I hate that it slows my pulse.
"Hey." Elle's voice is soft. Careful. Like she's approaching a bear with a thorn in its paw and a grudge against the world.
I grunt. I'm not choosing mature today.
The mattress dips as she sits beside me. Her scent gets stronger.
I'm trying to stay angry here, and her scent isn't helping.
"Are you planning to give me the silent treatment forever?" she asks.
"Hadn't decided yet."
She sighs. Reaches for my phone. I pull it away.
"I'm reading."
"Nikolai. Look at me."
I don't. I keep scrolling, because if I look at her in that silk robe with that expression, I'll either fold or say something I can't take back, and right now I'm not sure which is worse.
"Please," she says. Quieter now.
I set the phone down. Look at her.
Bare feet. Silk robe. Hair loose over her shoulders. Expression that's half apology, half determination. She looks like a woman who's come to negotiate a ceasefire.
Too bad I'm not done with the war.
"I need to ask you something," I say, "and I need you to answer honestly."
She blinks. "Okay."
"Were you sent by your mother?"
The silence that follows is thick enough to cut.
"What?" she whispers.
"Gayle set up a deal. A deal that fucked us, by the way, but that's a separate conversation. She engineered the whole thing: the marriage, the assets, the terms. Every piece of it was a play." I sit up straighter, watching her face the way I'd watch an asset during interrogation. "So I need to know. Were you part of it?"
"Are you serious right now?"
"You said yes before I could even think of an alternative." My voice is flat. Clinical. The voice I use when I need the truth and don't care how it feels coming out. "Nobody does that, Elle. Nobody agrees to marry a stranger that fast unless they're running toward something or running a play."
Her face goes white. Not offended white. Hurt white.
"I was running toward something," she says, voice tight. "A door. A way out. That's all you were to me, Nikolai. A door. I'm sorry if that doesn't sound romantic, but it's the truth."
"And Natalia? You let her onto my property. My property, Elle. Where my son sleeps. Twenty-four hours after I confronted your mother, I'm supposed to believe that's coincidence? That your mother didn't send her?"
"You think I orchestrated that?" She stands, and now she's the one who's furious. "You think I called up some woman I've never met and told her to show up screaming at our gate? With what phone? Using what contacts? I didn't have a single friend until three weeks ago, Nikolai. I didn't even know how to flag a cab."
I watch her. Cataloging. Looking for the tell, the twitch, the rehearsed pause.
I don't find one.
"I grew up in a cage," she says, and her voice drops to something raw and scraped. "The only plan I ever had was to get out. That's it. That's the whole conspiracy. A girl who wanted to breathe." She swallows hard. "If you don't believe me by now, after everything, then I don't know what I'm doing here."
