Chapter 10
Alexei
She’s asleep. Here. In my bed.
Holding my breath, I touch her. I can’t help myself. I need to make sure that she’s real, that this isn’t a dream caused by my involuntary passing out from lack of sleep. But no. Her jet-black hair is soft and silky as I brush my hand over it, the skin of her bare arm supple and warm.
I exhale raggedly and pull my hand away, not wanting to wake her.
Then I realize she’s still wearing the dress she ran away in, the same blood-stained dress I found her in at the hostel.
It definitely needs to be changed. Gently, I roll her onto her side and use my knife to slice through the material in the front and back so I can remove it without disturbing her too much.
As I do so, I try my best not to look at the satin curves I’ve bared.
Not because I think it’s wrong, but because, with my emotions oscillating wildly between relief, rage, and fear, I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself from doing more than simply touching her.
Despite everything—or maybe because of everything—I want her so much I feel it in the very marrow of my bones. I ache to clasp her to me and bury myself in her, to forget that I’ve come so disastrously close to losing her—that I might still lose her if we don’t win the battle with her cancer.
Tomorrow at noon, they will cut her head open to excise the tumor from her brain, and I’m fucking terrified.
Dragging in an unsteady breath, I take the remnants of the dress to the living room, where I chuck it into the fireplace to destroy the evidence of Alina’s successful self-defense.
Not that anyone will link her to the dead man—Valery’s forensic team will get rid of the body and destroy all evidence of what occurred in that hostel room—but still, we can’t be too cautious here, where we have much less influence with the police than we do back home.
I’m relieved that nobody at the clinic commented on the blood stains.
They most likely thought that the blood was from the gash in her hand.
Or the miscarriage/period—whatever the bleeding at the end of a chemical pregnancy is called.
My chest squeezes painfully, a sensation that I ascribe to prolonged sleep deprivation.
It’s good that things turned out this way—the best possible outcome, really.
Now Alina won’t hate me for forcing her to proceed with the treatment that would’ve killed what she thought of as our baby girl.
And even if it weren’t for the necessity of the treatment, I don’t know if I could’ve handled my Alinyonok being pregnant and giving birth—not after the nightmare about my mother’s death.
I was so fucking wrong to try to force this on her, to think that tying her to me was worth inflicting this kind of physical trauma on her.
Well, never again. I’ll have to win her love some other way.
And if I can’t, I will keep her regardless.
I stay by the fireplace long enough to make sure the dress is nothing but ashes.
Then I call Valery and confirm that his forensic team cleaned up the scene.
The entire time, my eyes burn as if pepper-sprayed as I think of the tiny embryo that never was and remember the look on Alina’s face when she told me she was bleeding.
I tell myself that they burn from fireplace smoke and from lack of sleep, not anything as banal as grief. There was nothing to grieve, after all. The baby never truly existed.
It’s not until I return to bed and pull my sleeping wife against me that I feel a strange wetness underneath my eyes and realize the painful tightness never left my chest. Even now, as I’m holding what’s most precious to me in the whole world, each breath feels like a struggle, each heartbeat requiring monumental effort.
Despite my exhaustion, hours pass before I’m able to finally fall asleep.