"Mine," Afon replies.
"You still have an apartment in the city? I thought it was wooden shack or bust for you."
"I still have a few things stashed away here and there." He looks out the window. "I told you the Bratva's work was ugly. I didn't tell you it paid."
The building is on Central Park West. Limestone and gargoyles, a green awning, a doorman who straightens up when he sees Afon and says, "Mr. Satyrin. Been a while," like Afon vanished into the mountains last week instead of six months ago.
"Carl," Afon greets. That's it. They must be great friends. Probably send each other Christmas cards.
We go up in an elevator that opens directly into the apartment. Not a hallway—directly into the apartment. As in, the whole floor.
I just stand there and gawk.
The ceilings are easily fourteen feet, maybe higher, with crown molding so intricate it looks like frosting piped by someone who just took alotof Adderall. Unbroken, frameless panes of window glass run the entire western wall, and beyond them, Central Park unspools in a white tangle of snow-laden trees, the reservoir a silver coin in the distance. The floors are some dark herringbone wood that's been polished to a mirror sheen, scattered with handwoven Turkish rugs.
There's a marble fireplace big enough to roast an ox. And above it, no moose head, thank God, just a single oil painting of a stormy sea. The furniture is clean, mid-century modern, gleaming leather and smooth wooden curves. A bar cart glitters in the corner.
What strikes me most, though, is howemptyit feels. No photographs. No clutter. No sign that a single human being has ever actually lived here.
Just like the cabin.
"You…" I turn in a slow, amazed circle. "You havethis?And yet you voluntarily chose to live in an unheated shack?"
"I live where I want to live." He sets his keys on a marble foyer table by the door. "The cabin is who I am now. This is who I was."
I drift to the window because I don't know what else to do with myself. The park spreads out below me, all the way to the towerson the other side. In the near distance down there is my whole tiny ordinary life, which feels like it belongs to a different person now. I've never felt poor—white-shoe law firm partners like my dad aren't exactly "down on their luck"—but there are levels to wealth, I'm learning.
"Feel free to explore," Afon says. "I'm going to take a shower."
He turns and slips down the hall on silent feet. I hear a door close and water begin to run through the pipes.
So I go snooping.
But there isn't much to explore, honestly. The apartment is huge, but it's empty and personality-free, like a hotel suite. The kitchen is stunning, but the appliances look like they've never cooked a single egg. A dining room holds a long table and eight chairs, with no scratches, no water rings, no sign anyone ever sat there and laughed until they cried. In the master bedroom is a bed bigger than the one at Lukas's place, made up with crisp white sheets, military-cornered.
I open a closet and find a row of suits. Black, charcoal, navy. All of them expensive and severe. A row of shoes lined up beneath, polished to a shine.
There's no flannel in sight.
This isn't the closet of the Afon I knew. It's the closet of a man named Mr. Satyrin who walks into dark rooms and does bad things inside of them.
Shuddering, I close the closet door and wander back to the window with the view of the city.
We have to get married.I turn those words over and over, looking for a seam, a way to make them mean something otherthan what they mean. It's not symbolic, Lukas said. Well, notonlysymbolic.
But itissymbolic. That's the whole problem. Two days ago, I would have done it. Back then, if Afon had gotten down on one knee in the snow and asked me to marry him, I'd have said yes before he finished the sentence.
Eyes open. On purpose. I picked him.
Yet now, here I am, being asked to pick him again—-except this time I know exactly what those hands did. My mother screamed in her sleep because of the man in the shower down the hall. My father is in an early grave because of his sins.
I don't know how long I stand there. Long enough that the sun comes up over the clouds clustered on the horizon and begins to melt the snow on the glass, until little rivulets of water trickle down the panes.
Then I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn around.
And I stop.
I genuinely don't know who I'm looking at.
