Page 22

After my shower I am fresh, and my mind is a little clearer.

The intensity of what happened in the car on the way home is still lingering on my skin, tingling along my spine and causing heat to flow between my legs.

I want more.

But I also want to speak to him about everything first.

He can’t keep denying what he feels towards me.

I slip into a pair of jeans and a hoodie because in the late afternoon a slight bite of cold has arrived in the air. Boston summer is almost over.

My sneakers squeak on the top step as I climb down the stairs toward the kitchen to find Rigor.

But he’s not there.

I scrunch my nose. He wasn’t upstairs either. I checked the office first.

Heading out towards the patio to see if he’s sitting in the garden by the pool, I find the door locked. He isn’t there either.

I make my way around the entire mansion until it clicks that he must have left.

I push the front door open and confirmation makes my heart sink to the very pit of my stomach.

His car is gone.

He left.

After everything that happened today, his reaction, his response, was to leave me alone.

I swallow the lump forming in the back of my throat and refuse to acknowledge the sting of tears in my eyes.

Perhaps, all this time, I’ve been wrong about him—I’ve been projecting my own feelings and thoughts onto him and assume he’s falling for me when in fact I am nothing but a play thing to him.

Why else would he run away?

I’m so stupid.

I really am that na?ve, pathetic girl who first arrived here. Clueless to what is going on around her, making up stupid stories in her head to make herself feel better.

He doesn’t care about me at all.

I run up to my bedroom to grab the cell phone Rigor gave me. I haven’t used it yet, but I need it now.

Dialing one of the numbers he has already programmed into it for me, I sit on the edge of the bed with the phone pressed against my ear.

“Hello?” her voice comes through the line.

“Ruslana, it’s Aly. Can you come over?” I ask, biting back the tears again.

“Of course, is everything ok?” she asks with worry in her voice.

“No, Rigor left and I’m alone and I’m—I just need—please can you come over.” I’m crying now and she can hear it in my voice.

“I’m on my way, sweetheart. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she says quickly, reassuring me.

With no idea what my plan actually is, I start throwing clothes into a leather tote bag. I want to leave, and I want to stay. I want to stay far more than I want to go but I can’t take it anymore.

I can’t take the pain in my heart. Not knowing. Not understanding. Making assumptions that are so obviously wrong.

I haven’t decided yet—but I might ask Ruslana to take me home. To help me get out of here.

If Rigor comes back and acts coldly towards me again, it will break me beyond the point of repair. My heart is already so fragile. It isn’t even about the kidnapping or the marriage—or witnessing the torture. It’s about him. How I have completely and utterly fallen for him and how he does not feel the same towards me.

It’s the type of pain that no one can save you from.

So, it’s time for me to save myself from my own delusions.

Ruslana arrives, I hear the door opening downstairs and her footsteps in the entrance. “Aly?” she calls into the house.

“I’m upstairs, I’ll be down in a minute,” I call back to her, fighting tears.

Forcing myself to take a few deep breaths I pick up the tote bag and take one last look around my bedroom. My bedroom. Not a prison cell. Not a room I feel locked in or held captive by. My room. A safe space that I don’t want to forget.

Sighing, I push the stupid thoughts aside.

It was never mine. I was a prisoner. I was a tool. And it’s time for me to go.

I grip the bag handles tightly in my fist as I walk out of the bedroom, down the passage past Rigor’s room where his cologne drifts into the passage. I pause. Take a deep breath, close my eyes, then force myself to start walking again. He isn’t mine. He doesn’t belong to my heart. He never did.

I carry the bag down the stairs and when I look up, I stammer to a complete, frozen halt.

“Avraam?” I mutter, staring at him in disbelief.

Ruslana rushes forward to stand between us, unsure how I will react to seeing my brother again. “Aly, he’s here because he cares. That’s all. We aren’t here to cause trouble.”

Avraam clenches his jaw, his eyes are sad and desperate as he watches me.

Part of me wants to just collapse into his arms and let him hold me. Part of me is terrified of him. I turn towards Ruslana and can’t hold back my tears anymore. She wraps her arms around me and holds me close to her. “Hey, it’s ok. Everything is going to be ok,” she whispers, gently rocking me to and fro.

“Are you going somewhere?” Avraam asks.

I nod, stepping away from Ruslana.

“I’m leaving,” I say. “I can’t be here anymore.”

“Aly—“ he sighs. “I wanted to come and get you. So many times, I’ve been thinking about it none stop—but you were so angry with me. And I didn’t know how to get you back without causing a war or breaking the alliance between our families.” He is broken as he speaks to me. It hurts to see him this way, but I can’t lie to him.

“I’m still angry with you. And if you had come to take me, I wouldn’t have gone with you,” I say truthfully.

He clenches his jaw, his mouth pulled tight, and he nods.

“I thought as much.”

Ruslana takes the bag from my hands. “Aly, where are you going?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” I shrug, tearful and desperate. “I just need to leave.”

“Come and stay with us. We have plenty of space in the house and you can have as much privacy as you want. It’ll be safe. I promise.”

I nod. “Ok.”

She turns to Avraam. “We need to sneak her past the guards though. Can you pull the car around the side? I know how to do it.”

