by Bethany-Kris
Demyan stood up. The shift in the air was immediate, and he was sure the other two could feel it. With a wave toward the door, he said, “You’re welcome to walk out of here today and never come back, or you could tell me what I want to know, and my door stays open. Just for a little while longer, yes? Imagine the kind of brownie points on your report card you’ll get for that.”
Still smiling, although he knew his tall frame was intimidating, Demyan waited his hand outstretched for the other two men to make a move. It was their call; he was willing to let them make it.
Mahon fidgeted under the pressure, looked like he was about to shit himself, while Packard managed to hold it together. It was amusing, at least.
“Why should I tell you anything when your son refused a real interview?”
“He told you everything he knew,” Demyan told the older agent. “Anyway, it looks like you’re ready to go. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
Demyan nodded to Pavel who had come to stand at the door.
Packard clocked the gesture and cleared his throat before saying, “There is something you should know.”
If they were expecting Demyan to show enthusiasm—they weren’t getting any. He remained silent. That was always the better choice when you already had the upper hand.
“The remains found in the fire at the Yazov mansion—they may not belong to Maxim Yazov.”
Demyan dragged in a hard breath through his nose. It was all he was going to allow himself in the presence of these men.
“And maybe we can meet again, to discuss any other information we have that could help you. Or if you have anything to share with us,” Packard continued, tipping his chin in a nod.
Demyan gestured at Pavel again, and this time the spy had an enforcer waiting in the hallway behind him to guide the two agents out of the house and off the property.
Good riddance.
Demyan was done with them.
*
He found his wife blow-drying her hair.
Demyan couldn’t help but stare at Claire’s reflection as she brushed thick strands of hair while simultaneously running a dryer over it with one of those large barrel brushes he thought could be better used for torture. The sight of her bent over in a silk robe had him standing back and grinning, unwilling to interrupt her just yet.
Gray had started to streak through her hair.
Her curves were softer.
Deeper lines found their way around her mouth and eyes when she smiled, and he loved knowing that so many of those happy moments had been because of him. He’d dared to love her, after all, and wives of men like him tended to suffer a great deal for it. Demyan made a special effort to make sure his wife never did.
She’d been his second chance ...
Everything good.
When she caught him standing at their bedroom door, she blushed before turning to him.
“Hey, you.”
“How do you do it?” he asked, stepping into the room.
Claire turned the dryer off and tossed it to the bed with the brush before smoothing her hair with her hands. “How do I do what?”
“Get more beautiful every day.”
Claire shot him a rueful smile as he came closer. “How do you still manage to make me feel like the good girl with a crush on a bad boy?”
Demyan towered over her, placing both his hands on her silky soft hair. Then, he kissed the top of his wife’s head.
“You look like you’ve got some good news,” she said.
Demyan knew she would figure it out. Claire could always reach inside his mind to find what he was thinking—his eyes were her windows to his soul.
“I don’t know what I’ve got yet, if it’s anything.”
“Care to share?”
“The remains they found in the burnt down Yazov mansion—well, it isn’t Maxim.”
Claire pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips. “Then who was it? Where’s Maxim?”
She reached for her husband’s wrists, clinging to him because, no doubt, Claire knew all at once those were the same questions Demyan had. Since they met—Claire made him feel like he was the one with all the answers to her questions.
The truth was that she saved him.
“Leonid is missing. Nobody’s seen him since the fire. Dima is in New York and demanding to see me, but he’s here without his father. There has to be a good reason for that.”
“Leonid is dead?” Claire asked.
Demyan remained silent because this was just a theory without actual proof.
But it was a good one.
TEN
Days went by without any difference in the way Karine woke up feeling. In unseen agony from heartbreak, but visibly numb to anyone who looked her in the face.
She’d been helplessly trapped the very moment when Roman first brought her to this place. The same thought invaded her head every morning she cracked open her eyes—that he had abandoned her.
Why hadn’t he taken her with him?
What had she done to deserve this?
One morning, she woke up in the same bed, with the same sheets, and accidentally looked at her hand to see the diamond ring he had given her. The one she had picked out that day at the jewelry store with that small diamond that sat daintily on her finger but couldn’t be missed all the same.
Impulsively, she smiled at the memory of that day because it was a beautiful one.
In those ignorant seconds of happiness, she had dared to think that was how the rest of their married life together would be.
He made her feel like every blushing, blissed bride should on their honeymoon, gifting her with an experience she never thought she would have, and he did it effortlessly. Like he didn’t even have to think about it. He just ... did.
Karine had thought that they somehow just brought out the best in each other—together.
Ever since she could remember, she expected the worst from Dima, honestly. To be in a marriage full of hate and rage, subjugation and abuse.
But now she was married to Roman.
