Chapter 31 #2
He can’t unsay the words or undo the nights I spent afraid of him or erase the memory of his face in the corridor when he told me my movements were restricted and his voice dropped to that register that made my skin go cold.
He can’t fix any of that with language.
So, he’s using his power and wealth as a crutch. Gifts. Presence. The steady, persistent accumulation of evidence that he is trying, in the only dialect he’s fluent in, to say I’m sorry without ever pronouncing the words.
And the truth is that it’s working. Not because of the cashmere or the chocolates. It’s working because of him .
He’s been closer lately. Not just physically. Though, there’s that too — the way he finds excuses to be in whatever room I’m in, the way his hand lands on my lower back when we walk together.
But it’s also about the way he tells me things or asks about Anya’s lessons. The way we fell into sharing a bed without a conversation or a negotiation.
I lie in his bed and stare at the ceiling.
The truth is, I sleep better here than I’ve slept in years.
This should be alarming. A reasonable person would find it alarming that I sleep soundly in the bed of a man I saw covered in the blood of people he most likely killed, and that his arm around me in the dark produces a physical relaxation that I’ve never managed with a prescription sleep aid.
My nervous system has apparently arrived at the conclusion that whatever Rolan Belov is, he is not a threat to me.
I’m lying in bed when my phone buzzes.
MARE
Ellie, I’m scared. There’s someone stalking me, and I don’t think it’s Landon anymore.
What the ? —
I sit up, my stomach twisting and turning with worry.
My brain swoops in first. Could it be one of Rolan’s men? Someone he assigned to protect her? A few weeks ago, the thought would have been comforting.
But now I know what Rolan’s people are truly capable of.
What do you mean? What happened?
The response comes fast.
MARE
Someone broke into my apartment. I swear it wasn’t Landon. I had to run. I’m in a hotel. Ellie, I need someone I can trust right now. There’s no one else. Only you. Please come.
I read it twice, my gut twisting into deeper knots.
MARE
We can get out of this together.
Shit . This is all my fault.
I want to bury my face in my hands and scream. But that won’t do any good. So, I huff and stare down at the screen.
Landon went after her when he couldn’t get to me. But if this wasn’t Landon, who could it be? Someone he hired?
Or someone who works for Rolan.
I don’t know which answer is worse.
I think about it for a long time before I pick up my phone.
It’s not going to be easy to leave. I haven’t been completely honest with you about the situation here. I’m not sure I can just walk out.
MARE
What do you mean you can’t walk out? Ellie, what’s going on?
The family I work for. It’s complicated. I don’t think he’ll let me go.
A pause.
MARE
He won’t LET you? Ellie.
I know.
MARE
That’s literally more reason to run. Oh my god. Are you okay?
I swallow, trying to let the worry crawl out of my throat.
It’s complicated in ways I can’t explain in a text. But yes. I’m okay.
MARE
Come find me. As soon as you can get out. We’ll figure it out together like we always do.
It’s okay, I’ll fix this, I promise.
I put the phone face down on my chest and stare at the dark ceiling.
I need a plan. Rolan won’t let me leave, and trying to flee a house with this much security without a plan isn’t going to work.
Not to mention, if I don’t succeed on my first try, I might not get another.
I need his help.
His car arrives at 11:30 p.m. I see the headlights from the window.
I wait.
Thirty minutes pass.
I’m in his room, book open, and not reading, the words moving under my eyes without leaving any impression.
Forty minutes.
The book goes down.
I check the corridor. It’s empty.
Where the hell is he?
I go to the office. The door is open, and the lamp is off. The desk is as he left it this morning. I stand in the doorway and think about where else he goes when he comes home late.
I check the kitchen. Empty. The study. Empty. I’m standing at the top of the main staircase past midnight, considering going back to the room, when I catch the noises.
Muffled below, coming through floors and walls. Voices, more than one.
I know this house now. I follow the sound to the east service corridor, the one where the staff offices are. The door at the end of it has a keypad. I’ve seen it closed every time I’ve passed it.
I’m standing in front of it now, and it’s not fully closed.
A gap, two inches, maybe three. A strip of light spills onto the wall, warm and yellow. Sounds drift through more clearly now. Voices in Russian.
