His lips were close to my ear, and he whispered:
“Natalia, trust me now. Trust me, please. I love you. You can hate me now, but someday...” He pushed me away to look into my eyes. “Someday very soon you will understand why I did what I did.”
My heart sank again, and I slipped to the floor. Alaric held my elbows and lowered me gently.
I felt the prick of a needle in my arm, and I should have felt alarmed, but instead I felt relief. Hopefully I could sleep through the rest of my life, I thought, instead of living this nightmare.
The drowsiness and the calming effect took over my thoughts almost immediately.
My body felt heavy, and Alaric got down on the floor in front of me as my heavy head tipped back. I couldn’t stop it—his hand caught it, holding me up. I started to talk.
I managed to get in, “I hate...”
But that was all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alaric
It had to be that way. I hated drugging her again—especially after Eric had given her a sedative. It was risky, but not as risky as having her freak out on the helicopter.
I had to leave her in the dark because I didn’t trust Eric as much as I probably could have. I trusted him enough to do what I asked—but that was only because I knew that more than anything, Eric wanted to be out of the game, and he played by the rules, and at this moment, it was more dangerous for him not to do what I asked than anything else.
But that was as far as I trusted Eric. Maybe he had bugged the place. Maybe all that would ever happen is that he would say something that led to the island. Maybe he had brought something with him to detect the position, something that couldn’t be jammed by my security system. The main thing was he knew about Natalia. And I didn’t trust him anymore.
I wondered if she had something important that she wanted to bring along with her. I took everything I could find that had been hers: her old purse, her clothes. It wasn’t easy to get her down to the boat, and I worried about her waking up before the helicopter trip.
I used the motor until we were far out on the sea, so that I could look back on everything I was leaving behind.
But when I turned back to the rising sunlight, and thought of the girl below deck and the life she carried inside of her, I knew I had made the right choice. I needed Natalia, and it was time to quit the game.
From the fishing village, due north, in a direction that no one has any reason to travel, there was a small rocky island that would be gone in a few years anyway. On it there was a helipad, and most of the time, there was a boat moored off its shores.
I had sailed the boat, my first sailboat, a thirty-foot Catalina, solid but hardly a luxury boat and barely large enough to fare the seas, back to my island after leaving my helicopter on the helipad. I had sunk it with a heavy heart, about a mile out from Orel Island.
I would sink the Sirena now, setting it out on a course due north with a small explosive charge set in the hull. She would sink, and no one would ever have any reason to look for her—just to know that she was gone.
I carried Natalia carefully and strapped her into the seat of the helicopter. I gave her a tiny dose of sedative—as much as I dared, but enough to keep her at least hopelessly sleepy in the back of the copter. I kissed her forehead, set the boat out to sea, and then climbed into the helicopter.
As I rose into the air, I watched the Sirena cutting through the growing waves in the high seas. She would sink, and that would be the end of the person I had been.
This was the beginning of a new life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Natalia
When I opened my eyes, a blinding white assailed my vision, so bright that I thought maybe I was in the hospital, being operated on.
I closed my eyes quickly and listened, and let my memories seep up the way they did, like water in a well, until I was full again of the past events, and my anger and sadness had returned.
I was on a soft surface now, and I could hear the crash of the waves and the sound of gulls. I could not imagine why the air was chilly, and the tropical smell I had become so used to was gone.
I twisted my wrists and ankles, and discovered I didn’t appear to be restrained.
I opened my eyes again and sat up.
A dizziness brought on by disorientation made me almost fall over again, but I braced myself against the pillows and stared at my surroundings, feeling like I did sometimes when I woke up from a nap in the evening and thought it was morning. There had to be an explanation for what I was seeing, but I couldn’t think of it.
Instead of glass and cool white stucco, the walls that surrounded me were a bright, cheerful yellow, and the windows were framed by solid dark wood. Bright sun poured in through them, but a grayish blue lurked outside of them.
I tumbled out of the bed, looking behind me at the large wood four-poster with white sheets and blankets on it, racking my brains for some memory of where I was. Or why.
I stumbled to the window.
I smelled smoke, and the air was crisp and woody, instead of tropical. I stared out the window.