Even though she was trapped in this institution, that didn’t change what was. Her marriage to Roman was still very much real. It didn’t change that, for a moment, he had made her feel that unimaginable happiness, and she didn’t think it was entirely a lie.
Not all of it ...
It couldn’t be.
The ring reminded Karine of the necklace. One of the few items Sylvia and a male nurse had provided with Karine the day after her admission because, as they explained it, the chain was too delicate for her to use as a weapon. Whether against herself or otherwise. They had nearly taken her wedding ring, convinced she could use it as a sharp object to self-harm but because she didn’t have a history and threatened to throw an unholy fit, she kept the ring.
For now, the therapist warned.
Right.
Karine toyed with the idea of taking the necklace out and wearing it. He’d picked it out for her. Would it help to close the emptiness in her heart, even if it didn’t soothe the anger—would wearing it make this bearable?
Did she even want to feel closer to Roman?
There was that voice, never far from the back of her mind; familiar and vicious, reminding her every day that he had let her down—just like she said he would.
Katina had been so used to taking over when things got too difficult for Karine to handle that it was hard to shut out the high-pitch ring of her warnings. At least, Karine had learned to pay attention. To try and understand why she was saying what she did.
Pressing her eyes closed, Karine reminded herself the voice and person it belonged to was a part of her own thoughts.
Michelle had helped her with that—understanding the core of the disorder she had lived with daily for a decade.
Those thoughts of Michelle quickly brought with them the faces of the other women who had broken down the walls Karine hadn’t even realized she’d erected around herself over the years. Claire.
Mash
a.
Where was Masha?
Loneliness was the worst kind of prison for Karine. A personal hell she had lived in for far too long, leaving her constantly clinging to the scraps of attention she was sometimes given. It made the deep sadness in her heart all the more cruel and painful when she thought about all the people who were taken away from her.
People he took away from you.
Karine shook her head, ignoring that invasive, sharply hissed thought. Not that it stopped that fractured part of her mind from fighting to fill her mind with more.
Why couldn’t he leave you in Vermont, huh? You said it—you were happy. You couldn’t have a life there, Karine? What does he expect you to do now? Start over?
With people she didn’t know or trust, Karine finished herself.
Not fucking likely.
The urge to pull the ring off her finger and throw it as far away from her as the room would allow was strong.
Karine ignored it.
Somehow.
She wondered if it was some sort of karmic irony that now she was married to Roman, she found herself wondering if she had to escape him.
He’d done exactly what her father did, after all. What Dima would have done if she married him instead—eventually. Once he’d likely had his twisted, sick fill of her and had enough of abusing every piece of her that he could.
Roman was a different man, sure. It didn’t change what this was, though. Keeping her imprisoned, without any real choice, and creating only the illusion of freedom.
How is it different?
Katina demanded her answers, slinking into Karine’s thoughts to warp them to her own advantage when she had the chance, never missing the opportunity.
She hated that.
Didn’t want it.
Karine could be angry all on her own—she didn’t need Katina’s violent emotions warping her own, too.
“Shut up!” she screamed, cupping either side of her head.
It was just unfortunate that Katina’s voice had grown too loud too fast, taking over every thought and movement.
Telling her she was better off without Roman.
You need to get away. Run.
That their paths should never have converged—the universe had gotten it all wrong.
No.
“No, no ... no!” Karine snapped. “Stop it right now!”
The thing was, well, the voice was wrong.
She couldn’t stop loving Roman, even though she didn’t understand him. Or entirely why he decided this was his only option for her.
He had kept her safe—a promise he hadn’t broken. Didn’t that mean something? Didn’t that count for anything?
Didn’t that prove it was real?
To her, yes.
For Katina ... not so much.
That was the hard part.
“Karine? Are you okay?”
It was Sylvia—again; she was never too far away from Karine, it seemed. Her calm disposition only rattled slightly as her tone of voice raised an octave when she came through the door of the private room to stand just beyond the threshold. Lines creased her brow when she added quietly, “I heard you yelling. I was just next door speaking to Miss Tanny.”
Oh.
Yeah.
The lady who’d apparently hoarded so many animals in her bungalow home that after an unfortunate incident with a five-foot pile of paper the old woman had been saving for forty years fell over ... Karine winced, still able to hear the women crying as she told the story from where she sat playing cards just outside of her room in the hallway the day before.
It was an unfortunate thing.
Her family decided to step in, then.
Didn’t really want to keep being here, just living, after that, the woman had admitted while she’d gathered her cards before leaving. But it was the way she’d spat out the words—just living. As though the idea was simply unthinkable.
And that ... well, Karine did understand.
Not that she’d engaged the woman.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Nothing personal.
“Do you need some help?” Sylvia asked, moving towards her bed with careful, slow steps.
In her gaze, Karine could see the therapist expected rejection. For good reason because she’d offered nothing more and nothing less.
Still ...
