“Yes.” Anna looks at me now. “I was only a few rows ahead of you. You didn’t even see me,” she says. “You were so caught up in her.”
The words sit between us.
I remember the flight in pieces. Sienna’s nervous laugh. Her mouth. Her body in my hands. The way she disappeared before I could find her again.
Anna was there.
She looks at me, tired now. “I told her you weren’t safe. I told her to stay away.”
“And the champagne?”
She looks down. “I told the caterer to bring it out,” she says. “That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes,” she hisses. “Like I said, was trying to keep Mikhail away from you. I was trying to keep you alive. I was trying to keep my own life from being ripped apart. And this is how you treat me?”
“I don’t trust you,” I say.
The hurt shows clearly on her face.
“Where is he now?” I ask. “Mikhail?”
“Away,” she says.
“Bring him to me,” I say quietly.
“Why?” she says sarcastically. “So you can kill him?”
“You should have come to me.”
“I know.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t. Because if you knew, Sienna would not have been the one warning me about my own sister.”
Anna flinches.
Good. I want it to hurt.
Because it hurt me.
“Find Mikhail,” I tell Yuri.
Anna goes still. “Viktor.”
I don’t look at her. “Before tomorrow, I’m going to kill him.”
Her face drains. “No. You can’t.”
“I can.”
“Please.”
That word makes me look at her.
Anna never begs. Not me. Not anyone.
For half a second, something in me almost softens. Then I remember the footage. Her lies. Voronin on my property. Sienna bleeding in my arms.