A green carpet of grass stretched out in front of me, a blue-black sea beyond it. Everything seemed to shine with wetness and sunlight. I wiped my eyes and stared, and then I heard the sound of splitting wood. I guessed... I’d only ever heard the sound in a movie.
I found a door and stepped into a hallway of expensive wood and brightly colored walls. I passed a small kitchen, with an iron stove and a kettle on it. A large, pretty table took up most of the space, and a big window let out to a set of stone steps that led to the ground level.
The cold swept up from the floor when I opened the door and walked up the steps; not freezing cold, just colder than Orel Island, colder than I had been used to. The scent of burning wood grew stronger. I rounded the corner of the house—a large, stone house, beautiful, but completely different than the modern fortress on Orel Island.
My breath was taken away by a hillside, rolling away from the ocean view, to a lake, framed on all sides by breathtaking, snow-capped mountains. Everything was black or green, cool and stunning.
I was pretty sure I was in a dream. In a dream, where my feet were cold because in real life my feet were cold.
My breath moved in front of me as a mist.
There was a small house down the hillside, with a plume of smoke coming from its narrow chimney. Movement by it caught my eye.
And that’s when I knew I was dreaming, because she emerged from inside of it. Her long black hair was loose, and she was wrapped in a red shawl. A woman in white had her by the arm, and a strange, lyrical language came from where they were.
My heart did that same thing again, and I started to cry. This was just a dream, I thought bitterly. Lucy was dead and I was dreaming again.
I closed my eyes and tried to stay there, though, when I felt a hot, solid body against my back. The familiar movement of his fingers, as they pulled my hair from my neck and his lips landed on my skin.
“Forgive me, Natashka,” he whispered, and my eyes spilled over again. The thrill of his lips on my skin traveled straight to my core.
I sucked in a deep breath, and then I opened my eyes. Everything was just as it had been when I closed them. It all seemed so beautiful and real, especially Alaric’s body against mine, his fingers over my hand, his arm protective around me. I didn’t ever want to wake up. I sniffled.
“If you don’t like it,” he was saying, “give it some time. And then, if you still don’t like it, give me some time to find another place.”
I jerked around to face him, my mouth hanging open.
“I couldn’t tell you about this,” he said, pushing a strand of hair from my face. “I trusted Eric. But only so much.”
I looked back at Lucy.
“This is real,” I said. It came out less like a question than a statement.
“Is this real?” I whispered.
I turned back to him, holding my hand to my heart. �
��I thought you, I thought that... I hated you. You made me hate you so much! I don’t... why did you do that? Why would you do that?”
I struck him on the chest. I was angry again, though more relieved, and totally confused.
He took my hands in his, holding them still so easily that I shuddered. I had forgotten about the sheer strength of him, all the power that he kept coiled up so neatly.
He brought my hands to his lips. “I couldn’t tell you,” he whispered, and his breath traveled over my knuckles, up my arm, and made me shake from head to toe. “I needed you to hate me. I needed Eric to believe that Lucy was dead.”
I shook my head. I didn’t understand.
“Lucy is right over there. I have a nurse attending to her. I hope you like her, because getting another one would complicate our lives.”
I looked around. “Wh-where are we?”
“At the ends of the earth,” he said. “Patagonia.”
I shook my head again.
“We can always find another place,” he said, pulling me to him and bringing his mouth close to mine. “I will try to give you anything you want. But I like it here,” he added. “This is close to where I grew up. It’s beautiful. And very, very far away from everything.”
“So you...”
“I realized you would never forgive me if I got rid of Lucy. And I realized you would never be safe if Lucy was left where she was. And I realized... I wanted to become a better man. A different man. A good man. For you,” he paused, and put his hand on my stomach, “and for other reasons.”
“I don’t...” I managed to say. I was crying, but it was a different kind of crying than before. “I don’t know what... to say...”
Alaric looked concerned. “Please, Natalia, don’t cry,” he said quickly.
“I’m not... I’m not crying because...” I looked up at him. “I’m just so happy,” I said helplessly.
He brought my lips to his by gently pulling on my chin. He pressed his forehead to mine. “You always will be,” he said softly. “I promise.”
The End
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His for the Taking Page 15