He shrugs. “I don’t have the energy for this conversation. Get into bed.” Seizing the moment, in case he changes his mind, she scuttles into the bedroom. There she slips off her boots and huddles on top of the bed farther away, turning her back on him.
She listens as he moves around the room, undressing and folding his clothes. Her anxiety mounts with each movement and with each sound. After an eternity the soft slap of his footsteps pad on the floor as he approaches her bed. He stands beside her, his breathing shallow, and she feels his eyes on her. Everywhere. She squeezes hers shut, pretending to sleep.
He tuts, and she hears the rustle of sheets and blankets, and to her surprise he drapes a blanket over her. He switches off the light, plunging the room into darkness, and the bed dips as he lies down.
No! He should be in the other bed.
She stiffens, but he’s beneath the covers while she’s on top. He puts his arm around her and shuffles closer. “I will know if you leave the bed,” he says, and he kisses her hair.
She recoils and clutches her little gold cross.
Soon his even breathing tells her that he’s asleep.
Alessia stares into the darkness she fears and wishes it would swallow her up. Her tears refuse to fall. She’s all cried out.
What is Maxim doing?
Is he missing me?
Is he with Caroline?
She sees Caroline in Maxim’s arms as he holds her close, and Alessia wants to scream.
* * *
Alessia is too warm, and someone is murmuring in the background. She cracks one eye open momentarily, bewildered as to where she might be.
No. No. No.
A wash of fear and despair fills her with anguish when she remembers.
Anatoli.
He’s on the phone in the other room. Alessia sits up and listens.
“She’s okay….No. Far from it…She’s reluctant to return home. I don’t understand it.” He’s talking to someone in Albanian, and he sounds confused and upset. “I don’t know….Maybe…There was a man. Her employer. The one who was mentioned in the e-mail.”
He’s talking about Maxim!
“She says she is just his cleaner, but I don’t know, Jak.”
Jak! He’s talking to my father!
“I love her so much. She’s so beautiful.”
What? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “love”!
“She hasn’t told me yet. But I want to know, too. Why would she leave?” His voice cracks. He’s emotional.
I left because of you!
She left to get as far away from him as she could.
“Yes. I will bring her back to you. I will make sure she’s unharmed.”
Alessia places her hands on her still-tender throat. What the hell? Unharmed?
He’s a liar.
“She’s safe with me.”
Ha! Alessia almost wants to laugh at the supreme irony of that statement.
“Tomorrow night…Yes…Good-bye.” She hears him move about the room, and suddenly he appears at the door wearing only his pants and an undershirt.
“You’re awake?” he says.
“Sadly, it would appear so.”
He gives her an odd look and chooses to ignore her comment. “There is some breakfast for you out here.”
“I’m not hungry.” Alessia feels reckless and bold. She doesn’t care anymore. Now that Maxim is out of harm’s way, she can behave as she wishes.
Anatoli rubs his chin and regards her thoughtfully. “Suit yourself,” he says. “We leave in twenty minutes. We have a long way to go.”
“I’m not going with you.”
He rolls his eyes. “Carissima, you have no choice. Don’t make this painful for both of us. Don’t you want to see your father and mother?”
Mama.
His eyebrows rise a fraction. He’s noticed the chink in her armor and, sensing victory, swoops in for the kill. “She misses you.”
She rises out of bed and sullenly grabs her bag and, skirting him as widely as she can, heads into the bathroom to wash and change.
Under the shower an idea begins to form in her head.
She has her money. Maybe she should return to Albania. She can get a new passport—and a visa—and return to England.
Maybe I should stay alive.
And as she briskly towel-dries her hair, she feels a new sense of purpose.
She will get back to Maxim. And see for herself. See if everything they shared was a lie.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alessia dozes in the front seat. They are on an autobahn traveling way too fast. They’ve been driving for hours, through France, through Belgium, and she thinks they’re now somewhere in Germany. It’s a cold, wet, winter day, and the landscape is flat and bleak, reflecting Alessia’s mood. No. She feels more than bleak—she’s desolate.
Anatoli seems grimly determined to get to Albania as fast as possible. At the moment he’s listening to a German talk show on the radio, which Alessia doesn’t understand. The monotony of the voices, the constant rumble of road noise, and the dreary countryside are all dulling her senses. Sleep is what she wants. When she’s asleep, her anguish is a low hum, like static on the radio. It’s not the searing pain that tears at her heart when she’s conscious.
She turns her mind to Maxim.
And the pain amplifies.
Stop. It’s too much.
She looks through tired eyes at her “betrothed,” studying him. His face is hardened in concentration as the Mercedes eats up the miles. His complexion is fair, betraying his northern Italian roots—his nose straight, his lips full, and his blond hair, uncommon in her town, is long and unkempt. Alessia can look at him dispassionately and judge him to be a handsome man. But those lips have a cruel twist to them, and those eyes are piercing and cold when he’s glaring at her.
She remembers when she first met him. How charming he’d been. Her father had told her that Anatoli was an international businessman. During that first meeting, he’d seemed so dashing and knowledgeable. He was well traveled, and she’d listened rapt to his stories of Croatia, Italy, and Greece—these faraway places. She’d been shy, but pleased that her father had selected such an erudite man for her.
Little had she known.
After she had met him a few times, she started to see flashes of the man he really was. His irrational anger at the local children who’d surrounded his car out of curious wonder when he came to visit, his temper when arguing with her father about politics, and his sly admiration when her father scolded her mother for spilling some raki. The signs were there, and he’d rebuked Alessia a few times, too, but his true nature had been constrained by social etiquette.
It was at a local dignitary’s wedding, where Alessia was playing the piano, that Anatoli finally revealed his dark side. Two young men, whom she had known at school, lingered when she finished playing. They flirted with her until Anatoli managed to usher her into a side room, away from them and the festivities. Alessia, secretly thrilled, had thought he wanted to steal a kiss, since it was the first time they’d been alone together. But no—Anatoli was furious. He slapped her hard across her face, twice. It was a shock, even though living with her father had prepared her for physical anger.
The second time it happened, she was at the school. A young man came to ask her a couple of questions after her recital. Anatoli chased him away and drag
ged her into the cloakroom. There he hit her a couple of times and grabbed her hands and pulled back her fingers and threatened to break them if he ever caught her flirting again. She’d begged him to stop, and mercifully he had, but he’d pushed her to the floor and left her sobbing in that room, alone.
That first time, she kept his attack a secret. She excused it. It was a one-off. She had misbehaved. She had encouraged the young men by smiling at them.
The second time Alessia was devastated.
She’d thought that maybe she could break the cycle of violence that beset her mother, but it was her mother who’d found her while she lay curled up, sobbing and trembling, on the floor.
I don’t want you to go through your life with a violent man.
They’d wept together.
And her mother had taken action.
But it was all for naught.
Now here she is—with him.
Anatoli gives her a sideways look. “What is it?”
Alessia averts her eyes, ignoring him, and stares out the window.
“We should stop. I’m hungry, and you’ve not eaten,” he says.
She continues to ignore him, though hunger claws at her stomach, reminding her of her six-day walk to Brentford.
“Alessia!” he barks, making her jump.
She turns to him. “What?”
“I’m talking to you.”
She shrugs. “You’ve kidnapped me. I don’t want to be with you, and you expect conversation?”
“I didn’t know you could be this disagreeable,” Anatoli mutters.
“I’m just getting started.”
Anatoli’s mouth twitches—and to her surprise he seems amused. “I can say this about you, carissima, you are not boring.” He flicks the turn signal, and they pull off the autobahn into a service area. “There’s a café here. Let’s get something to eat.”