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“All this time…” he murmurs. “All this time, you were trying to kill me.”
“No, I—” I gasp around a sob. “No, Dimitri,please—”
He holds a hand up, stopping me mid-sentence. “Let’s not do this, Natalya. You’ve lied enough to me the past few weeks, don’t you think? Hell, I don’t even know if that’s your real name.”
“Look, things are… Things are different now.”
“Why?”
“Because I—” I’m going to break. I can feel my insides shattering into a million impossible pieces. “I thought you killed my father. Edvard manipulated me. I was in a terrible place before, so I—”
“So you tried to blow me up,” Dimitri finishes flatly. “And when that didn’t work, you weaseled your way into my household and thought you could seduce me.”
My heart twists painfully in my chest. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m having a heart attack. Between my gunshot wound and this anguish eating me alive, I don’t know what to do.
“Please, just let me explain,” I beg. My face is hot, my nose plugged up, and the tears won’t stop falling.
“Go on, then. Explain.” He’s so clinical. Distant. I wish he’d scream at me because I know it’s what I deserve.
“My father, Viktor. He owed your family a bunch of money. It was to help me pay for medical school.”
Dimitri’s jaw ticks. “Viktor. Viktor Orkanov?”
“Yes. I took my mother’s maiden name so you wouldn’t recognize me. How did you—”
“Hedidowe us money,” he confirms. “But he paid us off ages ago.”
My head might explode. “But then why… I thought… You shot him!”
“Why would I do that?” Dimitri finally looks me in the eye, and it’s so startling I’m filled with genuine fear and regret. “You clearly know who I am and what I do. I collect debts on my brother’s behalf, yes. But what reason would I have to kill your father? You can’t collect money from a dead man, Natalya. And you certainly won’t get repeat business from a corpse.”
“Then who—” I bite my tongue so hard I swear I taste blood. “Who killed my father, Dimitri?”
“I don’t know. Who stood to gain the most from his death?”
The answer is on the tip of my tongue. “Edvard Levitsky.”
Dimitri nods, just once. “I don’t have the full picture, but from where I’m sitting, it’s obvious the man needed a pawn. Someone naive enough to latch onto his every word. Find someone desperate and alone, show them an ounce of kindness, and then you’ve got yourself a loyal attack dog—unsuspecting or otherwise.”
I can barely hear over my thundering heart; the rush of blood past my ears is deafening. “Dimitri…”
He sighs. “Looking back, it’s all so fucking obvious. You kept looking at those knives in my kitchen because you wanted to stab me, didn’t you?”
“No…”
“And you had the chance to push me down the stairs.”
I close my eyes. I don’t want to be here anymore. All I want is to go back to sleep and wake up in an alternate timeline where none of this happened.
“And you slept with me because you thought you could get me alone and finish the job.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then tell me whatistrue, Natalya.”
“I didn’t—I mean, it was like that at first, but then…” I wipe my eyes, so frustrated and scared and heartbroken I can’t even form proper sentences. “Then I started to fall in love with you and now I’m—”
Dimitri gets up and starts toward the bedroom door. “Fall in love with me?” he echoes with an incredulous laugh. “Yeah, right.”