My hands are shaking .
Don’t, says the logical part of my brain.
He doesn’t tell you anything. You need to find out yourself.
I push the door open.
The stairs go down further than I expected. The air changes as I descend, getting cooler. The voices get louder. My heartbeat is fast.
At the bottom of the stairs, I stop.
I’m behind a partial wall, a support pillar that creates a natural corner. I press myself against it and peer around it.
I spot Alexei first. His profile, three-quarters to me, standing with his arms crossed in the posture of a man observing rather than participating. Two of the guards are with him.
And Rolan.
His back is to me. I know him from behind the way I know him from any angle, the set of his shoulders, the way he occupies space. He’s in his suit, jacket still on, which means he came here directly from wherever he was tonight.
He speaks in Russian. A voice answers from somewhere in front of him, a voice whose source I can’t see because he’s blocking it, his body a wall between me and whatever is on the other side.
He raises his hand and lets it fall, hitting something.
The sound that follows is low, wet. It’s a person. A man.
Rolan hits him again.
I watch his shoulders move with each strike. Methodical. Without apparent anger — that’s the thing that fixes itself in my mind, the absence of visible rage. He’s not doing this in the heat of rage. My hand covers my mouth involuntarily.
He steps back.
Now I can see.
The man in the chair is — I look, and my mind refuses the image for a moment.
But the image remains, insistent and undeniable.
His face is wrong, swollen and split in places that make it difficult to parse as a face at all.
He’s conscious — his eyes are open, tracking the space — but the movement is sluggish.
He doesn’t make another sound.
Rolan speaks again, still in Russian, and waits.
The man in the chair says nothing.
Rolan turns slightly, murmuring toward Alexei, and I see his hands.
The gasp I make is not loud. It’s barely a sound — a small, involuntary intake. But the room is quiet, and I am at the bottom of a stone staircase. Every head turns.
Four faces register my presence. Alexei, the two guards, and Rolan.
He turns fully. His eyes find mine across the room, and the look in them is — he had the same look on the day of the attack.
His hands are dark at the knuckles. He doesn’t lower them.
I turn around and run.
I flee up the stairs faster than I came down them, and behind me, the basement is silent.
I don’t look back as my legs carry me up and through the door. I don’t stop moving until I’m in the bedroom with the door closed and my back against it, breathing heavily.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, and I think about Maren in her hotel room.
I can only think of one thing: I have to leave.
This time, the thought doesn’t have a question mark.
It’s hard to tell how long I sit there before my phone vibrates against the floor beside me.
Maren.
I open it with hands that haven’t entirely stopped shaking.
MARE
He found me. I had to switch hotels. Running out of options, Ellie. Running out of time. Please, I need you.
A sharp, hollow ache opens in the center of my chest. I failed to protect the one person who never asked for protection, never asked for anything besides the truth and a real friendship. For eight years, Maren has been the person I call, and she has never once failed to show up.
But I can’t help her on my own. I need Rolan, no matter what just happened.
Yet the question that refuses to leave my head remains the same. Can I trust him?
The thought sits in my chest alongside the ache. I press my back harder against the door and answer honestly, I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know anymore.
But Maren is running out of time, and I have no one else.
I get up off the floor.
His office is empty when I arrive. The desk lamp is on, so he must intend to return. I move around the desk, sit in his chair, and wait.
The minutes accumulate.
I reread Maren’s message, drafting responses and deleting them. I look at the objects on his desk — the folders, the pen, the glass paperweight that ended up on the floor the afternoon he swept everything off it. I weigh how much this is going to hurt if my plan doesn’t work out as I expect.
The door opens.
Rolan stops.
His eyes move from the empty chair across the desk to the chair behind it, where I am sitting, and for a fraction of a second, I detect a new glint in his eyes. Is that... pride?
He changed his shirt. His hands are clean. Whatever happened in the basement has been removed from his person with the same efficiency that removed the evidence from the foyer weeks ago.
I stand and come around the desk, stopping in the center of the room, right in front of him. I hold his gaze and take a deep breath, bracing for a truth I need to hear.
“Who are you, Rolan Belov?”