by A. Zavarelli
There isn’t a single purchase that I’d like to make. But there is something else inside of that computer. An answer to a question whispering at the back of my mind.
I’m tracing over the tiny apple emblem when Alexei’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
“You have not used it.”
I don’t answer him, but I do look up. Today, he is dressed for going out. The same black jacket and gray flat cap on his head as when we first met.
Alexei never leaves.
In my eyes, nothing else exists outside of this world he’s built for us. These walls and this space which harbors me and keeps me safe. But he is the gatekeeper. And when he is gone that safe feeling flees with him. And the thought of him doing so now sends a small sliver of fear through me. I don’t understand why. He doesn’t miss it. And like always, I wonder how he reads me so well.
“I will only be away for a short while,” he says. “Franco will remain here to look out for you, as well as Magda.”
I nod, though his words do nothing to dissipate my fear. Every breath I take feels forced, stilted… as if my lungs have given up. I’ve lost the will to breathe. He promised he would keep me safe. But then I think of Arman. How unlikely it is he will ever let me go. What if he came here? I haven’t been counting. Or planning.
I need to do that.
Because Arman will come. Alexei’s words mean nothing to me. Just as Dmitri’s and all of the others before him. Words are nothing. Even the vows of marriage cannot protect me. Shield me. Or even repair me. And I must die.
“Talia?” Alexei’s voice is closer now, and when I blink his fingers are on my face. Warm and strong. I don’t say anything, but I don’t need to. He seems to understand what I’m thinking, and I don’t like that. He is hesitant to leave now.
“I’m tired,” I tell him. “I want to lay down.”
He nods and pulls back the covers for me, helping me into bed. And then he pauses. His eyes on mine. My eyes are on his lips. Wondering if he thinks they are dirty now because I kissed him. Wondering what he sees when he looks at me the way he is looking at me right now. My fingers are moving over the star on my hand. Exactly the way he taught me to. He doesn’t miss it.
“I’ll be back soon,” he repeats softly.
And then he retreats.
I lay in the stillness of the house, waiting for the sound of the front door to close. In the time it takes the organ in my chest to beat sixty times, he is gone. And I’m staring up at the ceiling. Thinking of Arman. And the questions in my mind. The desire to know more of Alexei, and the emotions I feel rising to the surface the longer I avoid the thing that needs to be done.
Before I can really question what I’m doing, I move down the hall to his office. I know he has alcohol in there. I tell myself that’s what I’m seeking out.
I can hear Magda downstairs in the kitchen, and there is no sign of Franco. The door is open. All of the screens are off. And I step inside.
His scent still lingers in the space. The large oak desk is well worn, with lines that tell a story of who this man is. A constant companion over the years, it seems.
I sit down in the chair and glance at the drawers. They are all locked. One of the few things that poses no obstacle to me. I had a good teacher. A friend. A distant face that I think of sometimes, but pretend doesn’t exist.
Because it’s easier that way. It’s easier to die knowing that nobody cares.
I retrieve a bobby pin from my hair and go to work on the first drawer. It doesn’t take long for the skill to come back to me as if it were yesterday. When I was just a kid on the street. Always looking for my next meal. My next aversion to the constant well of pain inside of me.
The drawer yields nothing but a black notebook and some pens. Addresses, names, and a makeshift ledger with neat scrawls of penmanship across the blank pages. I put it back and move to the big drawer. The one on the bottom. A file drawer.
It opens. That organ in my chest beats again. Harder.
There are only two files inside. Two brown paper files.
My fingers hesitate to touch, but my brain demands answers. So I pick them up. Neither has a name. Or anything noted on the blank space where it should be. My mouth is dry when I glance at the door and open the first.
What I find is worse than I expected. More than I can handle.
The pages of my life. Summarizing my existence into a series of mercilessly blunt chapters. Birth certificate, health records. But worst of all are the photos of my family. Of my mother and my siblings. The newspaper records printed in black and white. And then the careless notes of the case worker who handed me off to anyone who would take me.
I keep flipping through the pages. Catching only words and fragments of sentences as they collide with images in the story of my life.
Murdered. Tragedy. Children. Monster.
Disappeared.
Then there are photos. My airway is choking the life out of me. I can’t breathe.
That little girl. It isn’t me. I don’t know her. That isn’t me.
Those faces. Four angels. My mother’s halo of hair in the bathtub, her eyes open and the only smile I ever saw on her face. My lips are singing the words as I examine the photos I never knew existed. Angels in the morning.
Crime scene.
My eyes are flickering open and shut, and my body is rocking back and forth in the chair. Footsteps move in time to the beat inside my head.
Muffled words. A curse.
And then a hand, reaching out to take what isn’t his to take.
I claw at the files, and he pulls. The paper rips, and pieces of my life rain to the floor. I’m on my knees, crawling around in a frantic effort to conceal them. He doesn’t deserve to see. He doesn’t deserve to know these things. And I don’t want to remember.
I reach for a photo just as a strong arm wraps around my waist. But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.
