I slam the door on Aleks and Jennifer and barely make it to the toilet in time.
As soon as I hit my knees, last night’s dinner comes up in a torrent. The heavy stink makes me retch again.
I heave until my insides roil with painful emptiness. I flush it all away and then lean against the cold tile, trying to stop the ache in my head and my heart from spreading elsewhere.
I know it’s a lost cause, though. His words are like splinters, burrowing inside of me, tearing from the inside out.
“She is nothing more than a weapon.”
“This marriage was not about emotion; it was about convenience.”
“Once her purpose is served, she’ll go back to her pathetic little life, and I can move on with mine.”
I lean back against the tiled wall of the bathroom and stare up at the ceiling. That’s what he’s waiting for—the moment when he can bury me in his past and forget I ever existed.
But if that really is true, then what was last night about?
He didn’t have to sleep with me. He didn’t have to touch me the way he did. But I could see it in his eyes: he wanted to be there with me.
In that moment, I was the only woman in the world.
I’m still feeling queasy, but I force myself off the bathroom floor and up to the sink. I wash out my mouth and face and head back into the bedroom.
I stop short when I realize it isn’t empty.
I shake my head. “Not now, Yulia.”
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Because I have no words to articulate the truth of how I’m feeling, I choose instead to collapse onto my bed face-first. A few seconds later, I feel the mattress shift.
I support myself on my elbows and look at Yulia. She’s sitting next to me. “I heard you throwing up in there,” she tells me.
“That was because of your son,” I say accusingly, even though I know it’s not fair to blame her.
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re pregnant?”
My brow creases immediately. “Of course not! I just… No, Jesus. He made me sick. Literally and figuratively.”
“What happened?”
“I heard a conversation he was having with Isab—with Jennifer,” I say. “I suppose it’s stuff I should already know. But I guess I’m still a little naïve.”
“You’ve developed feelings for him.” She sounds disappointed, but not surprised.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. Ideally, nothing. Silence is golden and all that.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Olivia. Sometimes, the universe has its way with us. And sometimes, people do.”
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes to try easing the throbbing. It doesn’t work. “The first day we met, he was different,” I murmur.
“He was playing a part.”
“Right,” I say. “Just like Jennifer was playing a part with Rob. With all of us. Guess the Lawrence clan makes for easy targets, eh?”
“You want to see the best in people. That’s not a bad thing.”
“It sure feels like shit.” I crack open one eye and give her a sad smile. “Thank you for that, though.”
She pats my hand. “You deserve to be treated better than this. You’re a good girl.”
My thoughts are racing. If I’m such a “good girl,” like everyone keeps telling me, then why did I have to go and fall for a monster? Maybe this is why I stayed clear of bad boys and risky choices, even when my heart was pulling me in that direction—because somewhere, deep down inside of me, I knew that I wasn’t capable of surviving this kind of heartbreak.
I can already feel the fissures he’s made inside me.
And it’s only going to get worse.
“I need to get away from him,” I whisper to myself.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
I like Yulia. A little part of me even trusts her. But at the end of the day, she’s still Aleks’s mother. And she’s made it clear on numerous occasions that, like it or not, she has to take his side.
Who’s to say I wouldn’t do the same for my own child?
“You miss them, don’t you?” she asks suddenly. “Your family.”
I nod. “All day, every day. I’m not used to not talking to them. I get on the phone with my mom and brother at least once or twice a week. And my sister and I text all day long.” I glance up at her. “Is it pathetic to need that kind of safety net?”
Pathetic. The word feels all the more painful because I heard it from his lips only moments ago. Only Aleksandr Makarova can make an already-cruel word sound so much crueler.
But Yulia just looks at me with a sympathetic expression. “It’s not pathetic at all, Olivia. I’ve always admired the people who can be alone but not feel lonely. For me, it’s always been the other way around.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “There are moments when I’ve felt lonely.”
“And what have you done about it?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I admit.
She raises her eyebrows. “That’s where you and I differ. I did everything in my power to reverse that feeling.”
“And did it work?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” she says. “But I’ll tell you this: even if it didn’t work, I never regretted the attempt.”
“Well, then, you’re a braver woman than me.”
“You keep saying that, but how do you know if you’re brave or not, darling?” Yulia asks me seriously. “You’ve never tried to be.”
Those words hit me sideways. I stare at her, but I’m not seeing Yulia—I’m seeing all the ways in which I failed to live the life that my father always encouraged me to live.
“Thank you, Yulia,” I say at last. “I never expected to find a friend here.”
“A friend, hm?” she says, repeating the word as though it’s foreign to her. “A friend…”
“Is it so hard to believe?”
“Harder than you could possibly know. But thank you. That means… well, you have no idea how much it means to me.”
A few minutes ago, I didn’t think there was any way to feel better. The ache still isn’t entirely gone.
But, little by little, it’s easing.
Then, just as I’m finding a little bit of light, my door opens and Aleks is standing there. His shadow arrows across the floor towards us like a silent threat.
