“What else?” I ask, sitting on the edge of my seat.
“He was charming,” she continues. “Attentive. Overwhelming, sometimes, but in a way that felt flattering at first. He showed up with flowers. Planned dates. Talked about the future like he pictured me in it.”
She pauses, eyes unfocused now, looking inward.
“He proposed pretty quickly,” she says. “It was a whirlwind. I knew it was too quick, but everyone kept telling me how lucky I was. How serious he seemed. How rare it was to find someone so certain.”
I nod once. “And how did your father feel about it?”
Her jaw tightens. “He liked Kostya,” she says hollowly. “He encouraged the relationship. He said he wouldn’t be around forever, and he was happy to know I would be taken care of.”
Of course, he felt that way.
“He was the one who introduced us,” she continues. “He told me that Kostya was a good man. Stable. That he’d take care of me.”
I feel a flicker of anger at that. Not directed at her father exactly, but at the circumstances that made such assurances necessary.
“Did you ever feel pressured by the speed of it all?” I ask.
She looks at me sharply.
“A little,” she admits. “I just assumed he wanted to get married quickly so we could finally have sex.”
Mine.The word rises unbidden from some primal part of me. I bury it immediately.
“Did you have any clue of who he really was?” I ask.
She frowns slightly. “I don’t know. There might have been signs. Maybe I just didn’t see them. Maybe I was afraid to.”
She rubs at her temple with two fingers.
“He started disappearing more toward the end. He always had excuses, like business dinners, meetings, family obligations, that kind of thing. I never asked because he acted like I shouldn’t.”
I know that tactic well.
“What about the night of the party?” I ask. “Did he seem nervous or off in any way?”
Her eyes harden, remembering, that night, but she shakes her head.
“He wasn’t nervous,” she confirms. “He was just distracted. Like his attention was split. And then he disappeared, and we both know what happened after that.”
I remember that night clearly. The chaos. The frantic searching. The way his men moved through the hotel with purpose.
“And when you found him,” I say.
She swallows. “That was the first time I saw the mask slip,” she says. “He wasn’t even ashamed. Just annoyed that he got caught.”
I feel my hands curl slowly into fists at my sides.
“He tried to talk his way out of it,” she continues. “Like I was unreasonable for being upset. Like it was a misunderstanding I should forgive.”
Her voice stays steady, but there’s an undercurrent there now. Steel beneath softness.
“I realized then that he didn’t love me,” she says. “He never did. I couldn’t make sense of it at the time because I didn’t have all the information. Now I do. I just feel like he used me.”
I study her carefully.
“Are you still angry with him?” I can’t help but ask.
