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9
Kira closed her eyes as she let her fingers flow over the keys, losing herself in the music that poured like mercury from the piano in the music room of her childhood home. The piece — Moonlight Sonata — was one of her favorites. Somber and heavy, it was a good match for the feeling in her heart, her bones.
Something crashed from the other room and her hands paused over the keys. She sighed and got to her feet, then left the music room and headed toward the ruckus coming from the suite of rooms that had been hers for most of her life.
She found two of the movers lifting the elaborate birdcage cabinet that was Odette and Dimitri’s permanent home.
“Everything alright?” she asked.
One of them, a middle-aged man with coarse features and friendly eyes, smiled. “Sorry about that. Almost had a mishap with the cage, but all’s well that ends well.”
She smiled. “Good.”
“You want the smaller cage too right?” the other man asked. He was younger than the first man who’d spoken, with an attentive expression that made Kira feel exposed.
“Yes, please.” The second cage was used when the large one was being cleaned and when Odette and Dimitri’s bickering required them to be separated.
She waited as the men maneuvered the cage out of the room, then looked around. It shouldn’t feel different. Most of the furniture would remain so she could use it if she ever wanted to stay with her father, something that seemed more likely than ever after the tense five days she’d spent in the sterile penthouse since the moment in the kitchen with Lyonya.
She’d rarely seen him, and when she did, he was quiet and distant, in a hurry to leave.
It was fine with her. He was obviously as much of a bully as he’d ever been, and he thought nothing of bullying her too.
You liked it…
She ignored the voice in her mind, the quickening of her blood at the memory of his body pressed against hers. It didn’t mean anything except that it had been too long since she’d had sex with something other than her vibrator.
She forced herself to focus on the suite of rooms, wanting to make sure the movers didn’t leave anything important behind. Her room at Lyonya’s apartment was beautiful and luxurious, but it was also cold. Her things — her books, the cage that was home to Odette and Dimitri, the sheer curtains that allowed gauzy light to filter into the room in the morning, the duvet cover she’d had custom made the last time she’d redecorated— would all serve to warm her new bedroom.
She sighed and left the room, walking down the upstairs hall and hesitating in the doorway of the music room on the second floor. The piano gleamed an invitation near the window, and her fingers moved of their own volition, the urge to play rising inside her like the tide.
She bit her lip, second-guessing her decision to leave it. The piano belonged to her, a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday, and he’d made it clear she was welcome to take it to Lyonya’s.
But it didn’t belong there. It didn’t feel right taking it out of her childhood home — a home filled with antiques and art and books and fresh flowers — and planting it in the cold apartment high above Lake Michigan. She couldn’t play with the windows open, a breeze drifting over her fingers as they moved over the keys.
Besides, moving the piano felt final, as if she would really be gone from her father’s house forever, and part of her wasn’t ready to accept her new reality. It was lonelier than she’d expected, even with Zoya and the birds. She missed her father’s companionship, their discussions about business over breakfast and dinner.
She was lonely, though she would never admit it. It would make her father sad, and the devil who was her husband would probably enjoy knowing it.
She turned away from the music room and started for the stairs. Leaving the piano at her father’s house would give her an excuse to come back and play, not that she needed an excuse.
She’d agreed to be Lyonya Antonov’s wife in name only. He didn’t own her.
Would never own her.
“Is this it?”
The voice stopped her in her tracks as she passed the library on the first floor. It was Zoya, pointing to a small stack of books on an end table at one end of the leather sofa.
“That's it,” Kira said. She’d pulled only a handful of books to be moved from her father’s collection, her very favorites.
“But there are so few,” Zoya said, her forehead creased.
Zoya smiled. “It’s alright. I have my own books from upstairs, and I can borrow from Papa’s library anytime.”
Like the piano, the books from the library belonged here, in the house she’d shared with her father. She wasn’t going to deprive him of them just to assuage her own loneliness. She already hated leaving him alone.
“If you’re sure,” Zoya said. “I’ll box them and have the movers take them to the truck.”
