“You lied?” My eyebrows lift, my hands fall hard onto my lap, and I nearly laugh. “Shocking.”
“Tell her,” Nikolai says to Ezra, panting, suffering.
Good.
Let the bastard suffer.
Ezra closes his eyes for a beat. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “Nikolai wrote in the contract that you were infertile. That you couldn’t get pregnant.”
“He what?”
“He lied to Vigo. The last birth control shot Nikolai had the doctor give you was three months before he sold you. You’ve been…” Ezra hesitates. “You’ve been off birth control for the past six months. The last shot would’ve worn off just before Vigo took you.”
My nervous systems stutters and every muscle in my body freezes. I’m stuck in place for what feels like hours, though I know it’s only moments. Suddenly I feel trapped inside my mind because what I’ve just heard is outrageous.
Absurd.
Laughable, really, though it’s not funny at all.
I blink and my eyelids linger shut for beats longer than normal. When I open them again, I look down at Nikolai, my mouth open wide in misunderstanding and confusion.
When I speak, my words are measured, slow, so there is no possible way they can be misunderstood. “Did you want me to get pregnant with that monster’s child? Is that what you wanted, Nikolai? Tell me. Tell me!” I shout.
“I wanted to punish you, rabynya.”
I slap him.
Then I slap him again.
I punch his shoulder, his chest, his stomach, and he groans in pain when I do.
“I’m sorry,” he grunts. “I’m sorry, Anya. It was a mistake. I tried to make it right.”
“Oh, you tried? Tried how?” I laugh. “Tell me, Nikolai, how did you try to make it right?”
“At the Leblancs’.”
I tried to kill myself at their last quarterly meeting three months ago. I’d been caught by Vigo before I could do it and they went to the board to decide my punishment. Ezra and I had been locked together while our fate was decided. Ezra and I had made love there.
But then Nikolai took me for the night to serve my punishment by giving me pleasure that I didn’t want. He fucked me over and over again that night.
That’s how he tried to make it right?
I don’t understand…
I don’t….
Oh, God.
“I’ve been sick.” I lift my head and meet Ezra’s solemn green eyes. “I thought it was from malnourishment. I don’t remember having a period…Oh, God. Ezra.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Ezra says to me. “It’s all gonna be okay.”
I feel composed and frantic all at once, my brain faltering and restarting again and again.
“Am I pregnant? I can’t be pregnant. There’s no way. With the stress my body’s been through? No. No. It’s not possible.”
“Letter,” Nikolai hardly gets the word out. “Lid.”
“What?”
Ezra nods toward the lid of the box beside me on the floor and I reach for it, flipping it over. On the underside is a small envelope taped to the lid. I pull it free and tear it open. My hands shake as I look at the handwritten letter. The date at the top tells me it was written last week.
It’s Nikolai’s handwriting, all in Russian.
It’s a letter he wrote to me.
Dear Anya,
I don’t know if I will ever give you this letter. But if you’re reading it, then please know that I do feel regret—not for making you mine, but for selling you out of anger.
I gave you everything you could have ever needed. But I’m starting to understand now that I never gave you what you wanted. I wanted you to have your pet. I would have let you love each other if only you had both loved me.
Ezra was the perfect fit. The pet that would have given you the happiness you deserved while I was away. If only you had both obeyed. If only you had both recognized your true master. We all could have found our happiness together.
There’s emptiness in this home without you. I know I hurt you. I wanted to hurt you. I’ve become obsessed with hurting you. But when you hurt me by bringing Ezra into your bed against my orders, I couldn’t stand to look at you.
But I missed you only hours after you had gone.
It was a mistake to sell you to Vigo.
If the gods see fit to bless me with your child, I will take you back, claim you forever, and try to be better.
I suppose I never learned how to show it, but I do love you, Anya. Please forgive me.
Yours,
Nikolai
The paper crumples in my hand and it forms creases on my heart.
Chapter 4
Nikolai
I am the devil.
Destroyer of destinies.
Keeper of souls.
Lord of chaos and king of torment.
But if I’m to go down in my own hellfire—in the flames I willed to burn around me—then I’m glad that this is the way it had to happen. Ezra was the spark that ignited Anya in a white-hot blaze, and I was the one who poured the fuel that fed their fire.
I did this to them, and it ruined me.
There is no redemption for me.
I may have stolen Anya back from the Vittoris, but she’s no longer mine. She gave her heart to Ezra, and I have no one to blame for that but myself. They don’t know that they each hold half of my heart in their hands, and I feel them squeezing the life force out of me with their love for each other. They grow stronger together while I burn to ashes at their feet.
I’m tired of the ache, the longing, the inability to master them and make them honor me the way they were meant to. My whole life has been a carefully crafted series of lies and manipulations, and I’m sick of the fight, the fear, the loneliness.
I’m ready to burn for them.
I’m ready to burn because of them.
It’s time for me to go down in a blaze and return to hell where I belong.
Chapter 5
Ezra
Nikolai’s pulse is fading. I could feel it pulsing when I gripped his hand, but now it’s unrecognizable. With my free hand, I press two fingers to his wrist. I think I feel something there, but it’s faint and slow.
I glance up at Anya, who is reading the letter, and though I don’t know what it says, her emotions are precisely etched into her expression. One of her hands rises from the crumpled letter and she covers her mouth, fresh tears spilling from her wide blue eyes.