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“Anya,” says Sasha, a blistering chill in his tone. “Are you harmed?”
“No,” I breathe.
“Did anyone beside these two children lay a fucking finger on you?” he rasps. “A prompt answer, wife.”
“No. No. Let’s go home.”
“Not quite yet.” He wraps a hand around each brother’s neck, lifting them off the ground. Holding them suspended in the air as the roomful of people gasp and back away. “There won’t always be witnesses.”
With those five lethal words, Sasha slams their heads together and leaves them in an unconscious heap on the ground, blood streaming from ears, noses, mouths. Then he calmly stoops down and collects my packets.
“I love you,” I whisper, needing to be held. “I’m sorry.”
When Sasha straightens and looks at me, I realize he’s the furthest thing from calm.
He’s murderous. And I’ll never get to go to college now.
Chapter Eleven
Sasha
My thirst for blood has not been remotely satisfied.
Hunger for violence pumps in my veins, rage chokes me and turns my knuckles white on the steering wheel. They touched my angel. They grabbed her. Every time I remember what I witnessed, wrath screams inside my skull again and the cycle starts anew.
When I walked into the party, I could not find Anya. Already I’d hit a dead end at the orientation hall and was about to return home in my borrowed car, thinking Anya must be headed back, until I overhead some young men discussing the party. My skin prickled, and I never deny an instinct. Anya is curious. If given the chance, she would appease that nature.
I saw those boys putting chemicals in a drink and was resolving to teach them a lesson, when I found out the drink was for my wife.
My teeth bare themselves at the road and I can’t keep my ear – piercing bellow inside. Anya flinches in the passenger seat and curls in on herself, whimpering softly, tears wetting her cheeks. There’s nothing I can do about seeing to her comfort yet. She will never know the panic and rage that burned me alive when hands — hands that weren’t mine — touched her skin. In a way that was meant to be harmful. My worst fucking nightmare come to life.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Anya swipe at her tears, and my chest seizes. “How did you drive without your car?”
“You say that with irritation. As if you’re not glad I came.”
“No. I just needed to ask you something to test if you’re speaking to me.” My righteous anger weakens somewhat in the face of such sweetness. “Of course I’m glad you came, Sasha. You rescued me.” She blows out a breath. “You were right all along to keep me inside where it’s safe. So was my father. I don’t know anything about the world. I was…I was stupid to think it would be easy. Or that I could do it alone.”
At this point, she’s making it very difficult to be mad. I still plan to murder the boys who laid hands on my wife — no one will miss them — but that is now a separate concern. Anya is my main one. And I’ve never heard her sound defeated in the entire time I’ve known her.
“Oh, I don’t know…” I cut her a glance and try to sound casual. “You got the drop on Sasha, no? You stole my car and drove two hours before I ever knew you were gone. That should not be disregarded so easily.”
“So what? None of it matters now.”
I watch in growing dismay as she rolls down the passenger side window and throws the stack of white envelopes out onto the road. “What are you doing?” I’m already pulling over the car onto the shoulder, watching in the rearview as the papers dance on the road. “For the last fifty miles, you have been so enamored with those envelopes, I was beginning to get jealous, Anya. Now you throw them away?”
“I thought if I could show you how responsible I can be…and how much I want to go to school, you would reconsider. But you’re not going to let me go back.” She turns away, as if I can’t see her face in the passenger window she just rolled up. More tears. They eat at me, every single one. “They don’t mean anything now.”
I could lose her — right here and now, I realize. Oh, she’ll come home and be my wife. She’ll eat meals with me, sleep by my side, moan while I fuck her, resume her daily swims in a new pool. After the fight, my decision to compromise on college seemed like a thing of the past. But she just threw a piece of herself out the window. And I can’t let her do that, no matter how difficult it is for me. I love her far too much. She has accepted my demanding nature, and it is only fair that I attempt to accept she needs to spread her wings.