Yulia and I both jump to standing at the same time. She looks alarmed by the incensed look on his face.
“Aleksandr, darl—”
“I need a word with Olivia. Alone.”
She glances towards me. “She’s not feeling very well. Maybe this isn’t the best time.”
I give her a grateful look, but she isn’t looking at me anymore. I don’t blame her. There’s something terrifying about him right now. His dark eyes burn, despite his outward calm. I can’t wrench my gaze away.
“Leave us,” he snaps.
Yulia turns to me apologetically. “Rest up, Olivia.”
She’s heading to the door, but as she passes by her son, he leans towards her and adds, “Wait for me in my office. I’ll be there shortly.”
“What’s wrong?” Yulia asks.
“I have something I need to tell you.”
She looks like she wants to request more of an explanation, but he dismisses her with a jerk of his head. She throws me one last backward glance and then she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
“Was that necessary?” I demand. “You don’t have to be so cold with her.”
“Best friends now, are you?”
I wonder where he gets off turning the tables on me. I’m the one who should be staring at him with that enraged look in my eye. He should be the one cowering in the shadows.
But I can’t even picture it. This man was not made to cower. This man was meant to control, dominate, lead. Nothing that happens will ever change his nature.
“What do you want?”
“What’s this about you being sick?” he asks.
“Why do you even care?”
Something flits across his face. Something alien that I’m not meant to see. Like the flash of a shooting star in the middle of an empty black sky.
“I don’t want you puking all over my tiles,” he mutters.
He says it with his usual disdain. But for the first time since I’ve met him, I don’t believe him. It sounds… brittle. At risk of crumbling altogether and revealing something living and breathing beneath it.
“Your tiles are fine.”
He strides forward and presses one huge hand to my forehead with a frown on his face.
I slap him away. “What are you doing?”
“Checking for fever.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“Funny you should point that out—I had a rough morning.”
He grimaces and passes a hand over his face. “I didn’t know you were listening,” he sighs.
I can’t help scoffing at that. “Would you have said something different if you knew?”
“Maybe. Fuck, I don’t know.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting for him to offer me something else. But he stays quiet. I take a deep breath, trying to find common ground where there’s none. Where there’s never been any.
“So the question is… did I hear the lie this morning?” I wonder out loud. “Or did Jennifer? Which side of the door saw the truth, Aleks?”
His anger doesn’t look quite so frightening anymore. He’s not sure of it himself.
He reaches for me again, but this time, it’s tender. He cups the side of my face. The gesture is so alarmingly sincere that tears spring to my eyes.
I don’t even care that he can see them, because under no circumstances am I breaking away from his touch. There’s magic in this wordless moment. I’m not too proud to admit that, despite everything, I’m falling into it.
“You are beautiful, you know that?” he says softly.
“Another lie?”
“No, kiska. I’ll never tell you another.”
Our bodies gravitate closer to one another. Magnetic. Chemical. Every bond on every level that says this is right.
But inside, something is screaming at me to tear away.
Didn’t I just make up my mind that I was going to try and be brave? I was going to try and escape? Because—despite my attraction to Aleks, despite the fact that my feelings for him are slowly evolving into something indisputably dangerous—I know we have no real future together.
How can I have a future with the man who threatened my family? Abducted me and forced me into marriage? Held me at ransom so that he could control my brother?
Sure, he may be innocent of the crimes my brother is accusing him of. But he’s still guilty of other crimes. Do I really want to be tainted by association? Do I really want…
My endless, scampering thoughts taper off when I look into his eyes. My heart thuds violently against my chest and all I want to do is kiss him.
Maybe, if we maintain this intoxicating eye contact long enough, he’ll kiss me the way he kissed me last night. With that all-consuming desire that made me feel like a queen.
Like his queen.
I’m about to throw caution to the wind. And so is he. I can see it in his eyes, in his quickening breath, in the heat emanating from his body.
Which is why, when he drops his hand and steps back away from me, I’m so surprised I almost tip forward. I catch myself just in time to stop from falling.
“I wouldn’t encourage a relationship with my mother,” Aleks warns me. His voice is gruff and cold once more.
“What?” I blink in confusion. “Why not?”
“She’s a lost soul. And she’s not in any position to be giving advice.”
“What makes you think she’s giving me advice at all?”
He just shrugs, as though that heated moment we shared only seconds ago never happened at all. He’s back to his normal self, all business and no emotion. “It’s in her nature.”
It makes me want to scream. But it’s a good reminder: the fairytale is only in my head. The reality will always be a disappointment in comparison.
“Is it in your nature to be so cold?” I demand. “So heartless?”
“Yes,” he says without batting an eye. “It’s how I was molded.”
“Then I feel sorry for the woman that ends up with you.”
“Careful,” he warns. “You might be that woman.”
“You promised to let me go eventually,” I remind him.
“If I am to live up to the low opinion you have of me,” he says, “then I may just have to break that promise.”
