Chapter 25
Helena
The music flowing through my fingers is a strange combination of notes. I’ve taken bits and pieces of my favorite pieces and somehow mashed them together. The result isn’t the prettiest of tunes, but it feels good to keep playing. The conclusions that I’ve come to certainly aren’t going to bring me any comfort, so I might as well enjoy this while I can.
At the very least, they are enjoyable roles to play as time goes on. The acoustics in the bedroomaren”t too bad. The sound is absorbed by the thin, flat quality to the far side of the room where there is less furniture. But it”s fine over here by the bed. I almost miss my dusty music studio. I really miss the auditorium. I”m wondering if there will ever be another chance for me to teach there. I don”t think Daniel will be persuaded that I can behave well enough to be left alone anytime soon, let alone return to the school.
He probably thinks that the moment there’s a neutral adult in sight, I’m going to go screaming my head off for help. Until he makes up his own mind otherwise, there’s no point in attempting to convince him to trust me. I wouldn’t just take somebody else’s word on that front either. I’m not going to try running away again. Not now.
If he was Nikolai, that’s exactly what I would do… but Daniel is gentle.
Naturally, he’s going to make me regret that assumption.
The bedroom door slams open with such force that I jump and jerk my arm across the cello. The bow slashes through my hand, leaving a red mark on my opposite arm where I hit myself. Despite this, I greet Daniel with a fleeting smile. He appears angrier than I”ve ever seen him.
The smile isslapped right off my face. His eyes have a feral quality to them that makes my blood run cold. I blink, and I”m back in my Moscow bedroom for a split second. The entire room appears to shift as I recall the terrible night Nikolai attempted to murder me.
My belongings are half-packed on the bed when Nikolai comes thundering into the room with a very similar look of rage and contempt on his face. I never did find out how he found out the truth about myself and his father. I never found out who told him or what had happened, but it doesn’t matter now, not really.
I remember waiting for the accusations to come pouring out of him, but instead, it was me who kept frantically talking. I begged for my life—pleading with the man I thought at the time that I was wildly in love with. I only tried to run at first because I thought that some time apart might mean that he would allow me to explain what happened. He was a man who understood revenge better than most, and so I had stupidly hoped that he would understand… that in time we could try to pick up the pieces of our love.
What had I gotten for it? A nearly crushed windpipe and a fractured skull.
Tears pour freely and instantly the moment that terror overtakes my body.
I try to blink them away, but it only takes me from one horrifying bedroom to the next. I feel like I should be begging and pleading, but I”m not sure what I”ve done wrong this time.
As he thunders into the room, I instinctively scramble back and away from him. He”s not having it. There is no levity or teasing. Whatever happened while I was locked up in here... that”s itfor me. I can tell. As Daniel grabs my ankle, a knot of fear forms in my throat. He drags me to the foot of the bed.
“No… no, no, no!” I mutter and try to kick at him in protest. He grabs my injured ankle firmly, and I yelp in pain. I can’t fight him as he hauls me toward him. I’m powerless to stop him as he throws me up and over his shoulder. He carries me down the stairs without so much as a word. I try to grab onto door frames, furniture, anything that I think I can reach, but he’s moving too fast for me to even attempt an escape.
I claw at the wallpaper, but it doesn’t do me any good.
He kicks open the front door where there’s a black Range Rover waiting just outside. He opens the rear door and throws me in so gracelessly that I collide angrily with the floor and seat. He slams the door, and it locks me inside. As soon as I can get onto my knees, I start to feel around for a door handle, but it doesn’t do anything. The windows don’t roll down and the doors won’t open.
I start to panic.
The car accelerates so quickly that I slam sideways. The pain starts in my shoulder and travels down my arm like lightning, so bright and hot that I want to cry all over again. I have to bite my bottom lip to keep from screaming in pain and fear. That will almost certainly enrage him even more.
He doesn’t roll down the partition as we drive. I can feel the car racing up through the mountains again. All of those fears and worries from our first date come rushing right back. I wish I knew what had changed his mind. I know it won’t change whatever is coming for me, but I would like to know what the nail in my coffin is. Perhaps I can ask him before he does whatever it is that he’s planning on doing.
I curl up on the floorboard and wait for the car to come to a stop. My mind gladly supplies every worst-case scenario it can conjure up for me. When we stop, he slams on the brakes so hard that I have to fling my arms out to keep from collapsing. He switches off the car, and I can hear his furious steps as he walks around to the side of the car he threw me into. He slams the door open and reaches in blindly for me.
“No!” I scream. “Please! Daniel! Don’t do this! Please!” I wail loudly. The fear has taken over my body completely. He reaches for me, and I try to dive away, I try to avoid his hand, but he lunges for me and grabs me by my knee. I almost crash to the ground once more, but he rights me at the last possible moment. He takes a grip on my arm so hard that I can feel my pulse against his fingers.
It’s not the same place as before. This cliff smells like the sea. There’s salt carried on the breeze and there are cliffs everywhere. The railing is much lower here. If somebody were to stumble even a little bit, they would fall right over the edge. Just looking in the direction of the drop makes me want to throw up. I had hoped that if he chose to kill me again after that first date, he would consider doing it somewhere else.