This is not my mother in the bathtub. This is someone else. Another woman in a different bathtub.
And there’s blood. So much blood. Murky red water and a face I don’t recognize. The photo is snatched from my hand before I have a chance to make sense of it.
“Breathe.” I hear through the haze of my confusion.
My chest is heaving hard. Deep in the grips of a panic attack. Something I have not experienced since I was a child.
There is no breath in my lungs. I’m clawing at my throat, and he grabs my hands.
“Shh, shh, shh….” The words are whispered into my ear as his hand rubs my back.
The attack ebbs away with the soothing tide of his voice. I open my eyes and meet pale blue. And something else returns as I jerk away from him.
Anger.
My lip trembles when I speak. “This is why you took me.”
It’s the only sentence I can manage to get out. But it means so much more. And the guilt and shame in his eyes leave no doubts to the answer.
He could never love me. Because I’m damaged beyond repair. And he wanted a wife in name only. I don’t want him, I tell myself. I don’t want any of this.
“You had no right to know me!” I scream. “You don’t know anything about me!”
“I know everything about you,” he answers.
“I hate you!” I charge at him and the surprise makes us both tumble to the floor in a heap. “I want to cut your name out of my skin!”
I want to hurt him, the way he has hurt me. But instead, a split second of luck gives me the opportunity I need. He’s wearing his shoulder holster. And a gun. I take it before he regains his composure and scramble backwards on my legs, into the corner of the room.
He’s watching me.
And smiling. It’s not a normal smile. And it doesn’t fade even when I shove the gun up beneath my chin, meeting his gaze.
He moves closer. Slowly. Daring me with his eyes. Challenging me. Like he doesn’t believe I’ll do it.
I want to do it. It’s what I’ve been wanting for so long. So I don
’t know why I’m frozen. Why I can’t let go of his gaze and just pull the trigger.
“Your move, Solnyshko,” he taunts me.
I don’t reply. And I can’t stop shaking. He moves closer still. And now my hand is trembling. Watching him watch me with disbelieving eyes.
“You want me to do it?” he asks.
Alexei sees the indecision on my face. And he revels in it. He moves too close. Capturing my wrists before I can do anything, trapping me in place with his too large body. Then he’s lying on top of me, pinning me against the floor. Rejoicing in my failure. Mocking me with his eyes.
“Do you want to drown, baby?” he asks.
“No,” I answer. “I want to fly.”
“You know I’ll never let you go,” he tells me. “Maybe I need this angel here with me, yes?”
“I hate you!” I scream in his face again.
I don’t expect anything from him. But he flinches. A visible reaction to my words that proves he isn’t the only one with power. I take this knowledge and run with it. I keep screaming the words over and over. His hand comes down on my face and he squeezes hard, forcing my lips together so I can’t speak. The gun in his hand caresses my cheek and down the sensitive flesh of my throat, soft and deadly.
“Do it,” I murmur beneath his hand.
He digs the gun into my flesh, holding my jaw in place with the force of it. For a minute, it looks like he is actually debating it. But instead, he grabs me by the hair with his free hand and holds me in place while he kisses me.
It isn’t nice. It isn’t sweet.
It’s pure rage and chemistry. He wants to hate fuck me right now. I would let him.
In fact, I want him to.
But in the end, he decides against it.
And then the only sound in the room is his heavy breathing and my angry sobs. He saw my weakness. He saw my past. And now he thinks he knows me. Thinks he can use me. Just like Dmitri did. Like everyone has always done.
“Go to your room.”
He moves away from me. There is still anger on his face as he gathers up the photos, but he has no right to be.
“I hate you!” I tell him again.
His shoulders tense, and my body trembles under the anger in his gaze. Directed at me.
“As you should,” he answers. “Because I will destroy what is left of you.”
I blink. And there are tears on my cheeks. Wetness. I hate that he’s made me cry in front of him. That he’s made me feel things he has no right to. Dug around in my past and my life. I need validation. That my thoughts are right. That my deepest fears are right.
That people will always disappoint you. And that hope is the most dangerous thing of all.
“You picked me,” I tell him. “You picked me because of those things. You took a whore for a wife because you knew you could never love me.”
His face is blank. Devoid of the hurt I thought I saw only a few moments ago.
“Yes,” he answers.
The tiny bit of peace I thought I’d found in this sanctuary withers under his words and turns to dust. My feet are moving and my mind is repeating the only words that can bring me comfort now.
One day. One line.
One angel.
17
Alexei
I am in the gym. Piss drunk and with bloody knuckles when Magda finds me. I meet her panicked gaze in the mirror, and my heart beats too hard in my chest.
“What is it?” I demand.
My body is moving from the room before she can even explain. I find the cause for her concern when I walk into the sitting room and see the sofa cushions piled onto the floor.
My gaze moves up to where Magda points. Where on the ledge of a beam across the roof, Talia sits. Her back is facing us, her long blonde hair a halo around her white pajamas. Her legs dangle freely as her white knuckles grip the beam and keep her steady.
