“You made me a slave.”
“I gave you everything. I gave you the life of a Mikhailov.”
Ezra makes a derisive sound but doesn’t interrupt.
I drop to my knees, just so I can lean over Nikolai and show him the rage on my face. “I would rather die than have the life of a Mikhailov.”
He chuckles, but it cuts off abruptly with a stuttering breath. “Rabynya, that is the exact choice you must make. And you must make it in a hurry. I think I might be dying.”
I glance at Ezra and we share a look of confusion. “What are you saying?”
“How have you been feeling?” Nikolai asks.
“What?”
“Have you seen a doctor? Have any blood tests been done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We make our money stealing and selling human lives...but we control each other with lies and secrets.”
Ezra steps closer. “What are you trying to say?”
“I put a lie in Vigo’s contract,” Nikolai groans, crow’s feet wrinkling at the corners of his eyes as he squeezes them shut in pain.
Good.
I want him to feel pain.
“What was the lie?” I demand.
“I’m sure if you think about it enough,” Nikolai coughs, “you’ll figure it out. Maybe in time the truth will grow on you.”
What the hell does that even mean?
I shoot to my feet, enraged, indignant, fucking tired of him and the games he plays with my head. But I’m so tired and weak, so hungry, so thirsty, so out of my mind with suffering that I feel immediately light-headed and I stumble to catch my balance. I veer sideways. Ezra’s at my side in an instant, catching me around the waist, and righting me.
I look up at him and a green spark catches fire in his eyes. It lights my skin in flames that refuse to be ignored. In the mad rush from Ezra saving my life to fleeing the Vittoris, I hadn’t taken a moment to let it hit me that Ezra is with me.
We’re together and alive and safe for the moment.
He swallows as he ignites me with his fire and the heat is almost too much to bear. My mind is already overloaded, and my body can’t take much more stress. Nikolai is talking in riddles that only induce further frustration. I want answers, yet I don’t. I feel jittery and anxious and completely overwhelmed. The touch of Ezra’s hands on the small of my back makes me tremble.
It’s too much.
It’s too fucking much.
I gently push Ezra’s hands from me and scoot around him, storming off to the back of the plane. I slide open the door to the small bedroom, marching past the bed Nikolai has fucked me on more times than I can count, and enter the bathroom just beyond it. I slide the accordion door shut behind me. The bathroom is small, but not tiny like a commercial airline bathroom. There’s enough space in here to pace three small steps from one end to the other.
I bend over the sink, gripping the rounded counter’s edge as I breathe heavily, trying to get control of my rising panic before it grips me. I slowly lift my head and take in my appearance in the mirror above the small sink. I’ve never looked so awful. My cheeks are hollow, skin sallow, hair wet and matted from being trapped in Vigo’s tub.
But worst of all is the red.
Vigo’s blood coats my skin and stains the white shirt.
I look down at the buttons and suddenly remember that this is Vigo’s shirt.
I’m wearing Vigo’s shirt and it’s covered in his blood because I killed him.
I shot him.
I killed him.
Oh, God…
My skin is suddenly crawling for me to get it off, and my fingers fumble, trembling as I reach to unbutton the shirt.
Get it off.
Get. It. Off.
The bathroom door slides open and shuts again, but I don’t even look up.
“Anya.” I hear Ezra’s voice.
“Get it off me.” One button comes free and I fumble for the next, trying and trying, but my fingers keep slipping. “Get it off me. Get his shirt off me!”
“Anya, stop.”
Ezra reaches for the buttons to help me, but I’m out of my mind. It only feels as though he’s trying to interfere, and I push his hands away as I keep struggling to unbutton this godforsaken shirt.
Are there a hundred fucking buttons on this shirt?!
“Anya.” He snatches my wrists. “Stop. Let me help you.”
I don’t hear him trying to help me; I only feel him stopping me. I yank free from his grip and slap his hands away, then reach for another button. My whole body shakes as this overwhelming agitation takes over and I can’t stop it.
I can’t stop it.
I need Ezra to stop it.
“Fuck. Please,” I beg, words failing me.
In a rush, he’s in my space, hands grasping the hem of the shirt that reaches halfway down my thighs. His fingers brush my skin and the jolt of lightning startles me into stillness. He lifts the oversized shirt, peeling it up my body.
“Arms up,” he says to me.
In this sudden stillness that he’s sparked with his touch, my mind can listen, and I obey.
I raise my arms and he peels the shirt from my body, tossing it behind him on the floor. I would feel stupid for not thinking to do that myself if it weren’t for the fact that I’m so acutely aware of his presence, his heat, his power that poses no threat but only exists to care for me.
He pulls several paper towels from the dispenser beside the sink and wets them in the slow-running faucet. Without being asked, he wipes the blood from my skin. He cleanses me without command because he loves me.
I stand still as he wipes my face clean. His movements are gentle, though the paper is rough against my skin. My panicked breaths begin to slow as I watch him work. His brows slant inward, wrinkling his forehead with a look that’s focused and caring and worried.
He’s worried about me.
He should be worried about me.
I’m worried about me.
I let out a breath as my heartbeat wills itself to steady, to calm, to slow. I sigh as he moves from cleaning my cheeks, drawing the towel down to my neck. He scrubs across the hollow of my throat and I swallow hard. His eyes flick upward and meet mine, and we catch on a beat of nothingness.
It’s that beautiful nothingness where no mental or physical anguish exists—it’s only the two of us and everything is perfect because there is nothing else.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him as he curves around to the side of my neck.