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“It’s angry.” She steps closer to it. “But there’s also hurt.” Bending over, she puts her face close to the painting and examines the details. “Helplessness.” Her hand rises up, and for a moment I’m afraid that she wants to touch the delicate paint. But she doesn’t. Instead, she points at the single red line dripping along the bottom petal. “And guilt.”
I close my eyes. With just a few words, she manages to reach a part of me that has been locked away for so many years that I thought it had died. A part of me that understands cruelty as well as I do creativity, a part of me that dwells in both the beautiful and the grotesque, and a part that yearns for another person to awaken it again.
“You’re right,” I say.
A frown passes over her lips. Is she trying to reconcile all the contradicting parts of me into one person? Is she trying to make sense of the monster who’s keeping her in his tower?
She looks away, her eyes drawn to the sketches of chrysanthemums I’ve pinned to the wall. “Why the chrysanthemums? They’re everywhere.”
I stare into her hazel eyes in the dim light. The cool, still air of the studio presses down on us with the weight of a thousand unspoken words.
Can I tell her? Am I capable of telling her? Can I trust her to keep this part of me a secret from the world?
When she doesn’t move, I have my answer.
“It’s easier if I show you.” I lead her toward an antique armoire in the corner near a long, empty wooden table. The doors openand reveal several thin drawers. I pull open one of them to show her a collection of carefully arranged wooden boxes.
I lift out a box and open the lid. Pressed between two plates of glass is a chrysanthemum, each petal carefully preserved in perpetuity. I hand it to Eden, and she holds it in her hands. She stares at the flower while I gaze at her.
“The chrysanthemum was my mother’s favorite flower,” I explain quietly when she hands the box back. “This penthouse belonged to her. This studio was where she taught me how to paint. And it is the last piece of her that I still have left.”
Eden bites her lower lip as she listens to my words. Her eyes blink rapidly, and I hear a slight sniffle.
“Larissa tells me you blame yourself for her death,” she says. “Why?”
“Confiding too much in Larissa is dangerous.” My gaze fixes her in place. “For you and for her. She’s grown fond of you, and in her fondness, she forgets who and what you are.”
“The daughter of an alleged traitor to the Bratva,” she replies. “And your future wife.”
“Yes,” I say. The weight of that word hangs heavy in the air.
“Don’t I deserve to know the man I’m about to marry?” Undeterred, she steps closer and places her hand on my chest. Her touch is like a live wire, sending a surge of electricity coursing through me from the gentle softness of the gesture. Her innocent eyes goad me to reveal my secret to her. Emotions war in my chest as I wonder if I should tell her.
Fuck it,I decide. If she wants to know the monster in front of her, then she will.
I take a breath and cover her hand in mine.
“She killed herself because of me.”
37
EDEN
Nikolai’s wordssend me reeling. When Larissa told me he blamed himself for his mother’s death, I had no idea that it was something likethis.But just like everything he tells me, even this answer leaves me with more questions.
And I’ve come too far now to turn back from finding out the rest.
“How?” I ask.
His grip on my hand doesn’t change, but he looks at me with such intensity that I can feel his stare crushing my bones into dust. My heartbeat picks up from his stare, but I don’t look away.
“She threw herself off the terrace.” His voice is low. And even at this volume, I can hear it cracking slightly. “Eighteen years ago.”
He looks away, turning his eyes—shimmering in the dim light—toward the painting of the woman. There’s no mistaking the guilt in his gaze as he looks into the soft eyes of his mother, forever memorialized on canvas.
The world spins around me as I struggle to find the words—any words—to say back to him. But what are the right wordswhen someone says something so terrible? Everything starts making more sense. The nets. The warning Dominika gave me on my first night. Her reluctance to talk about who owned this penthouse before Nikolai.
And the look in Nikolai’s eyes when I told him I’d rather jump than marry him.
