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“What about lunch?” Yelena is pouting, clearly on the verge of tears. “I’m hungry.”
“We’ll get lunch. Anything you want,” I promise.
“Even hot dogs?” Yelena is perking up at the sound of that, although Anika’s spine is ramrod straight, her small nails digging into my hand in an effort to pry herself away still. “Papa never lets us have hot dogs.”
“Hot dogs it is,” I promise. “But come on, now. We need to go.”
Anika is still having none of it, but she’s a child, so it’s not that difficult to hurry her along. My heart is in my throat as I take both girls towards the elevator, waiting for Viktor to step out and shout after me, asking me where I think I’m going. I know he’s going to be angry with me later, but I can’t bring myself to care. All I know is that I have to get out of here. I can’t stay in this building another second, or I feel like I’ll go insane.
I don’t want to use Viktor’s driver, either. He’ll either tell me I can’t leave or refuse to take me anywhere other than back to the house, citing Viktor’s instructions. So instead, I pull out my phone, calling an Uber.
“What are you doing?” Anika asks suspiciously. “The driver is right downstairs.”
“We’re going to have an adventure,” I tell her cheerfully. “You like adventures, I know that. Just like that girl who explored the garden. We’re going to have a fun afternoon, take a drive through the city, eat hot dogs, and you’ll get to see a very old house.” I’m sure Yelena, at the very least, will be fascinated with my parents’—and now my—mansion just outside of the city. Anika is a tougher nut to crack, but she might like it too. My parents had a much more old-fashioned style of decorating, and I hadn’t had a chance to update the house since they passed.
“As long as we get hot dogs,” Yelena insists, now fixated on that for lunch.
I manage to get the girls out of the building and away from where the driver is waiting, slipping into the Uber without being seen. Viktor must still be upstairs because my phone hasn’t started ringing, nor has anyone come after us. But I turn my phone off, just in case. I need time to think, and I can’t do that with him trying to get in touch with me.
He wants me to take care of the girls, so he’s going to have to trust me to do that, just for one afternoon.
I try to keep the girls from seeing how distraught I am, and lunch proves to be a decent distraction. Yelena is in her own happy little world with the junk food, and even Anika seems somewhat mollified by it, all the way until the Uber drops me off at my old house.
“We should go home,” Anika says firmly. “This isn’t home.”
“This ismyold home,” I tell her, squatting down so that I’m at her eye level. “I just need to get some things from here, that’s all, and then we’ll head back. Would you like to see the garden? There’s a beautiful one out back.”
Anika narrows her eyes, but I can tell that she’s tempted. “Okay,” she finally relents. “Show me the garden.”
Her tone is a little demanding for a ten-year-old, but I don’t fight it. The last thing that I need is her angry with me, which will just make all of this so much harder. I know Viktor will be furious, and a knot of dread is steadily settling in my stomach, reminding me that this was probably a bad choice.
But it’s too late now. And I just couldn’t face going back to him, or back to the house that doesn’t, and will probably never feel like mine.
Anika is temporarily placated by the garden, which is as beautiful as ever despite the fact that I don’t live here any longer. The trust my parents left me, which I hardly need after my new marriage, has been going towards the upkeep of the house until I can decide what to do with it. My mother loved roses, and there are still sprays of them everywhere, climbing lattices and blooming on bushes. The garden is immaculately manicured, and Anika runs up and down the cobblestone paths, pointing out the names of flowers she knows and asking me to identify ones that she doesn’t. It’s the most she’s ever opened up to me, and I feel a warm flush of happiness that it’s here, in my mother’s garden, a place that always used to bring me so much happiness too.
“I have something fun for you girls upstairs,” I tell them, when Anika is finally starting to tire of the flowers. Yelena is clearly tired, and I need a moment to myself. I have the idea that I can put Yelena down for a nap and ask Anika to keep an eye on her while I make some excuse to slip away, and there’s a room already perfect for that. I’d started working on a nursery from the moment Franco and I had begun trying for a baby. There’s already a room with a daybed and toys that I’m sure either of them will be happy to play with.
I just need a minute to think, alone. To decide what to do next.
Anika is less than pleased, as I’d imagined she would be, but I manage to convince her to settle in with some of the dolls and keep an eye on her sister, who is already yawning and curled around a stuffed bear on the daybed. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I promise her. “I just need to look for some things in my old room.”
The moment the door shuts behind me, I let out a sigh of relief. The room—myroom—feels like home, more so than it ever did before I’d left for my marriage to Viktor. It smells like my perfume and the familiar scents of the lavender drawer sachets I always used, like the detergent used on my sheets, like the candles I picked out, rose and honey-scented and still sitting on my bedside table.
The sudden feeling of home, of safety, overwhelms me along with all of the feelings I’ve been shoving down since I walked out of the building, feelings about what I saw in Viktor’s office, grief and guilt, and fear and disgust. I sink onto the edge of my bed, pressing my face in my hands.
For the first time since that first afternoon in Viktor’s house, I start to cry.
Here, with no staff to eavesdrop, I let myself go, crying in great, huge gulping sobs, gasping for breath between each one. I’d married one violent man only to have him die and go straight into the arms of another, and now all my fears about what he might have done to his first wife come rushing back, overwhelming me with the force of them.
Can I be married to someone like this?I don’t know what choice I have, really—Alexei was telling the truth, I’m sure, when he’d said that Luca would know about this. That, in and of itself, feels awful. But what hits me hardest, right at this moment, is the question of how I can bring a child into this world, asonespecially, who will inherit that terrible business from his father.
I can’t understand how a man who loves his daughters as much as Viktor does can sell the daughters of other men, traffic in human flesh, and then come home and look his children in the eye. But even more awful than that is the thought of raising a son who will believe that it’s okay, that it’s his birthright, a son who will carry on that horrific trade.
The betrayal feels fierce and painful, like Franco all over again, only somehow worse because it’s not just me that will be affected by this. It’s the child Viktor has demanded, too. And I don’t see any way out of this, not without causing bloodshed that will affect other children, other families, cause more death, and more grief.
There’s no good solution, and suddenly this new world that I’ve married into feels even more terrible than the one I inhabited before.
I curl into a ball on my bed, pushing my face into my pillow and breathing in the familiar scent of my own bed as I cry and cry, wishing I could disappear, stay in this room forever, never go back.
I don’t mean to fall asleep. I don’t even realize that I have until the pounding on my bedroom door jolts me awake, sending a bolt of pure fear through me as I hear Viktor shouting my name on the other side, his voice so full of vicious fury that I feel like I might throw up.
That’s the moment when I know I’ve fucked up.
And I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
