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An endless procession of duplicates of my reflection stares back at me, blinking when I blink, moving when I move. But none of it feels like me. The girl in the mirror has way too many new lines on her face. She looks pale and exhausted and centuries older than her twenty-eight years.
I want to bang on the mirrors and ask, Who is that?
The answer comes to me a little too quickly: Someone who’s scared that this is only the beginning.
“How long do you expect me to stay here?” I rasp, wrenching my attention away from the eerie reflections.
“That remains to be seen.”
I don’t like that answer one bit. But before I can demand just a teensy bit more info about the course of my life, please and thank you, I hear the robot seductress call out, “Doors opening.”
The doors are indeed opening, parting to reveal a spacious foyer. An ash-gray carpet unfurls in every direction. I scan from left to right and see a black, petrified wood coffee table the size of a football field, surrounded by a black leather sectional sofa big enough to hold both teams that would play on said field. I see a bowl of lemons on a side table, a jarring pop of color. I see spiky, abstract art, beautifully tarnished mirrors on the walls, twisted black sculptures looming in the corners.
I keep coming back to those lemons, though. Everything else is drained of color, but the lemons shine like they’re incandescent.
“Come on.” Dmitri holds out a hand to me when I don’t step out of the elevator.
I glance down at the carpet, suddenly worried about dripping blood onto it. His hand is huge in my field of vision. The nurse’s blood is crusted dry on the back of his knuckles. I spy the hint of a tattoo on the underside of his wrist. I don’t know how I’ve never noticed that before.
I follow the arm up to meet his eyes. It makes sense that his home is colorless—so are those eyes. They’re brooding, utterly unreadable.
I swallow and raise a foot to step inside. But before I can set it down, a voice sings out, “Baby, is that you?”
A vision of a woman materializes from the open archway on the right. Her body is lithe as a model’s, which fits the bill, considering she belongs on a runway in Milan somewhere. I never knew negative percent body fat was a thing until now. Nor did I know hair could actually be that shade of honey-blonde outside of a shampoo commercial.
The woman freezes at the threshold when she sees me. I’m expecting annoyance, suspicion, maybe a Who the fuck is this? All would be valid.
But instead, she gives me a smile. “Hello, Wren,” she croons as though we’ve already been introduced. She glides forward gracefully, but doesn’t offer me her hand. I don’t blame her; I wouldn’t want to touch me right now, either. “I’m Beatrice. Everyone calls me Bee.”
I try to speak, fail, clear my throat, try again. “H-hi.”
Judging from her designer clothes and perfect, olive-toned tan, she’s definitely not the housekeeper. She looks too different from Dmitri to be related to him. So that leaves?—
“I’m his fiancée, to answer the question you didn’t ask.”
My whole body constricts like it’s trying to physically reject the word. Fiancée? He has a freaking fiancée, and I’m only hearing about it now?
But the more I look at her, the more sense it makes. Of course he has a partner. Very few men take on the responsibility of a child without having someone to share the burden with.
“I-I’m his…” I glance towards Dmitri, who is putting our coats away in a closet I didn’t see. He’s not even looking at me. “His… Um, I’m his?—”
“You’re his assistant,” Bee interrupts helpfully. Dmitri floats to stand beside her. She nestles into his side and places a palm flat on his chest. God, they look beautiful together. “And you’re the woman who’s carrying our little bundle of joy. I’m honored to meet you.”
My jaw flops open stupidly. Now that I know exactly how dumb that expression looks, I hate it, but I can’t stop myself.
“Why don’t you come sit down? I’ve got some tea and biscuits laid out.”
Tea and biscuits? Is she Princess fucking Diana?
God, my head hurts. Was it just a little while ago that I was throwing up on a hospital floor while my would-be murderer bled out beside me?
Now, here I am, in The Muse at Haven Crest, being led to a Coco Chanel coffee table where, just like Bee said, a tea service has been laid out for me.
She has a feminine strut to her walk and a lovely lilt in her voice as she drapes an elegant hand toward the offerings. “I have honey and hibiscus and the more traditional Earl Gray. But if you would prefer coffee, I can whip you up a mug.”
I lift my eyes to hers. She’s exactly the kind of woman you’d expect to see on Dmitri Egorov’s arm. Stylish, confident, carelessly beautiful.
“Wren?”
