Page 27 of Assassin's Heart


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The clothes I put on are things Grisha gave me too—a lingerie set he bought for me after we first started sleeping together, black satin panties with a lace edge and a tiny velvet bow at the top, and a matching black lace bra with the same tiny velvet bow between the cups. It looks gorgeous against my pale skin, pushing my breasts up to their best effect, and it’s only magnified by the dress I slip into—also a gift from Grisha. It’s a tight black dress that goes down to my knees with a slit on one side up to mid-thigh, a bustier neckline and spaghetti straps. I have a black herringbone coat he gave me as part of the complete outfit, along with black pumps and a pair of sapphire earrings that he said matched my eyes.

I’d been surprised by all the gifts—they came nearly every time we met up, and sometimes in between. At first I’d thought about selling some of them for more money to send to mybabushka, but Grisha made it clear that he liked seeing me in the things he bought for me, and I couldn’t admit to him that I needed money or tell him about my grandmother. It made me too uncomfortable—he would have just tried to give me money outright, and that would have made me feel too much like an escort instead of a girlfriend. The gifts were bad enough, but I could at least chalk that up to him wanting to spoil me, which felt strange but not awful. I could appreciate that, at least, even if it made me feel sometimes like he wanted someone other than the real me.

TherealLidiya is someone who wears sweaters and jeans and boots, comfy practical clothes meant for hours of research and sitting in grad school libraries, not what I see in the mirror right now. With the tight black dress on and my blonde hair carefully curled and swept to one side, the sapphire teardrop earrings dangling from my lobes and my makeup impeccably done with a smoky eye and nude lip, the heels adding five inches to my height, I look like some other person, someone I don’t even recognize.

Maybe that will make it easier.I can just pretend I’m someone else, some alter ego who is brave, who can go out to dinner with a man she hates, who hurt her terribly, and seduce him back into a relationship. Someone who can spy on him and relay that information back without fucking it all up, someone who won’t be terrified the entire time.

Grisha had offered to have his driver come pick me up, but I told him I’d make it there on my own. It worked this time since I’m supposed to be angry with him, but I’ll have to figure out some other way to make excuses in the future, since I can’t exactly come up with an explanation for why he’d be picking me up from the hotel.

Instead, I’m taking a cab to a block away and then walking, which isn’t ideal but is the best I can come up with. A few minutes before I’m supposed to leave, right on time, Levin comes back up to the room, probably to make sure he’s pleased with my appearance for the night.

When he steps inside, I move to the center of the bedroom, doing a spin in the black dress and high heels. “What do you think?” I ask sarcastically, but when I stop and face Levin again, the look on his face makes me go very still.

“You look stunning,” he says, his eyes trailing over me from my carefully done hair and makeup all the way down to my black pumps and back up again, and I feel myself flush under the weight of his gaze. There’s something odd in his tone, something I can’t quite pinpoint. It sounds almost regretful, jealous even, but that makes as little sense as his irritable behavior the last twenty-four hours or so.

Still, the way he says it makes my heart flutter in my chest a little, and it’s an effort to quell it.

“I should get going.” I look at the time on my phone, that flutter in my chest replaced with a tightening anxiety. “Wouldn’t want to be late for mydate.”

Levin frowns. “I’ll call you a cab.”

“Thanks.” I pick up my purse off the bed, the only part of the outfit that’s actually mine. It’s a little shabby compared to the rest of the outfit, a black faux-leather bag that’s seen better days, but it feels oddly good to hold onto, as if it reminds me of who I really am deep down—a normal graduate student, with an archeology degree and a sick grandmother, a person who reads books and goes to bed somewhat early and likes romantic comedies, not this person who’s been sucked into an affair and some kind of convoluted espionage situation on top of that.

It’s a lot of weight to place onto one cheap handbag, but I cling to it anyway, as if it can get me through this.

“I’ll walk you down,” Levin says, checking his phone. “The car should be here any minute.”

