56

Sasha
We’re not at the type of hotel with food service, but Pavel orders delivery of donuts and coffee. I think they’re mostly for himself, but he got a half dozen, and after eating, he tosses the bag onto the bed where my mother and I are still huddled.
He didn’t sleep in the bed. I’m not sure he slept at all, but he doesn’t look tired. He looks exactly the same. Indifferent. Casual. Lethal. So jaded for a man so young.
We spent the morning in silence. I’m too afraid to appeal to him again, like I’m afraid of using up my only chance to fix this.
Is it even fixable?
The dread in my gut tells me no, but I can’t accept that.
Pavel’s phone rings, and he answers it. “Yeah. Got it.” He stands. “Nikolai is bringing your shit, and I’m leaving. You’re on your own. Maxim says you can stay dead and keep your fortune, as long as neither of you ever show your faces to anyone in this cell again. Got it?”
I stand up. “No.”
He cocks his head, disbelief and scorn mingling on his expression. “No?”
Now that I know they don’t intend to kill my mother, I can finally move. Can finally function and make a choice. “I need to see Maxim and explain things. I don’t want to stay dead. I want to go back.”
“Sasha!” my mother barks. “What are you doing?” She also climbs off the bed, walking around behind me.
For as long as I can remember, my mom has made me believe she’s done everything for me. That she and I were on the same team, conspiring against the outside world. Against the men. Growing up, she made sure we were well taken care of, and she also made sure I knew it was through her efforts.
She showed me all her tricks. Explained why she needed me to be a good little girl and wait in my room while she seduced my father again and again, night after night. When I was older, why I should stop asking him to let me go to America for college. Why I needed to act more like her.
For whatever reason, I rebelled against my father, but I never rebelled against her. I guess she made it seem like she and I were in the same boat.
Now, for the first time in my life I take a stand against her. “It was my money, Mama.” The words sound awful to my ears, and my mother recoils, but it’s the truth. My father didn’t trust me with my inheritance, so he gave it to Maxim. Now my mother’s taken it from me.
And if I had to choose between being controlled by Maxim or my mom… I’d take Maxim any day.
“You told me Maxim and Ravil wanted to steal it, but you were the one who wanted to take it from me.”
My mother slaps me across the face, hard.
My eyes smart, and Maxim’s words come back to me, like a horrible taunt-a bitter reminder of what I’ve lost.
No one will ever slap your face again-this I promise you. Not if they want to live.
“I did this for you, you ungrateful brat!” My mother snarls. “We could have killed you for real in that car.” She jabs a finger at me. “That’s how I would take your money, if that had been my desire. It would’ve been far more simple. And Viktor would still be alive for me to enjoy it with!”
I stare at her, fighting back the weight of grief that washes over me. Not from this conversation, but from a lifetime of knowing subconsciously that my mother truly didn’t love me, except as an extension of herself. That I was a pawn in her game against Igor for his money. Nothing more.
She spreads her arms wide. “I did this for you. To free you of that man.”
“I didn’t want to be freed of him!” I shout. I look desperately toward Pavel, who stands at the door looking like he wants to leave but is incapable of looking away from this trainwreck between my mother and I.
“Please, you have to tell him. It wasn’t me. I didn’t want this.”
Pavel shakes his head in disgust. “I’m not telling him anything,” he says and walks out the door.
My mother turns and grabs her suitcase. “Let’s go. We have a flight to catch to Moscow.”
I can’t seem to move. I’ve never felt so lost or alone in my entire life. The desire to sink down into it-to gripe, complain, rebel-all the old stale tricks of my childhood surface, but I see how completely useless they are.
Maxim was right-power isn’t something someone grants you. It’s something you take for yourself.
“I’m not going.”
My mother freezes and then slowly pivots. “What?”
“I’m not leaving my husband.”
“Did you not hear? Your husband said if we ever show our faces again, they will strip us of the money.” She gestures with both hands. “We can’t live without that money!”
“Look at you,” my mother scoffs. “You’ve never had a job in your life. What would you do? How would you live? And for what purpose? Maxim isn’t going to take you back. I saw his face when he saw you were alive. You betrayed him once. You’re lucky he didn’t choke the life out of you right there for betraying him a second time.”
