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“Alright,” I tell him, all the breath rushing out of me at once. “I’ll marry you.”
It’s a marriage of convenience, nothing more. We’ll fix it when we’re back in Moscow. It means nothing.
It doesn’t feel as if it means nothing, though, when I find myself standing in the compound chapel twenty minutes later, Levin and I hand in hand in front of a priest, as Jorge Fernandez and an assortment of guests whose names I don’t even remember look on.
I barely hear the vows. My lips move, repeating what I’ve been told to repeat, and I see from the look on Levin’s face that I must be doing fine, but I feel as if I’m floating above all of it, looking down on myself as I do something I never could have imagined even an hour ago.
It’s not real. It’s not real.But for a little while, it will be.
I’ll be Levin Volkov’s wife.
When he kisses me, I know it’s done. I feel myself sinking into the kiss, seeking out an anchor of familiarity in all of this, and his hand wraps around mine, holding me steady. Holding me upright.
That hand is how I get back down the aisle, and out of the church. It’s what gets me to the car, sitting in stunned silence across from each other as it pulls away from the compound.
“We’re leaving tonight,” Levin says, his voice taut. “For Tokyo.”
I stare at him, the fog lifting only slightly on account of the new shock. “What do you mean,Tokyo?” My voice sounds raspy and stunned, not at all like my own. “Why aren’t we going back to Moscow.”
“I have to make sure it’s safe, first.”
“Safe?What we just did was supposed to make us safe. I thought–”
“From Fernandez.” Levin cuts me off, his hands gripping the edge of the seat. “Lidiya, I’m sorry. I should have stayed away from you, I should never have–”
“No, what you should have done is tell me the truth!” My voice rises, and Levin looks at me sharply. I can see him tensing for a fight. “I want to know what you do, Levin Volkov. I want the truth about it, because I know you haven’t given it to me so far. I think I’m owed that, at least.”
There’s a long, heavy silence, and then Levin nods. “I suppose that’s true,” he says quietly, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “Alright, then. You really want to know?”
I nod. “I want to know.”
“I’m an assassin. A spy. I work for an organization called the Syndicate. They had dealings with this cartel, and Grisha got in the way of that. He’d been in the way for a while. So he had to be stopped. And now he is.” Levin lets out a sharp breath. “After I found that evidence, I called my boss. I got permission to deal with Grisha here, to put an end to him. He wasn’t happy about it, but I managed to convince him.”
The words come out flat and emotionless, but each one feels like a punch. “Anassassin? Aspy?”
It’s what I’d thought, or something like it, sitting in the bedroom while Levin had dug through Grisha’s locked room. I’d had my suspicions since the very first day, really, and he’d wiggled his way out of them, made me feel crazy for thinking it. But now I can see that I was right all along.
“We were never supposed to do this.” I look at him, my voice hollow. I reach for my left hand, as if to twist a ring around it, but there’s nothing there. No ring, no physical symbol of the vows I just took, nothing but words that have already evaporated. It feels like a fucking dream. “We were never supposed to see each other again when this was over. We were never supposed to do–what we did.”
“I know.” Levin’s voice is calm and quiet in the darkness of the car, but I can hear an ache in it that I hadn’t expected. “I didn’t mean for it to go this way, Lidiya. But I can’t regret it. No matter what.”
The words hit me squarely in the chest. I can hear the sincerity in them, and I don’t know what to say.Do I regret it? Would I change it?
I know the correct answer is to say yes. That I would rewind time and never end up in Levin Volkov’s bed. That I would make all my decisions differently.
But I can’t say with any certainty that I would.
The rest of the car ride to the airport hangar is silent, except for the brief conversation that Levin has on the phone, making our arrangements for Tokyo. “I’m owed a favor,” is all he says. “We’ll have a place to stay, until I can be sure of what Vladimir is thinking.”
There’s that name again. I’ve figured out by now that it must belong to Levin’s boss, and I don’t ask. I don’t want to talk about it any longer. I feel exhausted and drained, and it feels hard to believe that this is my wedding night.
A night that I’m going to spend alone.
Or so I think. Once we’re on the plane, I push past Levin to walk straight to the bedroom at the back of it, closing the door before he can even say a word. I sink down onto the bed, burying my face in my hands.
It’s not that I’m angry at him, exactly. I’m just–tired. I’m tired of being deceived, of being lied to, of being used. I’m tired of having my choices taken away from me. And now he’s told me the truth–but I’m not so sure that it’s any better.
Exhausted, I lie back on the bed, still in my dress, and I fall asleep.