“I’ll be fine—” I start to say, but he pins me with a stern look.

“I’ll walk you down,” he repeats, and I let out a sigh. I don’t want him to follow me down to the lobby, but I suppose he has his reasons—probably that he doesn’t want me to make a break for it, now that the ten thousand is in my account. As if I would—I’m smart enough to know if he has the ability to freeze my accounts, he has the ability to take that money back, and worse probably.

“I’m not going to run,” I say tightly as we stand in the elevator. Whatever tension there was between us before has dissipated—we’re on opposite sides of it, both of us staring straight ahead. When I dare a sideways glance at him, I can see that his jaw and shoulders are tense, as if he’s upset about something, but I don’t have it in me to try to figure out why. The truth is that Iwantto run. The closer I get to seeing Grisha again, the more I want to throw in the towel altogether, but I can’t. If it was just me, I might. But it’s not.

“I have to be sure,” is all Levin says, still staring at the elevator doors.

“If you’re that worried, why don’t you ride with me all the way to the drop off point?” I glare at him. “I keep my word and you keep yours, remember? At some point you’re going to have to trust me.”

“It’s my ass on the line too, Lidiya.” Levin still won’t look at me. “And don’t think I haven’t considered going with you there,” he adds. “But the risk of him seeing is too great. So yes, I am trusting you. Once you walk out of those doors.”

I let out a breath as the elevator doors open. Levin stays by my side all the way to the rotating front doors at the front of the hotel, where I can see a car idling at the curb. I pause, glancing back at him as I pull on my gloves, the only other element of my outfit that I bought myself. Like the purse, they’re well worn—real leather this time, but hand-me-downs from my mother, with a fur lining that once was thick and plush and is now worn thin. I feel slightly comforted when I put them on, and I look at Levin, tilting my chin up with a resolve I don’t quite feel.

“I’ll see you later tonight,” I say simply, and turn towards the revolving door.

“Good luck,” Levin says, and it’s the last thing I hear before I step out into the bitter Moscow cold.

Lidiya

The entire way to the restaurant, I feel sick.

Once I’m in the car, it feels less like there’s a way out—as if there ever was—and more like this is real. The events of just a couple days ago come rushing back—waking up in Grisha’s bed like a normal morning, his hands on my body, both of us naked and languid and not wanting to get up. His attempts to get me to skip class and stay in bed with him all day, my refusal, getting dressed while he made us a quick breakfast—and then opening the door only to find his wife outside, her hand poised to knock, and the realization, after a few minutes of heated conversation, of who she really was.

After that—well, I don’t want to think about that again. The puking, the crying, the shouted curses. I hadn’t handled it all that maturely, but then again, Grisha was the first man I’d ever really seen a future with. I’d been slowly coming around to it, allowing myself to believe that his romantic gestures and gifts and sweet words weren’t just a way of getting me into his bed but rather something real that could be a foundation for us, and then it had all come crashing down.

I don’t even understand why he cheats on her. His wife is beautiful, elegant and lovely and curvaceous, with thick blonde hair that she’d had in an elegant twist. She’d been well-dressed in expensive-looking cigarette trousers, a silk blouse in pale pink and a heavy wool coat in a darker purple, and those expensive pumps that I’d ruined. She’d looked rich without being tacky, elegant instead of gauche, poised even as she found out that her husband was cheating on her. She’d been rude to me, of course—but I couldn’t exactly blame her.

All men get tired of what they’ve had plenty of.The thought worms its way into my head, even though I don’t want to believe it. My father didn’t, as far as I know—he loved my mother, right up until they died. They gave me high expectations of love and marriage, which is part of why I’d never found anyone who could even come close to living up to them—until Grisha started to make me think otherwise. I don’t have any reason to think of all men as cheating assholes, really, outside of the experience of other girls I know, but now Grisha has made me wonder. Do all men just get bored over time, even if they have a wife who is beautiful and elegant and intelligent?

Would a man like Levin?

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