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“How long will that take?”
“For once, Alek, I am trying to be patient. Once we get to Paris, I’ll up the pressure.”
We arrive in Paris an hour behind Grace. She’s checked into a hotel just a short walk away from Eiffel Tower. Once we get a room on the same floor as hers, I call her.
“How did you convince that woman to give me a phone?” she asks.
“Money buys anything,” I reply, loosening my tie.
“I checked both rooms beside me were occupied,” she says.
“Clever girl,” I whisper, opening the balcony doors and stepping out. “You have expensive taste, zhena.”
“That’s a new one on me, Ivan. Translate,” she orders.
“Zhena is wife.”
“Which I am not.”
“While you use my wife’s name, you are.”
“She was planning to leave you.”
“She was?” I’m not surprised. I’d suspected as much when things began getting worse between us. Weeks before she died, she wouldn’t even let me touch her.
“Shall I read it?”
My heart sinks. I hate the guilt the diary entries bring me. It’s something I’m not used to feeling. “If you must.”
I pull up the rattan chair and lower into it. “Dear Diary,” she begins. “I have a plan. The one good thing that’s come from all the bad is I’m learning to be as cunning as all the men who surround me. I’ve told Maxim I love him. His eyes lit up like all his Christmases had arrived at once. Idiot. I told him I’m planning to leave Ivan for him but I need money and a safe place to stay. He’s agreed to help me. Once I get that money, I’m taking off. I’ll move across to the other side of the world if I must, but those monsters will never see me or my baby ever again. Finally, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Her name is Galina. The woman Ivan spends time with, in Russia. Maxim told me he’s been seeing her for over a year. My heart is forever broken, and I’ll never recover from his betrayal. He keeps me here in his ivory tower for his men to use as a plaything, and he’s so wrapped up in himself and her, he can’t see what’s right under his nose. I love him so much. I’m a fool.
“On the day I leave, I’ll write him a letter so he knows the truth about it all. He should suffer knowing what happened to me because of him.” She pauses before asking, “Did she write a letter?”
“I never received one.”
“Maybe she changed her mind. What happened to you and Galina?”
“After Lara died, I couldn’t bring myself to see her. The guilt was too much.”
“Pity you didn’t feel like that when she was alive. None of this would have happened.”
“You’re carrying out her last wishes,” I point out. “Making me suffer.”
“You think this is suffering?” she asks, sounding amused. “Some diary entries?”
“She was my wife, the love of my life. I didn’t understand why she’d grown distant. Now, I know the truth.”
“You feel bad because of the guilt. You can never understand how she felt, what she went through, because you’re a man, and we feel so differently. You’ve never had a man hold you down and force himself on you, Ivan. That feeling of being utterly alone and powerless and not having the fucking strength to fight him off because you’re a woman and he’s a man.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I can only try to understand.”
“Those women you take,” she says, and I wince, “they feel too. Just because you drug them doesn’t mean they don’t feel.”
“It’s business, Grace.”
“It’s real life for those women, Ivan. You’re destroying lives for men’s pleasure. If you really want to begin to make up for all the things you’ve done, stop trading women like fucking animals.”
