31

Maria
It isn’t until morning that I hear someone knocking gently at my door. At first, I don’t answer. But whoever is knocking is persistent and doesn’t leave. It can’t be Mikhail, I reason, because he has a key to the room. And I get the feeling that if I don’t answer, things will only go from bad to worse for me.
So, I make my way over to the door and, with a trembling hand, pull it open to reveal a concerned-looking Dominika on the other side.
“Is everything all right, koshka?” she asks when I open the door.
I shake my head without looking directly at Dominika and watch her from the corner of my eye.
She pauses, staring at me intently as if to gauge my response, but I refuse to acknowledge her. Just go away, I think. If she goes away, then I don’t have to deal with whatever the hell else Mikhail plans on doing to me.
But she doesn’t. Instead, she shuts the door gently behind her and walks over to me. I steal another look, and there is concern in her eyes. She gestures at the bed and I sit down on it, hands folded in my lap.
“What happened, koshka?” Her voice is soft and gentle, and I don’t know how to respond at first.
She reaches up, takes my hand in hers, and gives me a small tug-not enough to make me move, but enough to make me know what she wants me to do. Feeling the facade of my own resistance crumbling, I sit down next to her as she wraps a knowing arm around my shoulders.
Oddly enough, it isn’t the absurdity of everything else that has happened to me or my own near brush with death, but her single act of kindness that breaks me.
Without warning, I collapse into her, crying like I’ve never cried before. Deep, choking gasps are dragged from the depths of my soul as tears blind my vision. My body shakes against hers as I cling to her. She holds me like the mother I never knew, combing her fingers through my hair as she lets me cry.
The gentle touch surprises me, but it also awakens a new resentment inside of me that I never knew I had. Is this everything that I never knew throughout my life? Dad loves me, I know that. But he was never someone who gave me a chance to wallow in my own emotions like this.
And in his refusal to marry, he denied me the touches of a mother.
The touches that I didn’t realize I’d been craving until now.
“It’s not fair!” I hiccup like a brat into Dominika’s shoulder, and she pats my head gently, saying nothing as I repeat myself again and again and again.
I don’t know how long I cry in her embrace. But she never once lets me go. Finally, as exhaustion takes over, I disentangle myself from her. I look over and see that I’ve managed to smear my eye shadow all over the front of her uniform.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter as I dab at my eyes.
“For what, koshka?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t change, and-most importantly-doesn’t hold a hint of judgment. I wonder how many others she’s comforted like this in this penthouse.
“I got your clothes dirty.”
“This?” She glances down and gives her head a quick shake. “Don’t be silly, little koshka. I’ve washed out worse.” When she looks back at me, her expression falls. “But I want to know what happened to you.”
I open my mouth, but just as the words are about to escape my lips, I can hear Mercy’s voice whispering vehemently in the back of my mind. You gotta have some backbone in this city. Otherwise, someone’s bound to take advantage of you. I remind myself that Dominika isn’t my friend. She isn’t my mother. She’s still Mikhail’s employee, and if I had to take a guess, she’s probably here on his orders in an attempt to squeeze information out of me.
“If you don’t want to tell me,” She says, “you don’t have to. But I’m old enough to know that this isn’t a tantrum.” She pauses for a moment when I don’t say anything. “And no, Mikhail Ivanov didn’t send me. Nor will what you tell me make it to his ear.”
“Do you promise?” I ask in a small voice, feeling like a naive child in doing so. But I desperately want someone to tell me that things will be okay. I just want someone to tell me that I will be all right.
“I promise, koshka,” she replies. “Upon my life.”
I take a shuddering breath. “I found something,” I say. “A room that I don’t think I was supposed to be in.”
The expression on Dominika’s face shifts. A shadow passes over her face briefly before it disappears. Her eyes are full of understanding, and when I look a little closer, I see something else in them-a sadness that lingers at the edges.
“The one downstairs?” she asks quietly.
“Yes,” I reply. “What is that place?”
