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I spin on her, dangerously close to shaking a finger in her face. “I told you to watch yourself, Clara Everett. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
Tears drip down her face as she smiles without a trace of humor. “How can I forget? You’re the guy in the courtroom who took one look at my bruised and beaten body and decided you’d hate me forever. Forget the fact that I was an eight-year-old little girl fucking terrified of the man standing next to me.”
I’m not going to let her win this. “Clara?—”
“No, Demyen. Oh, I’m sorry—Mr. Zakrevsky. I’m not done. Because yeah, I know exactly who I’m talking to. You’re this big, bad criminal overlord hellbent on making the universe pay for what’s basically the worst luck your brother could ever havedespite the factthat it all ended up being the best luck foryou.”
She might as well have slapped me across the face.
It almost feels like she did.
I’ve got nothing to say. So I continue to silently glare at her, hoping it’s enough to make her shut the hell up and leave me the hell alone.
“Don’t worry.” She folds her arms across her chest and rocks on her heels. “I won’t forget who you are. Especially the fact that you’re the kind of man who whispers sweet promises as long as you get exactly what you want. How did you put it? Oh, right: you wanted me to trust that you’d ‘do everything in your power to lay the world at my feet.’” She tilts her head to one side and fights back the fresh flow of tears. “Was that because of the sex before? Or the sex after?”
I swallow. Hard. I don’t need this. I don’t need any of this shit from her.
I nod toward the corridor and simply tell her, “Go.”
Clara covers her mouth as a sob bursts out, but she turns and begins to walk to the bedroom door.
Then she spins back around and cracks her palm against the side of my face.
I don’t remember doing what I do next. I just sort of “come to” with my hand around her throat and her body pinned against the wall. I’m squeezing—not too hard, but hard enough to make her body shake with rasping sobs.
She doesn’t even try to fight me. Clara just stares at me through tear-filled eyes and shakes her head. “Do it. Go ahead and do it. At least I’ll still be right about one thing. At least I’ll know you’re just like them.”
My hand peels back like she’s burned me worse than that fucking frying pan at Helen Cooper’s. That feels like a lifetime ago.
I stare at Clara in horror.No.I can’t—I’m not—I swore I’d never be like them. I’d never be one of them.
But I’ve been making a lot of promises I’ve barely managed to keep.
This time, I don’t have to tell Clara to go into the bedroom. She struggles to wipe her tears away but she can’t stop crying, which now sounds like a pathetic series of wheezes that rip at my heart despite my best efforts to ignore the sound.
She runs into the bedroom and locks the door behind her, but it’s not soundproof. So now, I get to listen to Willow frantically ask what happened, is she okay, and then both of them crying together while Willow asks her mommy why this is happening.
Honestly? I wish I fucking knew.
21
DEMYEN
The plane landed a week ago.
It feels like a century.
Raizo is pissed beyond reason that the auction’s been delayed yet again. He can eat my goddamn pistol if it means that much to him. He keeps blowing up my phone demanding answers, demanding a new schedule, demand demand demand.
So I finally respond with a single text:The auction is this weekend.It gives me around five days to figure shit out to the best of my capabilities.
Which, since we landed, have been minimal at best.
I haven’t seen or spoken to the girls. At all. I made sure I was off that plane and in my own separate car before they had a chance to exit the bedroom.
I told myself it was because things would just be easier this way.
I ignored the voice inside my head that kept chanting,Fucking coward.
