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Saoirse lets out a long, slow breath through her pursed lips as if it’s taking every bit of patience she has to keep talking to me. “We were in Manhattan when it was performed,” she says, speaking slowly as if to an idiot or a child. “At Viktor Andreyev and Caterina’s second wedding. My father wanted it confirmed before Liam left on some business trip—” Her eyes narrow again, and I see her putting the pieces together.
“I’ll ask you again,” she says finally. “What the fuck are you doing in my fiancé’s apartment? And who are you to him?”
Much to Saoirse’s plain disgust—and mine with myself, if I’m being honest—I burst into tears. Because I can’t deny it any longer.
If she were lying, she wouldn’t know Father Donahue. She definitely wouldn’t have been to Viktor and Caterina’s wedding—which she probably attended with Liam. The thought of them at a wedding together, holding hands, dancing, laughing, makes me feel sick.
I look at the ring on her finger, and I know she’s telling the truth. It’s in her bearing, how confidently she speaks, how all the pieces fit together. He’s kept this secret from me, and this is how I’m finding out.
My knees feel weak. Tears are streaming down my face as I clap my other hand over my mouth, stifling the deep, shuddering sobs that are threatening to break loose. Saoirse shakes her head in frustrated disgust, turning away from me.
It takes me a second to realize where she’s going—towards Liam’s bedroom.
I follow her long enough for her to stalk inside, looking around as if she’s searching for something specific. The bed is made up, and she turns away from it to yank open dresser drawers, his closet, stalking into the attached bathroom and then back out again.
“There’s nothing of yours in here.” Saoirse glares at me as if it’s somehow my fault that she hasn’t found the evidence she was looking for.
“I—I don’t sleep in here,” I manage through my tears, my throat choked. “I—”
“You don’t sleep with him?”
I shake my head, and that much, at least, is true. She narrows her eyes as if sizing me up, and then pushes past me to stride through the living room again, towards the opposite side of the house.
Towards my room.
I try to catch up with her, but the guest room I occupy is the first one she enters. She looks around, standing in the middle of the room as she takes in the pink and white color scheme, the unmade bed, and the bathroom door open to show where some of my things are strewn across the counter.
“So this is where you sleep.” Saoirse presses her lips together. “Did he have this room made up especially for you? I can’t imagine him telling a designer to do—this—for any other reason.” She waves her hand around at the admittedly overly-feminine décor, and I feel the air go out of me as she turns back to me.
“Yes,” I admit quietly. “He had the room redecorated so I’d be more—comfortable.”
Saoirse raises an eyebrow. “This is your idea of a well-decorated room?”
“Well—no, not exactly.” I bite my lower lip. The conversation is ridiculous, but the longer we can keep from getting around to what Liam and I are to each other, the better. I’m still not sure how much of it I want to admit to her, how much Ishouldsay—not even for Liam’s protection, but for my own.
“I used to be a ballerina,” I finish lamely. “He just told the decorator that, and she—well, he said she kind of went off on her own, and this was the result. I was just happy to have somewhere to sleep.”
Even I'd admit the last comes out a bit melodramatic, but it stops Saoirse in her tracks. She pauses, considering me again for a moment.
“What do you mean?” she asks finally. “That you were glad to have somewhere to sleep? What are you, some kind of charity case? A family member I don’t know about?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that, yes, I’m some long-lost family member. But I’m not sure she’d believe it in the first place, and at any rate, it would come out eventually that I’d lied. I don’t necessarily want to tell her the whole truth if I can avoid it, but something tells me that the fewer lies I weave around Liam and me to this woman, the better.
“Liam rescued me,” I say truthfully, wrapping my arms around my waist.
“Rescued you?” Saoirse looks doubtful. “From what? Who?”
How the fuck do I condense this into a short enough story that she’ll listen to—and even believe—me?
“I got mixed up in some dealings with the Bratva in Manhattan a while back. Trying to help a friend,” I explain. “One of his brigadiers turned traitor. He kidnapped the Bratva leader’s wife—”
“Yes, Viktor and Caterina. I heard the whole story, or some of it, anyway, from Liam.” Saoirse purses her lips. “So you got caught up in that? That man that kidnapped Caterina and her friend and some other girl?”
Clearly, Liam left me out when telling Saoirse the story. I can understand it, I suppose—he probably wouldn’t have been able to get away to come and find me so easily if he’d said plainly he was going after a girl he’d left behind. But at the same time, it hurts to think that he didn’t tell her about me. I wonder what else he told her, if he told her that he’d participated in torturing Alexei to death, how clean she thinks the hands of the man that she’s meant to marry are.
I wonder what she would think if she knew what kind of womansheis. A daughter of someone high up in the Kings, clearly. But is she like Sofia, who never wanted to know any of it until she was forced to, or more like Caterina, who was raised in that world and never flinched at the things that had to be done?
I think, deep down, that the woman standing in front of me has a strong spine. She hasn’t cried or shouted, hasn’t flown into a rage. She’s angry, but she’s talking calmly to me, though I can hear the thread of fury through every single one of her words. She’s stayed composed, something that makes me think of Caterina, and it’s that, too, that makes me believe she’s telling the truth.