Avraam leaves and I follow Ruslana into the west wing of the mansion, out through the laundry room, into a back alley around the side of the house. Avraam is waiting there for us.

Before I step out of the door, Ruslana grabs my arm. “You need to move quickly,” she whispers. I nod.

“Aly, are you sure you want to do this?”

I nod again.

And we run for the car.

Inside the back of the car, Ruslana tells me to duck low on the floor behind the driver’s seat. She throws her coat over my back. I hold my breath as we drive out past the security gate and I listen to Ruslana chatting to the guards she knows well.

“We’ll come visit again soon when he’s back home,” she says cheerfully. “Have a nice day, Marcus.”

Then we are out on the open road and she says, “You can sit up now.”

My heart is racing. I sit up and stare out of the window, back towards Rigor’s mansion and the home I thought I could make my own. Where my heart is still beating, lost in a man who doesn’t want me.

Tears roll silently down my cheeks and I force my eyes away from the property, forward, into my future—and whatever the hell is waiting for me there.

Ruslana turns to look at me and reaches her hand back. She squeezes my knee. “Hey, it’s going to be ok. I promise. Don’t rush your thoughts. Take your time. Heal. Do what you need to do. We will take care of you for as long as you need.”

All I can do is nod.

I can’t speak because my throat is tight around the tears falling over my face.

I should take my time to figure everything out and see things for what they really are. I’ve got no choice. Reality is looming and I need to accept it. Maybe it was just Stockholm Syndrome. All this time.

Maybe I’ve been mistaken.

I sigh.

No.

I fell for him. The connection between us is real. But it’s pointless if he doesn’t want to see it too. I can’t force him to love me anymore than he can force me to un-love him.

My brother’s home feels so strange to me. I’ve only ever been to his small apartment in the city which I now realize was a cover for his real life. Him maintaining the illusion of being a normal person. This place—I’ve never been here before and it hurts my heart.

Ruslana shows me to my room and I settle down, telling her that I want to be alone for a while.

“I’ll come and call you when dinner is ready?” she asks, sitting on the bed next to me.

“Thank you, Ruslana. I really appreciate this.”

She leans over and pulls me into a hug. “It’s my pleasure, Aly. Anything you need—I’m here. We are sisters after all.”

I smile at the idea of her being my sister. I’ve always wanted one.

Ruslana leaves, pulling the door only half way closed. A gesture that says I have privacy, but she will come when I call.

Alone in the room, I kick off my shoes and curl up on the massive bed with my knees against my chest. Reaching back, I grab the edge of the blanket and pull it over myself, folding myself on top of it.

Closing my eyes, I try to silence the thoughts and the chaos. The ache in my heart—knowing I’ll probably never see him again.

All afternoon I sleep.

Drifting in and out of weird dreams. My subconscious trying to sort out the confusion in my mind. I cry a little, feel angry, feel lost and then sleep again.

My dreams are troubled with images of a man being tortured. But he’s bad. He’s evil, and he deserves what is happening to him.

Then into my dreams Rigor arrives, but it isn’t him—because this version of him is kind and reaches towards me to hold me. He tells me he loves me and wants to be with me forever.

I wake up again. Crying.

Sighing loudly, I rub my hands against my eyes.

Then with a jolt of fright my phone starts ringing, and I fumble to pull it out of the side pocket of my bag.

Rigor.

My heart is racing.

I press it to my ear. Closing my eyes.

“Hello,” I whisper.

“Aly, are you ok? I just got home. Where are you?”

“I’m with my brother and Ruslana,” I say calmly.

“Did he kidnap you? I swear I’ll—”

“No,” I mutter.

“No?” he asks, confused.

“I called Ruslana after you left, and I asked her to come and get me. I packed a bag and made a choice. No one kidnapped me. No one forced me to leave. I chose this,” I confess, waiting—wishing for him to beg me to come back.

“Oh,” he says.

And my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach.

I swallow audibly.

“I need space—to think,” I say.

“Ok,” he answers. Not fighting any of it. Not asking me why. Not telling me he doesn’t want to be without me.

In heavy silence I keep the phone pressed against my ear until finally he speaks. “I’ll see you around, firefly.”

Then the line goes dead and my heart shatters.

A million little pieces of me splinter and split and break apart inside my body.

With shaking hands I drop the phone onto the pillow next to me and curl up into a ball again.

I press my face into the blankets to hide the loud sobs falling from my lips.

I’ll see you around, firefly.

That was it.

That was all he said.

When Ruslana comes to fetch me for dinner, I don’t want to eat.

And the next morning when she fetches me for dinner, I decline again.

At lunch time she brings a plate of food up to my room and leaves it on my bedside table, but I don’t touch it.

How can I ever eat again when all I want to do is die?

For three days, I don’t get out of bed.

I can’t think or move or be anything but broken.

Then on the fourth day Ruslana and Avraam both come into my room.

I tell them to let me be, but they refuse.

Avraam sits on the end of the bed and speaks to me. He tells me I’m worth more than this and I can’t let myself be wasted. I have so much in me. So much the world needs to see.

Ruslana pulls the blankets off me and helps me out of bed, guiding me towards the shower.

“Come on, sweetheart. You’ll feel so much better after a shower, some fresh clothes and a bite to eat,” she says gently, helping me get undressed and turning on the water.