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When I wake up at nine in the morning, I’m more than grateful for Markus forcing me to take the little pill. For the first time in two weeks, I’ve had a good night’s sleep. No restless dreams or waking up before the sun and being unable to fall asleep again. I almost feel well-rested.
I even manage to eat a good meal when Markus brings me down to the breakfast buffet.
The calm is short-lived, though. As the day progresses, my anxiety builds, and when I’m in the lobby early afternoon, waiting for Markus to get the rental car, I’m shaking. Nothing will alleviate the trepidation rattling in my bones. Not the warm lobby, nor the thick parka Markus bought me at the airport in Berlin.
I told him I’d make do with my woolen coat, but he insisted on getting me a warmer one, and the moment we stepped out of the Moskva airport last night, I was more than grateful. The Russian winter is even harsher than I could imagine. Just the thought of going back into the frosty air has a shiver running across my already nervous skin, causing a surge of nausea.
A large SUV pulls up outside the hotel, and I’m surprised to find Markus in the driver’s seat.
“Why such a big car?” I ask when I jump in and slam the door to the biting cold.
“I don’t want to get stuck on a desolate road in the middle of a Russian forest.”
I stare out at the piles of snow and shudder. In a few hours, I’ll be stuck in the middle of a Russian forest with a man who wants to hurt me, and Markus will be on his way out of there.
I gulp against the lump in my throat and stare at Markus.
His attention is on the screen, programming the GPS, and it takes everything not to tell him to stop and bring me back home with him.
His brows are knitted when he lifts his eyes to me, and the frown deepens into an expression of worry when he reaches up to run his thumb along my moist eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to say more, but I can’t figure out how to express the wealth of emotions bursting through my system.
“Don’t apologize.” He leans over the console to bring me in for a long hug. “This is how it’s supposed to be,” he whispers close to my ear. “You belong with Grigory.”
Pressing myself close to him, I inhale the scent that has always meant calm and safety to me. Soon, it will be gone, so I inhale deeply again, trying to brand it into my senses.
“I’m really going to miss you,” I say, hating the words the moment they leave my mouth. They don’t convey half of what I feel. But I can’t find anything better. Because what do you say when you’re about to end something you don’t want to end? What do you say when the man you love is about to hand you over to someone else?
There are no words. So we stay closely entwined until a car behind us honks.
Markus pulls back and takes my head between his hands, all the sincerity of his words written deep in his eyes. “I’m really gonna miss you too.”
The idiot behind us honks again, and Markus releases me to set the car into drive and take off.
Most of the drive passes in silence. Whenever I glance at Markus, I have to suppress tears pressing behind my eyes, so I keep staring out the side window. But it’s not much use. The finality of it all has me in a chokehold, and when Markus grabs a paper bag with takeout from the back seat and tells me to eat, I feel downright sick from all the heavy emotions coiling in my stomach.
“I’m not hungry,” I tell him.
He casts me a worried look. “You need to gather your strength for whatever Grigory has in store for you.”
“That doesn’t help,” I say, gulping down the rising nausea in my throat. I can’t even think about what he might do to me.
Markus pulls over at the side of the road and spends fifteen minutes calming me down, until I manage to eat half the salad he’s bought for me.
“Do you feel better now?” he asks, studying me with concern edged into his forehead.
I nod as I press the plastic lid back onto the bowl. The food did help and so did Markus’s reassuring words and the warm hand that is still caressing my shoulder.
“Good. Try to get some sleep. We still have at least forty minutes to go.”
Markus starts the car and pulls back onto the road. I lean my head back and focus on breathing deeply, and it calms me enough to rest for a while. But when the car starts bumping and the light dims ten minutes later, I open my eyes and stare into a dark tunnel of trees, and my anxiety returns with a vengeance.
The forest swallows us in cold, dead darkness. The tree tops are so dense they create a thick roof above the narrow road, shutting out any trace of the fading daylight. Only the headlights break the pitch-black darkness, reflecting upon the white layer of fresh snow covering the bumpy dirt road. It looks like something taken straight out of a horror movie.
It doesn’t get any better when we arrive at a lonely house in a dark clearing, surrounded by thick walls of trees on all sides. It’s a simple two-story log house with a small porch. It looks well-kept but unremarkable—not at all what I imagined. I’d never have guessed that a rich man like Grigory owned this place, and my mind starts wandering, carrying me through horror scenarios of being stuck here in the woods with some crazy person.
The car parked beside us offers a bit of reassurance, though. The black SUV is every bit as big and expensive as the one Markus has rented. Definitely not a cheap model. It has the right size to contain Grigory’s larger-than-life persona.
