Page 78 of The Lies Between Lovers

Petty, sure.

It was still true, and she didn’t regret saying it.

Feliks only laughed again.

Someday, she hoped he choked to death on that laugh.

Wouldn’t that be fair?

*

Vera should have listened to her mother and headed for the closest clinic that could get her pumped full of antibiotics. Instead, when she blinked awake to quiet beeps she didn’t recognize and stiff sheets that weren’t her own, the sterile smell of the hospital was the first thing to assault her senses.

She dragged in one breath, and then another. Letting her vision settle on the IV pole next to her bed and where the tube had been connected to her hand, Vera struggled to remember how she even got there in the first place.

The room, dimly lit and private as there was no other patient or bed except for hers, was quiet but for the soft murmurings she could hear from somewhere out in the hallway. The door had been left cracked just a little, letting a slice of light fall across the floor where it stopped at a sink connected to the wall. The room didn’t offer much more—there wasn’t even an attached bathroom, and she couldn’t be bothered to turn to her other side and see what waited for her over there.

She was still trying to figure out how she got there.

Her hands were slow.

Or maybe that was her mind.

It took Vera entirely too long—like her movements were done in slow motion—to get her one arm untucked from the blanket. The one that didn’t have an IV stuck in it. She tried to pull the messy bun out of her hair, but gave up when it seemed to take more energy than she had to expend. Even rubbing her palm over her cheeks and eyes did little to help the exhaustion weighing her down and pulling her back to sleep.

At least, she didn’t feel wracked with chills or barely able to keep water down from the rising fever she hadn’t been able to break with ibuprofen. She considered settling back into the stiff blankets and double stacked pillows behind her head for another sleep—at least until a nurse or doctor came to her room—but something caught her eye, and she couldn’t look away.

The newspaper sat folded neatly on her lap. Like someone had purposely sat it there because they wanted her to find it as soon as she woke up. Reaching for the paper, she only needed to pull it a little closer to be able to see why.

The headline read: Another Body Pulled from Canal

Vera blinked before her gaze narrowed in on the smaller writing beneath the headline to distinguish the written details of the crime.

It wasn’t actually a full body—more like pieces of one tossed like trash inside black garbage bags into the canal. According to investigators, there was a suggestion made to the reporter covering the incident for the newspaper that the newest murder victim might be connected to the last one found in the canal only months ago.

Vera let out a slow breath, wishing it would help to sooth her frayed nerves as she read through those first few paragraphs again. She shouldn’t have bothered, really, because it wasn’t even the most important part.

Or interesting, for that matter.

The remains have been positively identified based on a missing person’s report and jewelry found on some of the remains, the writer informed in a succinct tone that offered no emotion about the killing or body. A wedding ring obtained from the hand of the remains was confirmed to belong to Oligarch Viktor Antonovich. Divorced from his first wife, he had recently remarried. Officials hope that by releasing the name of the deceased as soon as possible that there will be more witnesses willing to come forward with any details they might know about the crime. Contact—

Vera stopped reading, then, and tossed the paper away. It landed on the same spot where she’d first picked it up from, but the force at which she threw it sent it sliding to the floor. Flapping open on the way down, the picture of a man fishing a garbage bag from the canal with a pole stared up at her.

Vomit threatened to spill from her throat if she didn’t look away, so Vera did. Not that she could really forget the image just because she wasn’t staring at the paper anymore.

Jesus.

Her heart raced while her mind went straight to Hannah. Her friend had been extra quiet since Vera left Italy, but she expected that after the message Viktor left on Hannah’s voicemail.

It was in that moment when her companion sitting at her left finally decided to make himself known. The squeak of leather soles against the tiled floor had her whipping to the side. Next to the window, in a wooden rocking chair where he sat like a silent predator waiting on his prey, a solemn Vaslav stared back at her.

She didn’t know what to say.

So, she said nothing.

Quiet and rough, Vaslav asked, “Well, does that solve one of your problems?”

She didn’t need to ask what he meant.