I need to send him away. He’s a predatory shark amongst delicate fishes. His sickness means he won’t be able to help himself. His predilection for young girls is the worst kind of secret, closely followed by the repulsion of sharing his bed. I was forced to endure it until he made sure I was pregnant, but the parts he shattered in that time hurt me more than my scars. When Frankie comes for me. If he ever comes for me. He’ll find a wreck behind my walls.
“Why’s that, meelaya? Do you not want your precious students to know you are more of a black swan than a white one?” He saunters towards me, mocking me with his words and his presence.
He hasn’t changed much in fourteen years. He’s a little thicker around the middle, which is more spread than muscle, but his eyes are still cold and callous.
“At least at thirty years old I’m not a minor.”
His expression darkens as he closes the gap between us. Wrapping his huge fingers around my throat, he walks me backwards and slams me against the mirrored wall.
“This would be a good place to fuck,” he surmises, licking his lips and glancing at his reflection above me. “I will be quick. For old time’s sake.”
My stomach heaves as I whip my head to the side to block out the repulsive sight of him—tensing as he thrusts his hand between my legs—feeling nothing but hate and shame. I’m dead inside to anything else, and he’s the man who made me this way.
“Get off me, Kirill.” I try to pull away but get my head slammed back against the mirrored wall in punishment.
“Have you seen him?”
“Who?” I gasp out, the edges of my sight blurring.
“Your lover.”
He says it like a death threat, and God knows he means it as one, yet somehow despite my dizziness, I manage to feign shock. He’s never asked me about the mysterious books that kept showing up until five months ago. He doesn’t know that Frankie found a way to tell me he’s alive.
“You said you’d killed him.” My voice is little more than a croak. “That night in the basement.”
He chuckles darkly. “We left him as close to death as a man can be.” He brings his face up even closer and I shrink back into the mirror. “We took turns to piss on him at the end, meelaya. All nine of us. We made sure that Italian fire was extinguished before we left.”
Nausea swells up inside me again. “You lied to me.”
“Did you mourn him?”
“I mourn a lot of things about my life.”
“Then I am here to lighten your burden. Francesco Lastra has been living in Monaco for the last few years with his adopted brother.” His eyes are drilling into me as he says it, feasting on my slightest reaction like that hungry shark again. “Do you know what else is in Monaco, Ada? Women… The finest women in the world outside of Russia. I hear Lastra has developed quite a taste for them. Two…three a night… Every night… Filling them with his filthy mafia seed as they beg and scream for it.” He chuckles again. “And you call me the animal?”
That bullet starts ricocheting through my heart again, blasting holes, making me bleed red agony.
Books, I tell myself hazily. If he didn’t care about me anymore, he wouldn’t have sent me all those books.
But he stopped.
Five months ago.
Have I lost him?
Have I truly lost everything now?
“Say you’re right,” I rasp, forcing myself to confront my worst fears. “Say he is alive. Why would he come back for me? And why now after fourteen years?”
You should have let me go, Frankie. You’ll hate me when I tell you what I’ve done, and that look as it passes across your face will be a permanent shadow across my sun.
“This is true.” He drops his hand from between my legs with a look of contempt. I can tell there’s not a flicker of life in his cock, either. We’re dead to each other, yet here we are: trapped in this twisted, loveless, hate-filled net of a forced marriage. “There is nothing left of you that could satisfy a man, Ada. You are like an old whore: scarred, lame, and used up. I doubt you could even bear his child.”
“You tried to have me sterilized against my will!”
“You don’t even see the boy that you do have.”
Alex.
“And who’s fault is that?”
Kirill releases me and wipes his hand down the front of his black jacket, like he’s been caught touching something unclean.
Scarred.
Lame.
Used up.
His vicious words are seeping in through my cracks and filtering down into my ruins.
“Alex is in the car outside, Ada, but he will never see you. I have told him everything he needs to know about you. The boy is a man now and he has his own thoughts. You disgust him. As far as he is concerned, his pig of a mother died in childbirth.”
“You bastard,” I whisper again, fighting the urge to run to the fire exit, fly down the stairs, rip open the car door, and tell my son the truth.
But there was an agreement brokered within days of his birth. I did what I could to save him.
Still, to be this close…
“Just go, Kirill.” I slump defeated against the mirrored wall.
“Da,” he sneers, waving me away. “It was a waste of time coming here. Lastra got out of jail three days ago. If his love for you was so great, he would have contacted you already.”
Frankie’s been in jail?
“Goodbye, wife.” He clears his throat, aiming a parting shot of contempt at my feet, mottling the toes of my black leather dance shoes with his spit. “O’Sullivan has ordered you to join us at Ashton Racecourse on Thursday afternoon. One of his horses is running, and there are…various business reasons that require your attendance. I suggest you obey unless you want us to burn this studio down to the ground.”
“Kirill—”
“Here.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a cheap red lighter and tosses it onto the floor between us. “Next time there will be a flame, eh?”
“Fine,” I whisper. “I’ll be there.”
I’m dreading every minute of it already.
When the door slams shut, my aching legs give way, and I end up a crumpled, unwanted heap on the floor. Time breeds false hope, but it always ends with doubt.
Hugging my swollen knees to my chest, I think about butterflies crushing their once-beautiful wings against that glass. I picture all the other women he’s been with, faceless beauties with no surgical scars who can offer him the lightness he deserves, when all I have is weight. I tumble headfirst into a pool of self-pity until I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder.
“Miss Rivers? Um, are you okay?”
One of my eleven-year-olds from my next class is staring down at me, aghast, like I’m a puppy she’s kicked by accident.
“Oh, my God, is that the time?” Reaching for the ballet barre, I pull myself up and brush away my cracked composure. “I thought I’d lost an earring, Candice. I’m so silly. Are the rest of the girls ready?”
“I’m early, Miss Rivers. No one else is here yet. By the way, this just came for you.” She holds out a slim brown package to me.
“What is it?” I say, taking it from her.
“I don’t know. There was a man on the pavement downstairs. He gave it to my mum. Said you’d dropped it a while back and that it was time to return it. We figured it must be something for the studio. I’ll go and get my dance shoes on, shall I?”