I hate heights. I don’t want to have to explain that to him while I’m begging for my life.
Should I even beg? What do I have to live for?
His hands are shaking.
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but since we’ve stopped moving I can feel it now.
I look up at him. The salt in the air makes the tears falling down my face stick to my cheeks. The evening air is cold and bites at my bare legs. I want to go back to my boring room.
“You’re good, you know,” he says harshly. “You’re far better than I thought to give you credit for. I should congratulate you on that much.”
He sounds like he’s having so much difficulty controlling his words. I don’t know what words he’s holding back, but I know that I won’t like them.
“What? What happened? Daniel, you’re scaring me… please don’t do this…”
He closes his eyes but doesn’t lessen his grip at all. “You’ll just say anything that you think will help your situation, won’t you? You really don’t have any fucking boundaries or morals, do you?”
“What? Daniel…” I’m confused. I don’t know what has changed or who has gotten to him. I stare at him, hoping that he will look down at me and maybe then I will understand what’s happening. “You’re the…” I swallow hard against my fear. “I’ve never lied to you… you’re the only person that I’ve never lied to…”
“Is that right, Sofia?” he corrects.
“Apart from that!” I say. “That wasn’t just you… that was trying to get some sort of life back! I haven’t lied to you except at the beginning?—”
“And I should trust you why? All you’ve done is lie… to everybody… and I’m just your latest fool, it would seem.” He finally looks at me, and it makes me regret wishing for his gaze. I flinch from the coldness in his eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m gum on the bottom of his shoe. “You lied about not having any contact with Alek after all. I never would have believed a word that you said! I should have had my way with you and ended you like I was told!”
He draws me closer, and I can hardly breathe.
“Not only that,” he seethes through his clenched teeth. “Not only did you lie about not having contact, but you lied about knowing my sister—you fucking introduced them!”
I shake my head. “What? No! I haven’t… I don’t even…” I feel like a crazy person. He’s accusing me with such conviction that it’s making me doubt my own mind. Did I? Did I somehow know his sister? When was the last time that I had friends? When was the last time that I introduced somebody like that? It’s been so long… did I do it and just never thought anything of it? Was it an accident?
Daniel reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and thrusts it at me. I open it carefully and look down at the picture. Sure enough, I’m sitting there. Realization dawns on me slowly, creeping up as the memory is pulled out of a sleepy, rarely visited part of my mind.
“Lillian is your sister?” I mutter incredulously. It is such an impossible thing. How could we have randomly been tied together like this? I rush to explain myself. In my haste, I fumble horribly over my words. The paranoid part of my brain is telling me that it’s only making me sound even more guilty… it’s telling me to slow down, but I can’t. “Before I started things with Nikolai and moved out on my own, I had been making connections… one of those was Lilian. We met for coffee a couple times and started to hang out from time to time… not just us. There was a whole group of us. Given the nature of our backgrounds, we never talked about anything serious. Never families or business talk… that was the whole rule of our friend group…”
It was so that none of us could turn on the other or attempt to use one another for personal gain, because we didn’t know anything real. Hell, I had figured that at least half of the girls in the group had likely given me false first and last names as well.
“One night... We”d been to a club, and Lillian had introduced me to her boyfriend. He looked familiar, but I couldn”t place him... As the night progressed, I couldn”t get over how much he reminded me of Alek, but he pretended he didn”t know who I was. He didn”t say anything to me all night...that”s this picture was taken. We were all drunk and having a good time... When the club lights came on, I tried to approach him. I wanted to know if he was Alek or not, but he told me to get away from him... to never speak to him again. So I returned home and never saw him again.”
I had spent months after that encounter just praying that the man I met at the club wasn’t my brother. The notion that he could be my brother and just not even want to greet me and get coffee was too much for me to stomach. It hurt too bad. I tucked the memory away somewhere deep in my mind where I wouldn’t ever have to look at it again, because having Alek abandon me a second time as an adult where we could have started from scratch was more than I could handle.
“I didn’t introduce them. Lilian said that they had been dating for a good while before I even went out with them. The picture was a fluke… I don’t know how you got it or what was said to you but Daniel… I didn’t lie!” I’ve never been so desperate for somebody to believe me before in my whole life. Not just because he could kill me any second that he chooses, but it’s important for me that Daniel believes me.
“I didn’t see Lillian much after that. I had begun my mission to kill Nikolai’s father and get my revenge… and that took over everything. It became my whole life… the only reason that I was alive. I cut off all of my friendships and ghosted just about everybody, Daniel… including Lilian. When it was all said and done, I was too ashamed of myself to pick things back up with any of my old friends. Her included.”
Silence envelops us like the winds that have begun to blow. My heart is pounding in my chest. I”m certain that whatever Daniel says next will shape the course of my future. He”ll either believe me...or not. I”m not lying. I”m telling him the whole truth and everything I remember about it. Someone is clearly working hard to make sure he doesn”t believe me, and I”m certain it”s Nikolai.
But if I bring up Nikolai, he’s going to think that I’m manipulating him for sure.
Finally, Daniel turns to face me but there’s nothing on his face. It’s a blank slate.
I swallow hard and my throat bobs anxiously.
His eyes narrow only slightly as he minutely shakes his head.
“I don’t believe you.”