VII (Seven)

by Lana Sky

  Faintly, I can hear shouting in the distance. Screaming.

  “What’s happening?” My voice comes out a dry croak.

  The man shoots me an odd look and once again fidgets with his headset. “Have medical standing by,” he mutters. “She’s injured—”

  “What’s happening?” My heart races as the man takes the steering wheel. Rather than head toward the house, he turns down the road. Toward Robert.

  “You’re safe now, miss,” he explains, his voice terse. “Mr. Winthorp decided to put an end to this little game once and for all.”

  That damn word—safe. From who? Mischa? With Robert?

  “Stop the car.”

  “What?”

  “Now!” It’s like another woman is speaking, not me. One who sounds so damn cold. Determined. She sounds like Mischa. “Now!”

  “Miss?” The man narrows his gaze and the van seems to move faster. We’re nearing a bend in the road. One that will take us beyond Mischa’s property and into the unknown. “We’ll be there soon enough—”

  “I said stop the car!”

  I lose my mind; that’s the only way to describe it. It’s like my consciousness detaches from my body. I can see myself lunging for the wheel, batting the man’s hands away. I can sense the vehicle swerve dangerously. Then a violent jolt as everything comes to a sudden stop.

  But it isn’t until I’m blinking up at an impassive night sky that I register the pain flooding my body. I taste blood. My ears ring so loudly that I can barely hear the telltale crunch of footsteps racing toward me. Something is still in my hand. Sharp. Jagged. Broken glass. Dazed and broken, I somehow manage to lift it, brushing the tip against my collar.

  Do I really have what it takes? Maybe I do. Anything to avoid returning to Robert…

  “Easy!” someone shouts, sounding nearby. “Easy…”

  I inhale sharply at the familiar accent and try to focus my vision in the speaker’s direction. “Vanya?”

  “Don’t speak.” Darkness descends as he drapes something over me. A coat? It smells like him: musk and smoke. “Just hold on to me. Hold on to me.”

  Chapter 21

  “Don’t get up too fast.”

  The warning comes as my eyes flutter open to an unfamiliar room. Tension laces my limbs, making them spring into action before I even fully regain consciousness. To run?

  Maybe not.

  Instead of a cell, I’m on a leather couch in a dimly lit room. Only a faint orange glow illuminates the weathered face of the man crouched beside me. Vanya. A cut on his forehead bleeds freely, and his left eye is partially shut and swelling fast.

  Shock erases my panic. “What happened?” I hear myself rasp. But hazy images are already flickering across my mind. Fire. Shouting. Robert’s men.

  “It was an ambush,” Vanya says gruffly. He rises to his feet, wincing, and starts to pace. “All I know is the goddamn house was on fire and we were being shot at like fish in a fucking barrel. I swear to god, if that bastard Medvedev—” He breaks off as if remembering I’m here.

  “Where’s Mischa?” A part of me steels myself for the obvious. He’s dead.

  “Mischa?” Vanya runs his hand across his face. “He’s—”

  The sound of squealing tires cuts him off, and Vanya lurches across the room to a window. I crane my neck to follow his gaze, catching the approach of a white van that skids to a stop near a rickety porch. The vehicle door flies open and Mischa jumps out, shouting.

  “Ivan! Come help! Now!” His blond hair casts a shadow over his features that makes him appear years older than he is. Blood streaks his jaw, and he looks more predatory than ever. Inhuman. I barely recognize him as he turns and lifts something from the floor of the van.

  Make that someone: a body, small and pale. The little girl.

  “Mother of God.” Vanya lumbers through the doorway as Mischa races toward the house. Somewhere beyond this room, a door opens, slamming against a firm surface. The floorboards shake as a stampede of men enters the room, led by a frantic Mischa.

  “Move!” He lunges toward the couch, placing a small body down beside me, forcing me to my feet.

  The girl. All I see is red. In her hair. On her face. Her chest.

  My mouth falls open in horror. “What happened?”

  “Don’t just fucking stand there!” Mischa cuts his gaze to me, and the ferocity in it takes my breath away. “Help me!”

