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When we reach Artur’s casket, Eve looks away, but I grip the back of her neck and turn her forward. “Bullets ripped through his neck, chest, and right cheek.”
The mortician had done a decent job of piecing Artur back together, but his skin looked plastic, the coloring slightly off. I knew, beneath restoration clay and makeup done for the funeral, his face was shredded.
She winces and her eyes flutter closed. “I’m sorry.”
“Blood filled his lungs. He suffocated, drowning on his own blood.”
Eve shakes her head, stepping away from the coffin. “I didn’t know about this. I didn’t ask for this to happen.”
“Your father did.” I finally let her turn away, but I keep a hand on her back, reminding her of who is in control. “Your father killed him, Eve.”
She is blinking back tears as I lead her to our pew, and every eye in the room is on us. When we sit, my father has to wave his hand in the air, directing people to continue the ceremony. One by one, the people who had planned words get up and speak. Many of them glance at Eve as they talk about Artur, unable to fight their own curiosity, but it serves to drive home the point I’d been trying to make. She shrinks in on herself with shame. She tries to scoot away from me towards the edge of the pew, but I grip her knee in my hand, holding her in place.
Finally, when the last person speaks and the funeral is over, I remove my hand and Eve bolts upright, ready to escape. But I lay a hand on her shoulder, and she once again sags under the weight. She can’t escape. She agreed to this deal, and now she can’t run away from me. Eve stays by my side as we walk out of the church and into the parking lot.
I need to talk to my father about where Eve will be staying. I went against his wishes by arranging the deal, and I don’t want to anger him further by assuming she can stay in the Volkov mansion with us.
I let my hand fall from her back and nod to the car. “Get in. I’ll meet you in a second.”
Eve looks at the car and then back at me, her eyes gaping holes, her pupils swallowing the caramel brown of her irises.
My heart lurches in her chest, looking around for what could be scaring her so much, but there is nothing. “What is wrong?”
She takes a step closer to me, away from the car, her head shaking. “I don’t want to die. Not like that.”
My brow furrows in confusion, and I barely resist the urge to wrap my arms around her in comfort.
“What are you talking about?”
She looks silently back at the car, and it clicks into place. I heard the news of Samuel’s death. His car exploded. Eve was noted as an eyewitness. And now that I really look at her, I can see poorly covered bruises along her neck and arms.
Eve thinks I’m trying to kill her.
The idea bothers me. It makes sense. After all, she watched me kill a man before her very eyes. But the idea that she believes I would go to the trouble of extending an olive branch in the form of marriage only to let her explode, that she thinks so little of me that I would kill her after offering peace, it is insulting. And worse than that, I still want to comfort her. I want to ease the worry lines across her forehead and massage the tension from her shoulders. She is insulting my character and disobeying my orders, and I still want to kiss the frown from her lips.
This girl is wreaking havoc on my self-control. I need to re-establish the order of things.
I grab her arm and spin her to face me, bringing her close until her chest is pressed against mine, our mouths only inches apart. She is too stunned to fight or speak.
“I’m not in the habit of destroying what is mine,” I snap, gripping her arm tighter. “And you are mine. Don’t forget it.”
When I let her go, she stumbles backwards, suddenly more afraid of me than the car, and I turn to bark at a nearby soldier. He rushes to stand in front of me, and I tell him to take Eve to the mansion to wait for me there. There isn’t time to get my father’s permission. I need Eve out of my sight immediately. I can’t think clearly when she is around.
The soldier helps her into the car, and she doesn’t turn to look out her window at me as the car passes by. She just stares straight ahead, her pouty lips pressed together. I watch as the car turns out of the lot and disappears down the road.
Even with her gone, my thoughts don’t clear.
9
Eve
I expect the car to explode at every intersection. Every time we stop and the car is idling, I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the end. When the driver takes a turn too sharply, I yelp, certain he upset the balance of whatever mechanism is strapped to the underside of the vehicle. It isn’t until we pull through a set of wrought iron gates and park in front of the Volkov mansion that I am able to think about anything other than dying a fiery death.
The driver opens the door, and I scramble out of the car quickly, glad to be in the open air. I take a deep breath only to have it catch in my throat. The Volkov mansion is huge. Much bigger than I imagined.
The central part of the house is a red brick rectangle with three clearly-defined floors. Double-hung windows with white shutters dot the façade at regular intervals, symmetrical around a grand entryway complete with a lifted porch and a balcony at the second-floor level, all of which is supported by columns that stretch the entire height of the house and are topped with a triangular pediment. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, two white-shingled wings extend from either side with even more identical windows. The wing on the left ends in a single-story, window-encased sun room. The wing on the right ends in another entrance facing the other side of the street, this one slightly less grand than the first with a comparatively simple brick porch and a one-story overhang. The roof is steeply pitched with gables designating what I imagine are private bedrooms on the third floor.
It's ridiculous.
