Page 31

My ears burn at the words I’m hearing, and the world around me tunnels into just darkness.

It can’t be. I came down here to join Agafon for that drink, but when I heard loud voices, I stopped outside. I was about to turn when I heard him say he only married me for revenge because of what I did to Nikandr.

What I did to Nikandr?

I clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. What did I ever do to deserve this? Why the hell does Agafon think I ruined Nikandr? Most of all, was he really only pretending all this time?

And here I am, such a fool for thinking I love him. The memories from a few hours earlier come rushing back. I was lying there on his desk, with him hovering over me, and I remember thinking I love him.

“No,” I hear Agafon say with conviction. “Never. I'll never love her after what she did to you.”

I stumble backward and feel that lump in my throat travel down to my chest, making it hard to breathe. I think I might have a panic attack. A fool. I’m an utter fool for thinking I love this man. My lungs squeeze tight. I have to get out. Now.

I have nothing on me but my phone, yet I can’t spend another minute in this house, near Agafon, near Nikandr. The entire family is nothing but a bunch of liars, I think to myself as the tears fall down my face.

With just my phone in hand, I run out of the house.

A guard tries to ask if I need a car, as the staff knows I can come and go at my choosing as long as I have security, and I wave him off.

“My brother’s picking me up outside,” I lie.

Right about now, my brain isn’t working on coming up with something more plausible.

But I seem to be in such a rush and speak with such conviction that he doesn’t question me further. Besides, they won’t dare insinuate that my family is careless with me by cross-checking whether I speak the truth. My lie is so audacious that it’s believable.

I know the guard will get in trouble later, but at this point, I don’t care. I need distance between myself and this lie I've been living. Between myself and the man I've been falling in love with, who apparently married me for revenge.

Once outside the house, I run down the block and hail a cab. Last time I ran, Agafon tracked me down within an hour using my phone's location. This time around, I turn off my phone’s location tracking and GPS. There’s no way I’m letting him come after me.

After what I’ve heard, I never want to hear from him again.

It’s only once I’m in the car and the driver asks where it is I’m going to that I feel my mind go blank.

Where the hell should I go? I don’t want to face my family with this embarrassing truth right now.

I defended Agafon, I brought him into our folds and made my family believe he was good to me. Good for me.

I can already imagine how going home would pan out. Sofia and Natalia would look at me with pity. Nikolai, Lion, and my brothers would seethe with rage. They won’t judge me—no. But they will feel sorry for me. They will feel angry at Agafon.

And right about now, I need to be alone without bringing all that trouble to my family’s door.

None of them will rest until they exact their revenge.

I don’t want them to worry, not until I clear my thoughts and find a good enough reason to go back home that won’t start a war between the Orlov-Zolotov and Letvin clan.

I’m tired. I just need to… rest. Collect my thoughts.

“Where to?” the driver asks again, eyeing me in the rearview.

I wipe away the tears and lean between the seats. “There’s a viewpoint on a cliff near the outskirts of the city,” I say. “I’ll direct you.”

***

By the time we reach the cliff, I’m numb with sorrow.

My hands won’t stop trembling, and my tears won’t stop pouring, but I hardly feel or notice either because my mind is creating a roadmap of every smile Agafon ever gave me, every kindness he showed me, and every inch of skin he traced his hands over.

I feel dirty. I feel used. I wish I could shed this skin and pretend he never touched me the way he did. He never thought of me as beautiful, I find myself thinking with despair. He only wanted me to fall for him so he could break my heart.

“Miss?” The voice brings me back to the present, and I realize the car is parked very close to where Agafon had left his when he had brought me here for that date. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say with a croaked voice and feel grateful that my Uber account has a credit balance, so I don’t have to pay him through any online means. If I did, Agafon might find me.

It’s only when the car drives off and I find myself standing alone at the cliff that I realize why I came here. This is the last place on earth Agafon would think I’ve run off to—his hut.

My feet know the way even as my mind reels from everything that's happened. The path grows more familiar as it gives way to scrubby woodland. The small hut sits nestled among a cluster of trees.

Agafon brought me here two months ago. I'd felt special that night, chosen. The memory curdles in my stomach now.

I hunt for the spare key he showed me he kept in a tree bed nearby, in case I ever decided to come here to think, he had said. The door creaks when I push it open. I sink onto the couch and finally let the tears come, hot and fast down my cheeks.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Agafon. I silence it and toss it onto the cushion beside me.

In the sudden quiet, memories flood back, memories I don’t want to think about, but I search through them to figure out whether I was responsible in any way for the decisions Nikandr made.

Five years ago, I was only nineteen and still in college. He was twenty-five, handsome, and devastatingly charming in that dangerous way that makes young girls do stupid things. We met at a singles mixer that my roommate forced me to attend.