  Instinct guides my motions. I sink to my knees, gritting my teeth against the pain, and reach for the nearest item I can find—a small throw pillow. Wadding it in both fists, I press it to the largest splotch of blood as my mind tries to process the culprit of such a wound.

  A knife?

  Gun?

  I must have asked the question out loud, because Mischa shoves my hands aside, his voice like thunder.

  “She was shot. Move!”

  His hands tear at the girl’s chest, ripping her shirt away to reveal the true extent of the wound: a gaping hole on her left shoulder, gushing blood. She’s still alive. My eyes track the fluttering motion of the pulse in her throat to ensure that much. But her eyes are closed, her breathing rapid and labored.

  “Help me,” Mischa snaps, raking his bloodied hands through his hair. “Fuck…”

  There’s no time to think. Plan. Something inside me takes hold and drives me closer to his side, submitting myself to his silent command: apply pressure with a wad of cloth he fished from seemingly nowhere. The girl moans when I press down, her eyelids fluttering.

  Gritting his teeth, Mischa barks an order over his shoulder to Vanya. Only after my brain tries to decipher it do I realize he spoke in another language. Russian? Whatever he said makes the older man move in between Mischa and me, forcing me farther from the chaos.

  Eventually, I find myself shoved beyond the room entirely, into a hall that opens onto a narrow room containing a bed and little else.

  Here, I listen to the noise seeping through the walls. More shouting. Hushed voices. A lone, plaintive, childish cry.

  Then nothing. The silence stretches on for what feels like an eternity, broken only by the eerie creaking of the old wood of the house. The stench of dust and musk irritates my nostrils, betraying the fact that this dwelling hasn’t been inhabited in a long time. Another safehouse?

  I don’t find any clues giving a definitive purpose. Just darkness and empty spaces. Eventually, the sounds of footsteps retreat down the hall and my heart kicks into overdrive. Hesitant, I linger near the door, unsure if I should exit the room myself in search of answers. In the end, the choice is made for me when the door opens from the outside.

  A shiver runs down my spine as Mischa advances a step, his head cocked to seek me out, his gaze piercing.

  “I suppose you’re happy now,” he says. “Your husband wants you back so badly, he’s willing to kill a child just to do it—”

  “Is she okay?” I can’t seem to breathe again until he finally nods.

  “For now,” he says, advancing another step. “Does that disappoint you?”

  I flinch, gritting my teeth against an impulsive reply. It’s what he wants, I realize. To fight. He wants anger and rage. He wants to feed off it. Exhausted and sore, I find that all I can do is sigh, noticing the reality of his exhaustion even his bravado can’t hide.

  “You’re covered in blood,” I croak.

  It paints him. The dark splotches almost seem like a part of his skin when seen through the darkness. I can smell it: salty musk that conjures unbearable memories. My fingers twitch, grasping at the air, and I approach the bed and snatch a ratty bit of cotton from one of the pillows. Balled in my fist, the fabric serves as a makeshift cloth.

  Mischa stares blankly as I approach him with the cloth held before me. Days ago, the look in his eye would have made me fall back. Maybe it’s the pain that drives me forward? I’m limping, inhaling sharply every time my foot connects with the floor.

  Even so, he looks worse.

  “Here…” My han
ds shake as I swipe at his chin with the edge of my makeshift rag. Stiff with disuse, the fabric barely soaks up any of the reddish liquid. I have to scrub, and scrub, and…

  “Enough!” Mischa wrenches from my grip, slapping my hand away.

  “Sit down.” My voice is a shallow whisper in the shadow of his, but he stiffens regardless.

  “Why?” he counters. “So you can have better access to my throat, Robert’s wife?”

  “No.” I swallow hard, clearing my throat. By some miracle, I’m still holding the cloth. “So that I can help clean the blood off of you before she wakes up and sees.”

  Something flashes across his gaze too quickly to identify. Shock, maybe? Like I’ve struck him. Perhaps I should. The boiling tension from the last few weeks feels like it’s building to a fever pitch beneath my skin, tainting every bit of muscle and bone. Violence is a tempting outlet.