“A place filled with ghosts,” she replies. “And a reminder of everything that could have been.”
I don’t understand what she’s talking about. Ghosts? Whose ghosts? Why can’t she just tell me these things up front? Why does everything have to be a riddle?
“There is a great deal about Mikhail Ivanov that you do not know,” she says. “And these are things that I cannot tell you.”
“But you clearly know what that room is!” I cross my arms and stand up. “Why can’t you tell me that?”
“Because it’s not my secret to share,” she replies. “Just as I have promised to keep your secrets from him, he has sworn me to keep his secrets from you.”
“So that’s it?” I ask. “You won’t tell me?”
“I can tell you that he allows no one in that room,” she replies. “Not me, not the rest of the household staff. Not even Larissa Gennadyevna. It has been the rule ever since he made this place his home.”
Wait … what? “What do you mean ever since he made this place his home?” I ask. “Hasn’t this always been his home?”
“The Ivanov mansion was where he was born and raised,” she replies. “But this penthouse is where he once knew happiness.”
Have you ever seen a body that hits the ground from this height? Her voice from my first terrifying night here haunts the back of my mind. It’s gruesome.
The world underneath my feet seems to shift at the memory. I stare at Dominika, waiting for her to say more. But she doesn’t. Those words suddenly take on a new meaning. She wasn’t speaking of a hypothetical. She was speaking from experience.
“Something happened here, didn’t it?” My voice is hardly louder than a whisper, but even then, the words sound too loud-as if I’m saying something forbidden. “Something terrible.”
Dominka stares at me in silence. But the pained expression tells me everything that I need to know.
“What am I allowed to know?” I ask. “Better yet. What are you allowed to tell me?”
“You may ask whatever you like, and I will answer whatever I can.”
“Do you know what is in that room?”
“I do not know the specifics of what is in it,” she replies. “But I know Mikhail Ivanov well enough to have a very good guess.”
“And what is that guess?”
A knowing smile crosses over her face. “You’ll have to try better than that, koshka.”
Fine, I think as I cross my arms. “When did he make this penthouse his home?”
“A year after he became Ivanov’s heir.”
“Was his brother the heir before him?” My mind races as I do my best to recall every little detail of the conversation I had with Larissa about the Ivanov family.
“He was.” There is a tone of finality in her answer, and I suspect that pushing any further down that route will only lead to her stonewalling me further. So, I decide to try a different approach.
“Who did this penthouse belong to?”
The pained expression returns to Dominika’s eyes. This time, she’s the one who blinks rapidly as she looks away. “It belongs to the Ivanov family.”
“That’s not an answer, Dominika!” My tone is harsher than I want. And when she remains silent, I raise my voice. “Tell me the truth!”
I’m so busy yelling at Dominika that I don’t even notice the door opening. And only when it slams, startling us both, do I turn and find myself staring into Mikhail’s dazzling green eyes. Those same green eyes dart back and forth between me and Dominika. Blood drains from her face when she sees him.
Without a word, she stands up from the bed, smooths the front of her uniform, bows, and scampers out of the room. And just like that, I’m left trapped here with Mikhail.
Alone.
“Don’t ever do that again, Maria.” His voice takes on the same dangerous, silky tone that it had when he dangled me over the roof.
“Mikhail …” I back up until I feel myself pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me. “I just wanted to have some answers.”
He keeps advancing toward me until he invades my space completely. Powerful arms trap me between them, and his alluring scent tumbles into my nostrils. A familiar heat begins throbbing between us as the space between us continues to disappear until I can see my own frightened reflection in his green eyes.
He’s doing his best to maintain control of a storm inside him that threatens to be unleashed. A storm that threatens to engulf me in its path. A storm that will leave nothing left when it ends.
“Come.” His hand reaches behind the nape of my neck until his fingers thread through my hair. The grip tightens and I tilt up my head in response until I can no longer look away from his fiery green eyes. “We have somewhere to be.”