Page 135 of Stolen Empire

The water beats against my skin like absolution, washing away the blood and sweat and fear of the past thirty-six hours.

I stand under the heat until my skin turns pink and my fingers prune, letting the steam fill my lungs and the sound of water drown out the questions circling in my mind.

When I finally turn off the water and step out, I feel fractionally more human.

I find a pair of Dimitri's boxers and one of his shirts in his closet and pull them on.

The shirt hangs to my thighs and smells like him, like expensive cologne and clean laundry.

The scent makes my chest ache with emotion I can’t even admit to right now.

I curl up on his couch with my knees pulled to my chest and let myself think about all the things I’ve been avoiding.

My mother is still in Perm, living under a false name with a husband who probably knows nothing about her real past.

Does she think about me?

Does she wonder if I’m safe, or has she convinced herself that staying away is the kindest thing she can do?

I’ve not called her since I moved to Moscow.

I told myself it was better this way, that I was more stable without her, but I turned out worse than her.

But now I wonder if she knew this would happen.

If she saw the trajectory of my life and recognized the patterns from her own.

Maybe that's why she tried so hard to hide me, because she knew no matter how far we ran, the past would eventually catch up.

I think about my father and try to remember him as something more than fragments.

What kind of man makes pacts with people like Dimitri's father?

What kind of man lives a life so dangerous that his widow has to erase his name and disappear into the margins of society?

I want to ask my mother these questions, but I’m not sure I’ll like the answers.

And then there's Dimitri himself, pacing through my thoughts like he paces through his apartment.

I don’t know what to do with the feelings that rise up when I think about him.

They're too large and complicated, tangled up with fear and desire.

He saved my life.

He killed for me without hesitation.

He holds me like I’m something precious and rare, even though I’ve brought nothing but trouble to his door.

I don’t know if what I feel for him is real or if it’s just the intensity of our circumstances warping everything into something bigger than it should be.

I don’t know if he feels the same pull toward me or if I’m just another obligation he has to manage, another piece of his world that needs to be controlled and protected.

But I know that when he looks at me, something inside me settles.

When he touches me, the chaos in my head goes quiet.

When he tells me I’m his, I want to believe him even though I know better than to trust promises made by men who live in the shadows.