Chapter Thirty Eight
Alexei
In the end, I could not tell her goodbye. In the end, I could not even watch her leave.
She will never have to see me again, but I’m not a good enough man not to see her.
My men are good; they know how to place cameras.
They know how to rig for audio. I know that I will have to wean myself off of her slowly.
Katya is like an addiction, and I am too far gone not to have my fix. But one day it will have to end.
One day she will be secure in her new life. She will go out on dates. She will bring someone home.
The cameras will have to be gone by then. Or I will not be able to control myself.
She is not mine anymore, though I still think of her this way. Perhaps I always will. I let her go only for her own happiness which has become of more value to me than my own. So it doesn’t make sense to me, what I see on the monitors.
I thought Katya would attack her freedom like a glutton.
That she would take that shiny new car I know is in her garage out for long drives, spend hours lazing on the beach, enjoy everything her new life has to offer to her.
I thought she would make use of the education she worked for, that she would at last attain that dream she once cherished and find a teaching position immediately.
But she does not do this. She does not do anything.
She spends days in the same set of pajamas, curled up in a chair, or laying listlessly in bed.
She eats only delivery pizza, and barely more than a bite or two before she loses interest and the box sits abandoned on the counter until the housekeeper inevitably cleans it away.
She drinks too much still, and never the sweet wines I once purchased for her. She drinks red wines which I know she has never enjoyed, as if she can punish herself in this manner. She drinks hard liquor straight from the bottle.
She does not paint her nails, or watch her documentaries, or read her romances or her biographies. She doesn’t live like she was meant to do. Like I wanted for her.
Instead, she cries. Often. And there is nothing I can do at such a distance, spying upon her like I have been.
This cut was meant to be a clean one. Swift for her and brutal for me.
These cameras hidden in strategic positions are the only concession I have given to myself to feed my raging addiction.
At my own demand, Anatoli made these arrangements with my resources in utter secrecy. I am never to know her exact location. I am never to know her address, her phone number. I am never to know her new name.
I promised her safety, even from myself.
So I tell myself that she will recover. She has to do this. This is what she wanted. The only thing she had asked for. I tell myself that she will be happy.
And yet, every day, I am confronted with the fact that I was wrong once again. That I do not know Katya at all. I would prefer to think it is only that—that she remains a mystery to me—because the alternative is unthinkable.
That I ruined her entirely.
Katya’s pain is my pain. Watching her suffer is unbearable. And I know, finally, that in a moment of weakness I might do something truly drastic. Maybe I do not know her address—but I can see the sandy beach on the cameras. I can see the sun set in the evening.
She is in California, then. And if I can divine this much only from what I can see on these cameras, how long will it be until that is not enough for me?
How long until her tears break me down so much that I pick and pull at this carefully-constructed protection which has been built for her?
How long until it unravels entirely and her new life comes apart at the seams?
How long until I ruin even her brittle, tenuous peace?
I need to put an ocean between us.