  For me and for him.

  I gasp as he grips my wrist, which forces me to take a step closer. At the last second, he turns and winds up dragging me toward the rickety mattress in the corner. It expels a cloud of dust as he sits, flooding the already still air.

  “Before she wakes up,” he parrots, tugging me even closer. “But will she? Not if your husband has any say in that—”

  “I would never want to see the death of a child,” I snap, tugging my arm away.

  “Is that so?” His voice. He sounds too damn smug.

  Here and now, I can’t overlook yet another childish jab at my past. Not again. “You want to know?” Exasperated, I pose the question without thinking it through, and my heart pounds as if in protest. No, no, no. “Fine,” I rasp, despite myself. “I did have a baby. But he—”

  It’s like rocks lodge in my throat, formed from years of suppression. I don’t revisit these memories. Not even as every other vivid horror echoes on an endless loop. Never this. Maybe it’s the one way I’ve followed completely in Marnie’s footsteps: Some things are easier to ignore.

  Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply, fighting for the strength. I can’t think. Only speak. “Robert wanted the baby, at first.”

  It feels strange to say so out loud. Despite his overbearing possession and meticulous planning of our life together, the one-time reality shattered his façade, he welcomed it.

  “I think he thought it was a benefit to him.” The cold, detached woman speaking sounds like me. At the same time, I feel as much a listener as Mischa: spellbound by a story that sounds so foreign. Like it happened to someone else. “I didn’t—I was… I didn’t want him. Not right away.”

  I had nightmares, in fact. Of a tiny female or male Robert with soulless eyes. Horrible, terrible nightmares.

  “But then… I started to feel him.” My hand flutters to my stomach, chasing that phantom sensation. It’s so real to me, even now. A strong, insistent pressure, like reassurance. There was a chance that whatever was growing inside me could turn out to be just like Robert. But it was a chance. He deserved that chance.

  “My feelings changed. I think that’s when he started to resent it.”

  I recall the slow, deliberate increases in Robert’s coldness to me. The searching looks he’d cast my way. The narrowed, suspicious glances whenever he noticed me standing as I am now, with my fingers ghosting my belly.

  “It’s crazy… But I noticed that my meals would decrease in size. He took more maids—practically paraded them in front of me. He made—” I break off, brushing my fingers along my lips. Why? It could be the silence lingering in the wake of my confession. I don’t think he’s ever let me talk like this before—uninhibited, without a single cruel interruption.

  “What happened next?” he prods, but his voice lacks the venom I’m used to.

  “Robert got angry. I had an…accident, and he was stillborn,” I croak. “They took him away before I could even hold him. See him. I never got the chance…”

  I shake my head and lock the images away before they can descend.

  “I’ve never spoken about it before.”

  Mischa is silent for so long that I think he’s satisfied. Finally, he makes a low sound in his throat as if he just solved a tricky puzzle.

  “Robert. It was his name you call out in your sleep,” he deduces. “Not—”

  “Yes.” A dry swallow pushes the rest of the memories back. Turning to Mischa, I find him watching me, his expression more unreadable than ever. “Call me a bitch, or a whore, or Robert’s fucking wife—that’s fine. But don’t you dare for a second insinuate that I don’t know what pain feels like.”

  Fire sears across my vision. I’m blinking too rapidly to see. Just blurred smears of light and shadow. Swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand, I start toward where I guess the door to be.

  “Wait.”

  Shock lances through me as he snatches my arm and tugs me backward. Why? So he can rub my nose in more agony?

  “Here,” he grunts, and I jump as he presses something rough against my palm.

  My trembling fingers struggle to identify it: coarse, gritty, bloodstained fabric, I realize looking down. While I’m caught by his grip, he forces me to unfurl the rag and lift it to his jaw.

  Up this close, there’s no telling just who the blood belongs to. The girl? Him? Another? There’s just so damn much of it. I can taste the salt on my tongue, cloying there like so many spilled secrets and dark memories.

  Grunting, Mischa presses my hand to his cheek, issuing a silent command. Clean me up.

