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Maybe I am too.
“Viktor is here?” I ask in a small and creaky voice, feeling my throat tighten and hurt with every word.
Max nods. “I’ll send him in. But please don’t speak much, Caterina. The doctor will know more, but you were strangled at some point. Your throat is damaged.”
Damaged.The word rings through my head.Damaged, damaged, damaged.How damaged am I, body and soul? A vision of Ana on the sofa in Sofia and Luca’s apartment springs into my head, her feet bandaged, destroyed because of my first husband’s treachery. Ana is damaged now, inside and out, her career gone and her spirit broken. Sofia has been trying to heal her ever since, but I don’t know if she’ll ever be the same.
Is that going to be me now? Irreparably broken because of the treachery of men?
I turn my head to the side, closing my eyes against the sudden sting of tears. My whole life has been a series of events controlled by the men in my life. It’s come to this—me lying in a strange bed, my body nothing but pain, hurt beyond anything I’d allowed myself to imagine could ever happen to me.
And I’m still not sure if I think my husband could be responsible for it or not.
Clearly, he came for me, but a small, insidious voice in my head whispers that this could have been to teach me a lesson. Maybe he wanted me broken and didn’t want to have to do it himself.
Maybe his first wife died because it went too far. Or perhaps he tried this first with her, and she didn’t break.
I’m not sure if I have it in me to hold it together much longer.
The door opens slowly, and I steel myself for who will be on the other side of it. It’s Viktor, as I’d expected it probably would be, but everything about him seems strange to me.
I’ve never seen him wearing anything other than a suit or what he wears to bed. Now he’s wearing what appear to be hiking clothes in muted colors and boots, his usually carefully styled dark hair loose and messy. His handsome face is a mixture of relief and worry, and that throws me off most of all because I’ve never seen my husband look at me like that before.
I also don’t want to trust it. I can’t.
It’ll hurt too much if I’m wrong.
I don’t let myself think about the last night we spent together as I look at my husband’s face. I don’t think about how I let myself enjoy him,feelsomething for him, just for a little while. Whether he had a hand in this or not, he’s still a man who buys and sells others. Who traffics women, whose family has always done it, and who thinks he’s justified.
I can’t love a man like that.
Not ever.
“A doctor is coming,” Viktor says quietly, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. “You’re very badly hurt, but the fact that you’re awake is good, I think. Max was as worried that it was the end as I was.”
Worried? Are you sure that’s what it was?I don’t say it aloud, though. The state of my throat gives me a good excuse not to have to speak, and I plan to use it as long as possible. It will let me get my thoughts in order before I have to actually talk to my husband again.
He slowly walks towards the foot of the bed, and I watch him warily, trying to gather my thoughts. Is he capable of what I suspect him of? Would he do that, or has the life I’ve lived made me paranoid?
Am I even happy that I’m still alive?
“I thought you were gone,” Viktor says quietly. “It’s going to take…time for you to heal.”
Inside or out?Another question that I bite back, tearing my gaze away from my husband’s and looking towards the wall. The room I’m in is very different from the one I was held in before; I can see that now. Besides the bed being more comfortable, the room is clean, with a rough hardwood floor covered in a thick sheepskin rug, a dresser on one wall, and a soft-looking armchair by the other wall. There’s a nightstand and lamp next to my bed, and it all makes a perfect, cozy picture of a cabin to hide away in. It could even be romantic, under different circumstances.
Right now, nothing could be further from those circumstances.
Viktor hesitates, clearing his throat. “You should rest,” he says finally, and I canfeelthe awkwardness as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, unable to quite meet my eyes. “The doctor will be here soon.”
I study his face for a long moment, trying to decide if I want to try to vocalize any of the thoughts tumbling around my head, if I even would know how to begin. But in the end, I just nod, my fingers curling under the blanket as my heart pounds in my chest.
I don’t have the energy to ask any of those questions, and I don’t know if it would matter even if I did. I don’t know if I’m safe now or simply in a different kind of danger.
I don’t even know if I’m going to survive this anyway.
The thought doesn’t inspire as much fear as I would have thought. I feel cold despite the blanket, every inch of my body hurting, and all I want is for it to stop.
All I want is to sleep.
