Page 126 of Scarlet Vows

When we hang up, I sit.

In this game, when I’m walking in at the top, I can’t trust anyone. Naivete doesn’t work.

So I asked him to look into Melor.

He’ll turn up nothing, I’m sure. Out of everyone, if I take Santo out of the game, the only other person who has anything to gain from my demise is Melor.

“Let’s just hope I’m wrong.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

ALINA

I’m notsure what time it is, but I’m in a cocoon. Albert’s huffing, squeezed in between me and Ilya. He sits up as I wake, his paws on my hip.

He climbs over me, letting Ilya move so that he presses in against me. The sheet slides with Albert as he parks himself on the other side of me, and in the dark, he stares at me anxiously.

“Do you need to go for a walk?” I whisper.

There’s a pad in the laundry room, and we now have a doggy door for him. Before the events of the other night where the job Ilya did went horribly wrong, Ilya managed to have someone fit it.

Probably when I was at the shelter.

I don’t think it’s that, though. Albert’s never gone in the house; the pad’s the same one Ilya first put down. He’s a good little dog, one who’s been well trained.

I pet his soft fur, and he whines a little, flopping down, but his anxious look remains.

It’s weird being in this masculine room, one that doesn’t have a woman’s touch. I’m pretty sure the bed’s Ilya’s, the onefrom his little duplex, as is the furniture. I really need to redo the upstairs, make it more palatable to our modern tastes, or to mine anyway.

I’d leave Ilya’s study alone, but here, if we’re to share this, then…

Maybe we’d have my room.

My heart starts to beat hard, and everything shifts, like I’ve put one foot into two different realities.

Max and I planned on getting either a little house in Old Town or somewhere similar. We would do it up, have an office for him, and I’d find what it was I wanted to do…

And now I’m planning on doing the same with Ilya.

Moving on with Ilya.

No, it’s like I’ve just gone and done that, full speed ahead, sleeping in his bed like Max never was?—

I stop myself.

Breathe.

Once in therapy, Carol told me in my future, when I met someone else—and she emphasizedwhen, explicitly told me when, not if—I’d have moments that felt surreal, back-slips, and phantom guilt.

Is this what that is?

For me, there was justice, I suppose, with Demyan taking down all the ones he deemed responsible for Max’s death.

But by my hand? No. Demyan doesn’t know, but Max and I did some self-defense before that. I learned to shoot, too, not that I carry a gun.

And all of that did nothing.

I hate the world that got Max killed. That puts every one of us in danger. The world Ilya loves and Demyan was born for.