Lena.Whatever situation you’re walking into, Alice will look out for you.”
I stared at her.There was something in her tone, something that suggested she knew more than she was saying.
“What do you know about… about where I’m going?”
“I know you’re scared.”She reached out and touched my cheek, her palm warm and papery against my skin.“I know you’ve made some kind of arrangement with that Antonov man, and I know it’s not my place to ask what.But whatever you’re going through, child, you’re not as alone as you think.”
The words loosened something in me.I wanted to tell her everything.The contract.The debt.The year of my life I’d sold to a man who looked at me like I was something to be devoured.The dead dog in the lobby and the fear that he might be the one who sent it.
But I couldn’t.The NDA.The shame.The crushing weight of everything I’d become.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.The words tasted like ash.
Marjorie looked at me for a long moment, her eyes seeing right through the lie.Then she sighed, kissed my forehead the way she had when I was small, and left.
I checked the time.Six-fifteen.Less than two hours until Raphael’s driver arrived.
I showered, letting the hot water pound against my back until it ran cold, washing away the last traces of the day.The smell of the soap, familiar and comforting, couldn’t quite cover the memory of that other smell, the wrongness of death in a gift box.
I changed into clothes that were a shield.Dark jeans, a silk blouse, low heels that I could walk in.Nothing too revealing, nothing that might give him ideas.As if anything I wore would matter to a man who owned me.
I threw the last few items into my suitcase.Toiletries.My mother’s photo.A book I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on.The sum total of my life, reduced to a single bag.
At seven-thirty, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and studied my reflection.
The woman looking back at me had dark circles under her eyes and a jaw set with determination she didn’t feel.She’d signed her life away this morning and opened a box of death this afternoon.She was about to walk into the house of a man who might have sent her that dead dog to break her down.A man who’d warned her, in no uncertain terms, that he would not be gentle.
She was terrified.
But she was still standing.
“I can survive this,” I told my reflection.“All of it.”
The face in the mirror didn’t look convinced.
At eight o’clock exactly, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.
Parsons is waiting.Don’t make me send him up to collect you.
A second message, seconds later.Tonight, we establish exactly what ‘mine’ means.
The words sent a shiver down my spine.Threat or promise, I couldn’t tell.Maybe both.
I picked up my suitcase, took one last look at the apartment that had been my home for twenty years, and walked out the door toward whatever waited for me next.
9
RAPHAEL