  I watch my hand contort and move seemingly on its own, rubbing ineffectively at the drying substance. He’ll need water and soap if he wants to make a real difference. Still, he makes me rub and scrub until he’s only symbolically clean.

  To him, maybe that’s enough.

  Chapter 22

  I don’t know how I fall asleep. Or where, exactly…

  Blinking, I let my exhausted brain piece together various clues like a faulty jigsaw puzzle. A looming ceiling. Dark, wooden floors. A dust-covered blanket shrouding my sore, aching limbs. I force my fingers to curl, grasping the edge of the stiff cotton. Vanya did it, his kindness striking once again.

  Telling myself that is the only way to keep my heartbeat steady enough for me to deduce the rest of my surroundings. I’m sitting directly on the hardwood floor. In a corner? A quick glance around reveals shadow broken by strips of yellow sunlight streaming in through boarded-up windows. The safehouse. I recall that much.

  Among other things.

  Like the man looming above me, standing so tall that he nearly blots out everything else.

  “Get up.” He sounds rough, but I can’t tell if it’s due to exhaustion or rage. He changed during the few hours I slept, exchanging his fatigues for a pair of dark pants and a gray shirt. His arms are bared beneath quartered sleeves, and in the dim lighting, his tattoos resemble tendrils of darkness attempting to swallow him whole.

  Cautiously, I rise to my feet, clinging to the wall for balance. I slept in the same room he cornered me in, tucked into a space across from the bed. Through the doorway, I can make out the couch in the other room. Did they move the girl during the night?

  “Look at me.” Mischa stops short of actually touching me, though his hand parts the air between us, ghosting the length of my jaw.

  “Is the girl okay?” I ask, ignoring the part of me aching to flinch. Cower. Run.

  “For now.” He cuts his eyes to the doorway. “She’s alive. But you and I need to talk about something else, Little Rose.” Two heavy steps bring him closer to the door, allowing him to easily slam it shut. Turning to face me, he rakes his gaze along my body, his eyes narrowing over what he finds. “You really want me to believe that little sob story you told?”

  I blink, more shocked than angry. Deep down, I’m not really surprised. Expect a monster to reason? Only a fool would be so naïve.

  “Of course not,” I spit back. “That might require some human compassion—”

  Rugged fingers capture the back of my hand and the rest of my in
sult dies on my tongue.

  “Compassion?” he wonders, tracing the line of a vein up my wrist.

  Paralyzed by disgust, I can only watch, hating the feel of his skin on mine. “Let me go.”

  “Let’s not play any more games.” Something in his voice draws my interest. It’s deeper than before. Tired. As if he stayed up all night, mulling this potential conversation over in his head. “No more lies. No more pretty word games. You give me what I want, and I will give you what you want.”

  My throat goes dry. Tentatively, I flick my tongue along my lips. “And what do I want?”

  He cocks his head back, and of all things to shape his mouth, this new expression is the most alarming yet. A dangerous, half-moon shaped smirk that conveys more than the malice I’m used to. It’s resigned. As if he’s confident that whatever he’s about to ask me to do, I’ll refuse. And he’s counting on it.

  “You want revenge, Little Rose,” he tells me. “Though I doubt you even realize—no.” He shakes his head, suddenly stern. “Don’t argue just yet. You want revenge on your husband, and I can give you that and more.”

  “But what do you want?” I demand, overlooking his assertion—for now. “You have his accounts. His secrets. I’ve told you everything I know—”

  “And that’s the problem.” The intensity in his voice makes my heartbeat stutter to nothing more than a thready pulse.

  He’s closer, leaning in to bring his mouth near my ear. His stench assaults me, heavy and ripe. I don’t think he’s bathed since last night and it shows: blood and musk.

  “I’ve drained your little skull dry, but it’s not your head I’m after.” Two of his fingers stab at my tangled hair, working their way through the matted strands. “It’s his. I want to know what makes him tick, Rose. I want to know the little secrets and fucking fears even you aren’t privy to. He thinks he can take me on? Well, I’m going to destroy that motherfucker from the inside out.”