I couldn’t even name it. That was how terrible it was, how ruinous, how soul-destroying, that even I could not force myself to speak of such crimes.
“You said you didn’t know who she was,” Lexi sighed.
“They said her name and her husband’s earlier in the video. The sound wasn’t up for you. The couple disappeared a few months ago. Her husband was going to expose their depravity.”
“But—so then it wasn’t even her they were after!”
“They made him watch what they did to his wife, and then they did the same to him.”
“You watched the rest of the video, then. Before I woke up.”
I nodded because my throat had closed up again.
With axes. While they’d still lived and screamed.
Looking away had felt like I was abdicating my responsibility to witness.
“I can’t let that happen to you,” I choked out. “Take your things and go.Run,Lexi.”
“But they’ll come after me anyway, won’t they? That’s how these things work. I’ve read books. I’ve watched the movies.”
I couldn’t even think about that. “Not if I tell everyone that marrying you was a drunken whim and nothing else. That you are gone. That you didn’t mean anything to me,” I lied.
“But you told everyone last night that we’ve secretly been dating for years. You convinced them ofthat.”
“The people who sent this are lazy. I have known them my whole life. If they get what they want, which evidently isme,they won’t chase you. I’ve had hours to think it through this morning. It’s the only way.”
“‘Only way,’ my chubby patoot,” Lexi grumbled, her devastation solidifying into something grimmer as she unwound herself and straightened to sitting.
I let my fingers slide down her tee shirt over her ribs, and my hand fell to the bed.
That was probably the last time I would touch her.
“Men think they’ve come up with ‘the only way,’ but it never is,” Lexi grumbled. “It’s just theeasiestway for them, not theonlyway.”
I unclenched my fists, spreading my hands. “I am open to alternatives.”
Even though I was not open to any other options at all. Nothing would be as safe for Lexi as if she ran for the fucking hills, right then.
“Besides,” she said, wiping her wet, reddened cheeks with the tissue. “You would still be here, around people like that. You’d still be . . . threatened.”
“I don’t matter.”
“Yes, you do.”
I didn’t. I was a sacrificial lamb from a long line of hereditary sacrificial lambs. The tsar was always sacrificed when his influence waned—exiled, executed, or assassinated—and I’d never amassed the bitter power to stay alive in the battle royale cage match of international crime that had infiltrated and poisoned global politics.
I would not commit such despicable crimes nor incite others to commit worse upon the most weak and vulnerable people to establish a sick trust based on mutual destruction by blackmail. It was the fucking way of the world, and I hated it with every fiber of my being. I was quite certain my father and uncle had committed unspeakable crimes, and cold sweat broke out on my skin anew.
I hadn’t the constitution for it. Too many civilized Europeans had diluted the ruthless genes of tsars in my DNA. “I need you to leave, my angel. For my soul to be at ease, Ineedyou to be safe.”
She was glaring at her hands, and I could practically smell the burning-electricity ozone of her mental machinery sparking. “I won’t leaveyouhere, vulnerable, where they might hurt you.”
“Yes, you will,” I ordered her. “You’re leavingnow.You’re packing your things and goingnow.I will have Ueli drag you out of here screaming if I have to, and I’ll tell everyone I tired of you. I can make them believe it. I can make them believe I never cared about you, that this day and a half was nothing to me.”
She finally looked up at me, her cheeks and nose flushed from crying, and her eyes red around the rims and in the whites. Strands of her blond hair stuck to her damp cheeks.
I hated that I’d made her cry, but I would do worse if it convinced her togo.