“She is singing a song,” Magda informs me. “I cannot get her to answer me.”
My body is stiff as I move forward. Towards the front of her body where I know I will find lifeless eyes if they meet my gaze. Because I put them there.
“Talia.”
The word is a command. One hidden behind the veil of fear I feel inside.
Her eyes flutter open, dead and empty, to collide with mine.
“You can’t catch me,” she says.
“I can,” I tell her.
“But you wouldn’t.”
“I always will,” I insist, my throat working to get the words out. “Come down from there.”
She takes one hand from the beam and uses her fingers to trace my face in the air. My heart is beating too hard. Too fast. I know she’s going to do it this time. Before she was unsure. Now, there is no doubt in her mind.
I’ve seen that expression before. That peace on her face is hauntingly familiar.
And for a moment, I am no longer thirty-five, but ten. And powerless.
My mind knows every dimension of this house. The height from the floor to that beam. But right now, the calculations are failing me. The pillows Magda has carefully placed below will not be of any help. Not from that distance.
“I was the wrong choice,” Talia says. “You picked wrong.”
There’s a moment where she meets my gaze again, and I try to find the words I desperately need. The words I have sought all my life. The ones that could save us both. They do not come. They have never come.
“You can’t destroy what’s already broken,” she says.
And then she lets go.
I step forward.
In front of me, Magda screams.
She is falling too fast. But she is light.
When I catch her in my arms, we both hit the floor, and her head bounces against my chest. There’s a momentary pause of silence before she blinks open her eyes and stares at me in confusion.
My relief is swiftly chased away by rage.
Magda is already hovering over us, attempting to coddle her. But I am done coddling the girl. I speak to her in Russian, telling her to retrieve my bag from the closet.
She does so reluctantly, and I heave the girl into my arms. She yelps when I grab her by the hair and yank her head back, forcing her gaze to mine.
“We are done with these games.”
Her throat bobs and tears threaten at the edges of her eyes. But she holds them in, like the brave girl she is hiding beneath the illusion. The one who has no choice but to go on because I will not allow any other option.
I carry her up the stairs and throw her onto the bed, her slight body bouncing against the mattress when I do. When Magda comes in, her expression worried, I instruct her to leave the bag and go. She hesitates, and it only fuels my anger.
“Go!” I roar again.
They both flinch, and Magda gives Talia one last glance before leaving. I dig around in my bag and find the rope. I use it to tie Talia’s wrists to the bed posts and her ankles to the base. When I finish, I step back to examine her. Spread open for me, her eyes wide and her chest panting.
My cock is painfully hard.
I want to bury myself in her now. To fuck her and fill her with my come. To impregnate her with my child. To prove to her that she is never leaving me. That the contract she signed with me is signed in blood. To remind her whose name and star she has carved into her flesh.
Instead, I settle for hovering over her body, my hand gripping her face when I speak. She smells of my drink, and it makes me want to fuck her until she can’t walk.
“You are my wife.” My fingers dig into her jaw. “I own you. And you will never disobey me again.”
Her eyes move over my face, and no argument spills from her lips. So I take it a step further by kissing her. Hard and punishing, my body pressing hers into the bed. My cock insistent that I sink inside of her.
“You’ve been into my cognac,” I tell her. “Do you like the taste of me on your lips as you fall to your death, my sweet?”
I grind against her, and she does not r
etreat. She is breathing heavy. Her chest rising and falling. Her nipples are stiff beneath the fabric of her soft white chemise. No bra. The swells of her breasts heave with the force of her breaths.
“My little Juliet.” I nuzzle into her skin and suck on her flesh. “You will taste of me for all of eternity. Because you don’t get to leave me.”
“You will grow tired of me,” she replies.
“I will not ever love you,” I tell her as my lips move down the snowy skin of her throat. “But I will have you, Talia. In every way. Make no mistake that you are mine. And I will do as I please with you.”
A puff of air leaves her lips and ruffles my hair as I nudge her top down to reveal her breast. She is watching me, her eyes no longer dead. But curious. Curious about what I will do. And impatient.
I swirl my tongue around her nipple and then suck her into my mouth. She shivers against me, biting down on her lip hard.
My hand cups the heat between her legs, rubbing the material of her shorts with my thumb, soaking it in wetness.
When my gaze meets hers, there is shame there. But want too.
And this is how I know she is not lost. That perhaps the thing she needs is not love but want.
My thumb rubs circles around her shorts, using the material for friction as I free her other breast and suck the soft skin into my mouth. She bucks her hips. And cries out.
“It won’t work,” she tells me.
My fingers yank the material of her shorts aside and shove inside of her bare pussy. Soaked and ready for me.
“It works just fine.”
I finger fuck her and eat at her breasts.
“I can’t.” She keeps telling me. Even as her body contracts and expands around me.
“You will.”
But she isn’t letting go. And I know what she needs from me. I also know that I want to give it to her.
I reach down and fumble around in my bag until I find what I need. The flick of the switchblade causes her eyes to shoot open. It has the immediate effect of calming her. As I knew it would.