“You look as bored as I feel,” he'd said, sliding up to the bar where I stood. “Want to make our own fun?”

I should have said no. But his gray eyes, so like Agafon's, held a spark of adventure that called to the part of me that had always been sheltered.

For three months, it was intoxicating. Late nights in clubs I'd never dared enter before. Motorcycle rides along the coast with the wind whipping through my hair. Heated kisses in shadowy corners. I mistook intensity for passion, obsession for love.

The changes were subtle at first. He'd check my phone when I wasn't looking, get angry if I spent time with friends instead of him, and question why I wore certain outfits. I made excuses: he was passionate, he cared, he'd had a difficult life.

But then, he started getting jealous and throwing accusations my way that had no basis.

He constantly needed to know where I was and who I was with.

The person I thought I had fallen in love with had turned into something else—morphed into a monster.

His mood swings would always leave me on edge, and I never knew what would trigger them next.

The night it ended, he'd picked me up from campus. His eyes were glassy, his movements jerky. He drove us to a party in some shady part of town when he told me we’d be going for dinner.

“I don't want to go in there,” I said when I saw the people stumbling around outside. “I have an early class tomorrow.”

“Don't be such a fucking prude,” he snapped, grabbing my wrist hard enough to leave fingerprint bruises. “We're going to have some fun. I got us something special.”

He pulled out a small bag of white powder. My stomach dropped. “No, Nikandr. I don't want that. And you shouldn't either.”

His face darkened. “What, you think you're too good for this? Too good for me?”

“That's not what I said—”

“Shut up!” He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “You're just like everyone else, looking down on me. Poor little Nikandr, can't measure up to his brothers.”

I saw then what I'd been ignoring. He'd been using drugs for a while now, and that explained his paranoia, his mood swings, and his constant borrowing of cash—and he wanted to drag me down with him.

“I'm leaving,” I said, grabbing my purse and reaching for the door handle.

He caught my arm, his grip painful. “You're not going anywhere.”

I remember turning ice cold as I looked back at him. “If you don't let me go right now, I'll scream until every person at that party comes running. And then I'll call my brothers.”

He released me, and his face twisted with hatred. “Fucking bitch. Get out then. You were just a game anyway.”

I ran all the way to the main road before calling a friend to pick me up. From then on, I avoided him at all costs. I never looked back.

That was until I agreed to marry Agafon. I knew Agafon was aware of my history with Nikandr because I’d met him once when he was visiting Nikandr on campus.

And now, I wonder what Nikandr told him. Looking back, I don’t know how I broke him, since Nikandr was broken from the moment I met him.

I thought Agafon knew that. I thought he had guessed as much, and from the way he treated me since we got married, with dignified respect, I believed he was falling for me.

I fell in love with my husband. And now I know it was all a lie.

My phone buzzes again, pulling me back to the present. Through tearful eyes, I glance at it. There are seventeen missed calls from Agafon, three from my brother Lion, two from Agafon's sister Tatiana, and many others. Agafon noticed I’ve gone, and now he’s calling my family and his.

Fuck.

When the phone starts ringing again, I grab it, ready to silence it once more, but something stops me. I need to tell Agafon the truth so he stops calling my family, so he realizes that the only danger I’m in is from him.

I answer but say nothing.

“Beth? Where are you?” He sounds worried sick, like he cares.

My throat closes up. I can't speak.

“Lilibeth.” His tone shifts slightly. “Are you in trouble?”

I try to exhale, but instead, it’s a choked sob that comes out.

“Beth?” he asks now, panic lacing his voice.

“You’re quite the actor, you know that?” I begin to cry, so angry that he calls me, acting like he’s worried. Like he cares.

There’s silence on the other end. Then he asks, “What are you talking about?”

I try not to say more, but I can no longer hold the pain at bay. “I heard you. With Nikandr. About how you married me to make me pay for what I supposedly did to him.”

There’s a thick silence, and I can feel him scrambling for an answer. I close my eyes, knowing there’s no answer that would be good enough to make this pain go away.

“Where are you?” he asks again, softer. “Look. Let me get you and we can talk.”

“You should have just told me,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “If you wanted to hurt me, you could have just done it directly. The pretending was cruel.”

“I'm coming to get you,” he says instead of addressing my accusation.

“Don't bother. I'm not your wife anymore. I'm not your anything.” My voice breaks on the last word.

“You're mine,” he growls, and I hate how those two simple words still affect me. “And we're not having this conversa—”

Just then, the door to the hut crashes open. I scream as I see two men in black rush in. I barely have time to register what’s happened before they reach toward me and take me in their hold.

I bite down on a hand and taste leather. One of the men curses but doesn't let go, instead pressing a cloth to my face. The chemical smell hits me first, then dizziness sweeps through me like a wave.

The last thing I see before darkness takes me is the sight of my phone, lying discarded on the couch.