That anger falters almost as fast as it comes.
Because she doesn’t look relieved now that she’s told me. She doesn’t look like a woman delivering news she’s made peace with. She looks like someone bracing for impact.
Her arms are folded tight across her body. Her chin is down. Her shoulders have curled inward in that way I’ve seen before.
She isn’t standing there like a woman confessing something she chose to hide.
She’s standing there like a woman showing me a wound.
So instead of saying the ten things trying to force their way out of my mouth, I make myself ask the one that matters.
“Did you want this?”
Her head lifts. Water runs down her temples and catches in her lashes and she blinks at me like I just spoke a language she doesn’t recognize.
“What?”
“The marriage. The arrangement. Whatever the fuck it is.” My voice is rougher now, the control in it costing me something. “Did you want it?”
A terrible little laugh leaves her. Broken at the edges, stripped of anything close to humor.
“I didn’t get a vote.”
“Nat.” I hear the edge in my own voice now and hate it. “That’s not what I asked.”
Her mouth tightens. Her arms pull harder across her chest like she can hold herself together by force if she just squeezes hard enough.
“No.”
The relief is instant and savage. She doesn’t want this. She didn’t choose this. This wasn’t some future she’s choosing over me. It was done to her.
That doesn’t fix a goddamn thing. But at least I know which direction to point the rage.
“Then why the fuck are you still going through with it?”
She looks away. “Wanting something else doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes what this is.”
Her brows draw together.
“If you wanted him, that would be one thing,” I say. “If you wanted that life, that would be one thing. But if you don’t, thenthis isn’t some choice I have to respect. It’s a cage.” I hold her eyes. “So what are they holding over you?”
Her nails press into her own arms hard enough to leave marks, and I have to stop myself from reaching over and pulling her hands apart.
“Anna is sick, Johnny.”
My stomach drops.
The warmth that filled her voice when she first told me about Anna is gone, replaced by something bleak.
“Alzheimer’s. My father pays for her care. Where she lives, what she needs, all of it.” She swallows once, hard. “And before he sent me here, he made it very clear that if I stop cooperating, that goes away.”
The shower keeps beating against the tile, against my neck, against her skin, but the whole room has gone cold.
Anton Kozlov found the softest part of his daughter and wrapped a fist around it.
For one vicious second all I can see is his hands on a leash. Around her throat. Around Anna’s life. Around choices that were never supposed to belong to him in the first place.