I wave my fists in the air like a lunatic. “I did not betray him a second time! You did! And I will make him see that.”
My mother’s eyes go wide. “Are you insane? You would wish us both dead, then?” She takes a step back, pretending to be hurt.
I suddenly see where I got the acting gene.
“Or just me?”
“No, Mama. He’s not going to kill you. He would’ve already done it. He spared you because he cares about me. That’s the part you missed. Maxim and I were falling in love. He bought me that car!” I gesture to the street as if my car was still out there and not blown into a billion pieces. I use the car as an example because money is all that matters to my mother. Of course, to me, it wasn’t the car. It was how he looked at me in the car. How he said it matched my eyes. How he walked to fuck me over the top of it. How he liked to spoil and then disrespect me in equal measures.
“I saw his face,” my mother says stubbornly. “He won’t forgive you.”
I straighten my spine. He forgave me once. I think he could do it again. Hopefully it won’t take eight years to heal this time.
“You go to Russia. I’m staying here.”
My mother puts down the suitcase. “I’ll wait. When he rejects you, we’ll go together.”
I don’t pretend she wants to be here with me. She’s staying because if I go back to Maxim, if I declare myself undead, the money is mine again.
Not hers.
When she was talking about being penniless, she was afraid for herself. With Vladimir alive, she would’ve been given a monthly allowance. Now that she killed him, she’ll get nothing. In fact, she’s probably not safe in Moscow at all. I don’t know if Vladimir had many friends, but it seems like someone would want her blood for what she did.
A knock sounds on the door. I walk to open it, but my mother whisper-snaps, “Wait!”
“What?” I whisper-shout back.
“Just because he said we’re free to go doesn’t mean we really are.”
I open the door a crack. It’s Nikolai with my suitcases. As soon as he sees me, he turns and walks away.
“Wait!” I call. “Please. I need to talk to Maxim.”
“That’s not going to happen, printsessa,” Nikolai says.
“He’s my husband,” I insist, as if that will mean something to Nikolai, who is already three-quarters of the way down the hall to the elevator.
“He’s a widower.” Nikolai doesn’t even turn as he speaks the words. And then he steps into the elevator and is gone.
Dammit.
I’ve never hated myself so much in my life. I did everything wrong with Maxim. My stupid, cruel lie about him trying to force me into sex as a teenager. Acting like a spoiled brat when he brought me here.
And I don’t know what I could’ve done differently with my mom, but I wish I’d done it. I shouldn’t have bought the burner phone and told her about my acting class. I shouldn’t have let her sow all that doubt about Maxim. I should have told her-convinced her-that I was happy with him. Then she wouldn’t have made this desperate move.
The one that just ruined my life along with hers.
I choke back a sob as I wheel my suitcases into the hotel room. “I have to see him,” I say.
My mother blocks my path. “We don’t have any money, Sasha. No credit cards, no cash. Nothing.”
“How did you get here?”
“Viktor,” she whispers.
Right. Viktor. Who is dead. My credit card-courtesy of Maxim-was blown up with my purse.
I have no phone. I can’t even take an Uber to the Kremlin.
“We need to use those plane tickets and get back to Moscow. Then we can get your money and a fresh start.”
Here she goes again with her big plan.
“Mama, it takes months to transfer property after a death. Maxim didn’t even have access to Igor’s money yet.”
Her face goes pale. “That’s our only hope.”
It’s hers.
But not mine.
My hope is Maxim. My life is Maxim. I just have to get him to see me, so I can make him believe.
I open my suitcase and change out of yesterday’s clothes and into a pair of capri jeggings and a cute top. I opt for practical shoes.
“I’m going to see Maxim,” I declare. I don’t care if I have to walk across Chicago, I will get there, and I will see him
I ignore my mother’s dire warnings and protests and leave the building. It takes me all afternoon to get to the Kremlin on public transit.
The moment I walk through the front doors, the guard shakes his head. “Get out. You and your mother are forbidden from entering.”
“Please, I just need to speak with my husband.”
