The vows I’d made to Caterina hadn’tmeantanything to me—or at least I hadn’t thought that they did. I hadn’t bought her an engagement ring or said anything beyond the most traditional of vows because it had all been a means to an end, a situation of convenience, and nothing more.
But here, now, I feel a responsibility that I hadn’t known I would. She’s mywife, and that thought makes me feel something intense and primal, a rage at anyone who might touch her that I hadn’t expected. However hard I’d tried to keep my distance; clearly, I hadn’t done well enough. I feel an ache for her that goes beyond simple duty. As I lie back on my sleeping bag, I feel that pulse of desire from the dream as I remember the last night before she was taken.
She’d wanted me. She might deny it if I said it to her face, and it might never fucking happen again, but she’d wanted me that night. She’d been willing, soft, and yielding, and it had cracked open something in me that I thought I’d vaulted shut forever.
As much as I want to pretend she means nothing to me beyond the bargain that I made with Luca, I know that it’s not true.
I hadn’t thought I could fear losing someone again other than my children. But tonight, alone in the dark, I allow myself to admit the one thing that I’ve been avoiding for days.
Caterina has found the chink in my armor, found her way into the spaces I’d locked up tight.
And now, I’m afraid of losing her before I’ve even really had her.
CATERINA
When I wake up again, there’s no part of my body that doesn’t hurt.
It’s dark again, and I’m freezing cold. It’s hard to pry open my eyes—they must have been leaking tears when I was unconscious, and now my lashes feel frosted to my cheeks. My face feels swollen, and I taste blood inside my mouth, my entire body heavy and aching.
It takes a moment for me to realize that I’m outside, lying in a stand of trees, and a fresh horror washes over me as I realize that they must have thrown me out here after they knocked me out. I’m still dressed but barely, the top of my dress clinging to me by a few stubborn seams, and my skirt wrapped around the tops of my thighs.
I know I can’t stay out here, but the idea of going back in feels equally horrifying. I lay there in the dirt for a moment, trying to breathe, my hands still bound behind my back. I don’t even know how I would get to the door—I’d have to crawl without being able to use my hands, and the utter humiliation of it threatens to rip me apart at the seams.
Viktor, are you out there?I look up at the clear sky, stars swirling overhead, and I wonder where he is. Is he back in Moscow, trying to find out what’s happened to me? Is he out here somewhere in these woods, looking for me, staring up at the same sky and trying to follow the stars to wherever I am?
It’s such a ridiculous thought that I start to laugh, and then immediately stop with a small cry as a violent pain shoots through my head, sending a wash of red over my vision. I can feel the throbbing ache that follows it, shooting down through my neck and the rest of me, and I slump back down onto the ground, gasping.
Maybe he’s not coming. Maybe this is all his doing, and I’m going to die out here, after whatever the two stooges in there decide they want to do to me first.
I don’t think I can fight them off. They drugged me and beat me, and I wasn’t in the best of shape before this—too thin and still getting back to myself. I can fight back, but it’ll only make it worse in the end. That doesn’t mean Iwon’t—only that I know that it’ll be a futile attempt to save myself.
It’s a strange feeling, lying there in the cold and the dark, reckoning with the end of my life. Wherever this is going, whether they have someone to deliver me to or if they’re just toying with me until they end it themselves, I don’t doubt that it ends with a knife at my throat or a gun barrel to my head. I’d been terrified before with Franco, but I’d never really, truly believed I would die. I hadn’t thought, deep down, that he’d have the balls to kill me. And besides, I was the thing he needed to keep his power. Without me, he’d have been nothing, and he’d known it.
But now—I’m going to die. The knowledge seeps into my bones, chills my blood in a way that the cold air never could, and I let it settle over me as I try to think about what it means, to come to terms with it.
In the end, what do I have to leave behind exactly? Two children who aren’t mine, one who might love me but who are too young to remember me for long if I’m gone, and another who hates my guts. A husband who might be relieved to have me gone, if he hasn’t orchestrated my demise himself. No family left, and only one friend, one who I haven’t even known all that long.
That makes me sadder than the idea of death itself, the realization that there wouldn’t really be all that much for me to leave behind. No one to mourn me really, or miss me. Just a life spent doing the bidding of others, giving up everything I’d ever wanted to do what was expected of me.
It feels like such a waste. I hadn’t wanted to cry, but out here with no one to see me, the weight of hopelessness settling on my shoulders, I close my eyes and let a few of the tears drip down my cheeks.
At this point, I almost want it to just be over.
I’m not sure how much time passes before the door to the cabin opens. I’d relinquished any thoughts of trying to crawl back towards it myself—I can’t really with my hands bound. Anyway, I’d rather freeze to death than give Andrei or Stepan the pleasure of knowing I’d crawled back in to them. Freezing is better than anything they could have planned for me, anyway.
But eventually, the door does open, letting out a sliver of yellow light into the darkness. I hear the sound of their voices, but it’s garbled, which makes me wonder if they’ve done permanent damage to my eardrums in some way, with how Stepan had struck me. Andrei is the one who comes out to get me, heaving me up like a sack of potatoes without any care for my injuries. I don’t want to cry out—I don’t want to give him the satisfaction—but I can’t help it. Franco beat me badly more than once, but I’ve never felt anything like the white-hot pain that shoots through every part of my body as he roughly hauls me back into the cabin.
My hope is that they’ll toss me back onto the filthy bed and let me sleep. At this point, I’m so exhausted that I think I could sleep anywhere, regardless of the state it’s in, but I’m not that lucky.
Andrei sets me down, holding the cuffs around my wrists as a means of keeping me on my feet. Stepan strides towards me with a malicious gleam in his eye that chills my blood even more than it already is.
When I see the massive hunting knife in his hand, I want to throw up.
“Keep her still,” Stepan says gruffly to Andrei, stopping close enough in front of me that I can smell the foul onion scent of his breath as he speaks. He presses the point of the knife between my breasts, giving me a vicious smile that makes my stomach flip again, knotting until I nearly gag.
“This dress looks like it’s seen better days,” he says with a laugh, grunting as he pushes the knife into the fabric, hard enough that I have to force myself not to cry out from the pressure of the point pushing into my ribs. “I think it might as well come off. Don’t you, Andrei?”
Andrei shrugs, chuckling lasciviously. “Might as well see if what’s under it looks as good as we think it does.”