“Maybe I do,” Karine replied.
*
“I don’t want to eat in my room today,” Karine told Sylvia.
She noticed the way the woman’s eyes brightened, but she kept outwardly calm.
“Of course, you don’t have to. You could eat with some of the others in the dining room, or you could eat outside if you want. Wherever you’d like. There are lots of little nooks around the place you are welcome to enjoy.”
With someone right at her back, she bet.
Sylvia had been helping Karine arrange her clothes in the wardrobe. Something that should have been done upon arrival, but Karine hadn’t touched her bags since she got there. Just seeing the bags was enough to make her want to rage all over again.
She still couldn’t get over how Roman had secretly packed all her things—even the beautiful clothes and shoes he’d bought her—at the hotel.
Without even considering asking her, he’d planned a future for Karine when her back was turned—maybe even when she lay naked and asleep beside him in their hotel room under the illusion of happiness.
It was the little details of betrayal that really got to her when she thought about it. And that was the thing ... here, all she could do was think about it.
The last thing she expected from the man she had agreed to marry—was oiliness. A man could be a lot of things, but she didn’t want one who was slick or slimy.
“I don’t think I want to eat with anybody else. I don’t want to meet anyone new,” she said, going back to her conversation—and plan—with the therapist.
Sylvia nodded. “Sure, you can eat outside. Do you want to look around the premises and decide where you’d like to sit by yourself?”
She had that pathetically hopeful look in her eyes. The same one Karine remembered seeing in Michelle’s too in the beginning. It was how she could tell they had their fingers figuratively crossed, hopeful that perhaps she was finally coming around.
God.
To what?
All these expectations they all had for her ... it was just too much. Karine hated it.
She never should have left Masha behind. She shouldn’t have agreed to Roman’s plan that night he convinced her to get into a car and drive to him.
Why could she so easily walk back through every single one of her mistakes?
Masha was the only person who truly understood her. In all the years they had spent together—she had never once tried to change who Karine was.
In fact, she’d still cared for her despite it.
“Yeah, maybe I should have a look,” Karine said with a nod. “Or go for a walk.”
Sylvia was pleased.
For a moment—her hands started to lift as though she might grab Karine and give her a hug, but she managed to stop herself in time.
Which was just as well.
She’d hate to start screaming today.
“Okay, yeah, that’s great. I can show you around. We can go now if you want.”
Karine smiled.
It was her first smile here, and it seemed to melt Sylvia’s heart by the way she beamed right back at the younger woman.
She couldn’t believe her luck.
Karine had news ...
There was no such thing.
“Let’s go,” Karine said, striding over to the door.
Sylvia came over to unlock it with her keycard. Depending on who was in the room, what hours of the day it was, or what might be happening in the rest of the wing, Karine had no real control over whether she could open the damn door.
The woman was still smiling at Karine when the door did open.
When they stepped out into the hallway together, she made a run for it.
*
“Why did you do it, Karine?”
Sylvia tapped a pen on her notepad as she sat on a big white couch across from her.
Karine had been given a gray chaise lounge to sit on. With her legs tucked in under her and her hands wedged between her thighs, she asked, “Why did I do what?”
“Try to run away?” Sylvia’s patience now was one of a saint, even though she’d screeched like a little girl when Karine ran.
She couldn’t remember laughing so hard.
Too bad the humor was long gone.
“I don’t know the answer to your question. Frankly, I don’t know the answers to most of your questions.”
Sylvia made a note, and Karine tried to ignore her rising frustration. Between the conversation, she had to carry outwardly, and the one she refused to have internally ... focus was tough, and anger was easier.
The voice she had become so profoundly aware of recently—the one who called herself Katina—floated on the surface of her consciousness almost constantly. It was Karine’s strong-willed desire to keep her alter subdued that forced Katina back, but that didn’t mean she liked it.
Katina’s sharp hiss told her that she didn’t need to answer any of these questions. A reminder that she didn’t actually need, but that didn’t stop her from saying it and more. You did right by running, she heard Katina muttering. Apparently, the next time she was serious about escaping—well, she should have a plan in place and be prepared to take extreme measures if she wanted better results.
Karine forced the lump down forming her throat. She hated hearing Katina’s voice in her head, and without the drugs she used to take to fade that voice, it was growing louder and louder. The only thing about fading the voice was Karine also inhibited her own control.
There was no way to win.
“Why don’t we take it one question at a time?” Sylvia asked, lifting her shoulders under the white silk blouse she wore. Her pencil skirt was so tight that Karine wondered if that was why she’d taken a second to dart after her earlier. Or was it because of her teetering four-inch stiletto heels? She really hadn’t expected Karine to run.
She almost felt bad.
Almost.
“You can think about your answers, and I want you to know there are no wrong ones,” the woman continued. “You can even just tell me the first thing that pops in your head.”