“Get out, or I throw you out. I’m on strict orders,” he tells me. “If you come back, I’ll call the police. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
And that’s when it hits me. I definitely don’t want to be dead.
And if I’m not dead, then Maxim has control of my money. Which means his obligation to Igor will still be in place. Unless he believes I nullified it.
Either way, it’s a good place to start. I nod. “Please call the police. I want to report myself not dead.”
Maxim
I’m on the couch working on drinking myself into oblivion again when my phone rings. It’s the security guard downstairs.
“Fuck off,” I mutter and dont answer.
He calls Ravil next.
“Huh. Well, call her bluff. Call the police on her,” Ravil says.
My head snaps up. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
Ravil shrugs. “She says she’s going to report herself undead unless you come down.”
I settle back and nod. “Call her bluff. She has to stay dead if she wants to control her money.”
“I was going to wait a few days to tell you this, but-” Nikolai starts.
I hurl my glass at his head. It misses but smashes against the wall, shattering.
“Right. I’ll wait a few days.” Nikolai has the grace to look unaffected by my attempted assault.
It shouldn’t be so hard to go one day without hearing her goddamn name.
Without thinking about her. Imagining I smell her. Wondering how I could be so stupid as to get played.
Forty minutes later, the asshole guard calls again. This time I answer, ready to chop off his fucking head. “What is it?” I snarl.
“The cops want to talk to you.”
“What?” Fuck. She actually went through with it.
I don’t want to admit what that does to me. She just gave her fortune back to me. But I can’t do this. I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but I won’t let her play me again. No fucking way.
“Yeah, I think you might be a suspect in the bombing,” the guard says in Russian.
Ah. Now I see her angle. Or do I? Fuck, I have no clue. I can’t think straight.
I’m supposed to be the Fixer, but I can’t fix a goddamn thing right now.
I head for the elevator, and Ravil, Nikolai and Pavel get in with me. At least I know they’ll always have my back.
Brothers you can trust.
Just not women.
I go downstairs, and there’s two cops in the lobby standing with Sasha and the guard.
“Here he is.” Sasha gives a big smile and a wave. “You see? I’m not hiding from him.”
The female police officer narrows her eyes. “So you went into hiding after the explosion, and your husband thought you were dead? But now you’re not hiding from him?”
“I was never hiding from him. I was trying to protect him from trouble. My father was the head of the Russian mafiya, and after he died, I feared some of his men came after me for revenge.”
“Russian mafiya,” the male police officer repeats, looking us all up and down suspiciously. “What men were these?”
Sasha shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“How long have you known your wife was alive?” the female officer asks me.
“Since last night.” No point in lying.
“And you didn’t bother to notify us? Neither of you did?”
“Like I said, I was laying low. In case they were after me.” Sasha has the nerve to walk over and stand beside me like we’re a unit. She wraps an arm around me.
If it weren’t for the police, I would shove her away. Except I feel her trembling.
Aw, fuck.
I don’t want to care about that.
I don’t want to even have to try to figure out what my conniving devil of a wife is up to right now.
Is she trembling over me or over the cops?
Gah.
I grab her by the nape and yank her roughly around to kiss her hard on the mouth. Then I lift my head and look pointedly at the cops. “I’m so happy she’s alive.”
I wish she wasn’t breathless, looking up at me like she’s never going to look away.
It takes some more back and forth, and the promise of a detective following up, but the damn cops finally leave. I walk Sasha around the corner, where I pin her to the wall by the throat. “I don’t know what your game is now, caxapok, but you can stop playing it. It’s over between us.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and I muster every bit of rage I have against her to keep those glittering drops from moving me.
“Maxim, please. I just want to tell you what happened.”
I tighten my grip on her throat, just enough to shut her up. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any of it. I don’t know what you think you proved by saying you weren’t dead, but I won’t keep you. Look for the divorce papers. Your mom will still inherit, and that way you don’t have to stay dead.” I release her and walk away.
I’m barely able to breathe from the pain slicing through my torso, but I don’t show it. I’m not going to pass out again and let her see how she ruined me.
It’s over between us. I can never fall prey to her wiles again.