She starts to shrug out of my jacket.
“Keep it.”
“I don’t need it. I’ll be inside in a second.”
“Keep. It.”
I don’t know why, but it feels vital that she keeps it. Maybe I am fucked in the head.
She pulls the jacket tighter and gives me one last look. Equal parts hurt and defiance.
Cold air rushes in as she steps out onto the sidewalk. One of my guards waits by the entrance to walk her upstairs.
I had him tail us. Someone needed to walk her up to her apartment, and it sure as hell couldn’t be me. If I go up tonight, I’m not coming back down until morning.
Before she closes the door, she leans back in. “Thank you for tonight. For what you did.”
With that, she slams the passenger door shut and spins toward her building. She doesn’t acknowledge the guard who follows her through the grimy glass doors.
I sit in front of her place and wait until I see the lights come on in her apartment. Through the app on my phone, I confirm she’s engaged both locks and armed the alarm as I do every night. Home safe. Locked away from everything that could hurt her. Including me.
Only then do I drive away.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
DINARA
I wakewith my mother’s terrified face burned into my vision and a name I’ve never heard before rattling around my skull.
Marina Voronina.
The dream was the same one I’ve had since the memories started surfacing. Six-year-old me peeking through my bedroom door in our Moscow apartment, watching two men with rough voices corner my mother in our narrow hallway.
But this time, it went further. My memory gave me something new.
One of the men spoke, his voice low and threatening: “Marina Voronina. You can’t run from who you are.”
I push myself upright, sheets tangled around my legs, pulse hammering in my throat.
Marina Voronina was not my mother’s name. Her name was Sonya Potapova, though that was her married name. Antonova was her maiden name.
There hasn’t been a dream or a flashback since I arrived in New York. Not one. It’s like the well dried up, leaving me toquestion whether the memories were ever real or fragments my brain constructed to make sense of my mother’s disappearance.
But this one had the same visceral quality as the others. The same texture of truth beneath the fear. One more layer of the onion peeled away by my subconscious, offering another clue I can’t ignore.
I throw off the covers, my skin clammy with sweat, and grab my phone. 6:13 a.m. I’ve only been asleep for a few hours.
After Kirill drove me home, I checked in with Oksana and made sure everyone was okay, which they were. Apparently, the story she heard was that a fight broke out in the bathroom. Sort of true.
After that, I got into bed, only to stare at the ceiling for what felt like hours.
I kept replaying the disastrous night. Marco’s hands on me, fighting him off myself. It was terrifying and I’m still sick about the whole thing.
But my brain keeps conjuring the image of Kirill with Rada on the dance floor, her body pressed against his, her palms on his chest. The jealousy that twisted through me was made worse by the fact that I had no right to feel it.
The night ended with him driving me home in icy silence, like touching me had been a mistake he regretted the second it was over.
