At least this way I wouldn’t have to completely wipe my identity. I could still be me and have my family in my life. I could still find love on my own terms. Couldn’t I?
“But for how long?” Gio was silent for so long I was about to ask him again.
“My hope is once you’re out of the picture and untouchable, Carmine will move on to someone else. We’ve already given away one sister to form an alliance and a pretty fucking big one at that. If he thinks you’ve taken a vow to be a bride of Christ, he’s not gonna push it.”
Gio said that, but in his voice there was a slight undertone that told me maybe he didn’t know for sure.
But he was confident enough that I felt a little relief. I could do the convent route. Maybe stay there a year, and after that I’d be so far in everyone’s mind that they wouldn’t care what I was up to.
I didn’t ask Gio because I honestly didn’t want to know the truth. I didn’t want him to tell me I have to be there for two, three, or hell, maybe five years.
This was a win in my corner, so I took it.
Now I just had to tell Dmitry, which might very well be my last letter to him.
Chapter 23
Claudia
Dmitry,
I just realized I’ve been writing to you for five years. Can you believe that? Seems so… surreal.
So… what’s new with me? Oh God. Brace yourself.
Gio told me last week I have to get married. He picked out a few men, and back-to-back, they’ve come over for dinner and to do some kind of pissing contest. They were all assholes that lined up to be “interviewed” for my hand in marriage. It made me feel like a damn business transaction.
But I guess that’s what women in our world are.
It’s like some kind of barbaric ritual with these people.
They were all predictably disgusting. But it was the last one that had Gio realizing this wasn’t going to happen.
I feared he didn’t give a shit about how I felt, that I refused to marry some douchebag simply because he’d gotten orders from the higher-ups. Like I’m supposed to care about that?
I didn’t choose this life and won’t be used. I won’t be Amara, even if she’s happy and would do it all over again.
So, when the last one, an asshole named Fredo, took that mask of civility off when Gio wasn’t looking, the things he said to me… how he rubbed my hair between his fingers and smelled it… that was it for him.
I was ready to disappear and see no one I love again. That would have broken my heart, torn me in two, but being in an abusive, loveless marriage where I’m only seen as important because of my reproductive organs isn’t something I can allow.
We finally agreed I wasn’t being thrust into a forced marriage.
But his solution wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
A convent, Dmitry. He’s sending me to a convent in Vermont. Me taking a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience will put me in a religious protection where Carmine and anyone else are concerned.
I don’t even know if I’ll be able to contact you. So, this may be the last letter. Please know it wasn’t by choice if they stopped, but this has to be done. I have to leave, have to create this whole new life for me, because the alternative isn’t something I’ll ever allow myself to be put into.
Claudia
Chapter 24
Dmitry
She’d been writing to me for five years while I'd been stuck behind metal and wired glass as a prisoner in the Desolation Correctional Facility.
I’d been writing to her for the same time, yet I had only sent two letters out.
I told myself I was too old for Claudia, the younger sister of my brother’s wife. I tried convincing myself I could be a good man because I knew she was too innocent and vulnerable for the likes of me.
I was a toxic motherfucker for her.
I stared at the roll of loose-leaf papers held together with a rubber band, a cheap plastic pen shoved between them. I tightened my fingers around them until I heard them crinkle.
Malehnkaya ptichka.
That was what I’d called her in the letters, a fragile thing that was far too breakable, but I wanted to hold it even though I knew I’d crush it, regardless.
The letters had started five years prior.
I’d ignored them at first because what the fuck was I supposed to talk about with a then-fifteen year old?
I didn’t even know why she’d taken an interest in me, and the times I’d talked to my brother, Nikolai, since he was married to Claudia’s sister, he had known nothing about it.
I’d told him to shut that shit down and make his sister-in-law see that she was being stupid for talking and trying to connect with a damn convict.