Chapter Ten
In which there can be nothing worse than someone hating you, but you can absolutely understand why.
Liria…
Our hostile silence continues until the SUV parks in front of what looks like a renovated warehouse.
It's brick with those huge old-fashioned glass windows that arch at the top.
It looks barren in front, no flowers or grass.
Danyl escorts me to the front door. It's a hugely wide and tall wooden door with two wolf's heads, carved with lifelike intensity.
Elaborate scrolls travel down the wood and I'd like to stay for a minute and examine it.
Before I can get a better look, Alexsey steps up to a complicated panel next to the door, he leans in and it takes a retinal scan.
Really? A retinal scan? I think. This place is already built like a fortress.
Alexsey heads into the house without looking back at me, so I follow him, hating the feel of trailing him like some submissive spouse. Danyl brings in a suitcase that I recognize as my own.
"Take it up to the guest room," Alexsey says. "The one furthest from the master bedroom." Danyl's gaze darts to me uncomfortably before he gives a nod and heads up the stairs.
The entire downstairs is open with iron beams bisecting the space.
The kitchen boasts a gleaming blue Aga stove and beautifully painted tile work that flows along the walls.
The island is made from an enormous wooden slab with ragged edges, as if cut and placed directly from a massive tree.
The space feels warm, with hanging iron pendant lights above it.
The main living space has all the furniture arranged to look out the windows to see the Hudson River flowing by; little boats and yachts, tugboats, and the occasional cargo ships that can handle the river flow by.
The furniture is all weathered-looking leather, with deep seats, probably for his long legs.
The best thing is the profusion of plants, there's a potted orange tree, and another that's heavy with plump lemons.
Ferns hang from the windows, thick and lush, and it's the first sign of life I've seen in Alexsey's space.
It's oddly comforting. Beyond that, there's an airy space with a layer of discarded easels and stacks upon stacks of canvases leaning against the brick wall.
"You're an artist." I nod. "Of course. You knew everything about Van Gogh that night."
His expression pinches as if he's smelling sewer gas. "I was." he says.
Danyl comes back down the stairs. "Will there be anything else tonight, sir?
I can wait if you need-" Alexsey waves him off and Danyl dips his head, leaving the house quickly.
It's the first time I've noticed that Alexsey's wearing a leather glove on his left hand.
I frown, trying to recall if I'd seen him without it.
Thinking back, during the signing ordeal, he kept it tucked by his side, just using his right hand and he didn't eat at all at the restaurant.
It's silent after Danyl leaves. The resentful quiet is harsh enough to be its own entity in the room.
I wrap my arms around myself, feeling small against the long line of windows and the high ceiling.
It's a huge place, large enough that my footsteps echo as I walk. I want to ask him about his hand. I remember his left hand very well during our night together, tugging on my nipples as he whispered perfect, obscene things to me. Did he get injured during my half-brother’s ambush on his family?
Fucking Luan, that bloodthirsty son of a bitch!
It would be a very good reason to hate me.
I want to ask him if he knew who I was that night in Boston.
If he thought about me. Was he ever tempted to come looking for me?
Alexsey's phone buzzes, he starts to take it from his jacket with his glove-covered left hand, then pauses before angrily pulling it out with his right.
He's already turned away from me, taking a call and speaking rapidly in Russian.
The set of his stiff shoulders and obvious dismissal makes me flush, embarrassed and angry.
I head up the stairs to the second floor to look for my room because really, what's the point of standing there like an idiot?
There's nothing to say.
A set of doors dominates the end of the hall that I assume are for the master bedroom. Since my charming new husband made it clear that I should be in the room furthest from his, I'm thinking it's the door to my left at the top of the stairs. I open it and my suitcase is sitting next to the bed.
Alexsey may hate me, but It's a lovely room, filled with carved wooden furniture and gorgeous paintings.
Some are local scenes that I recognize from trips to New York, others from where I'm guessing are Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
One lovely abstract painting over the fireplace draws me closer.
It's only lines and curves, flowing in the shape of a woman's body on a bed.
Her back is to the artist, skilled, elegant swoops of cream and pink create the lines of her skin lovingly, with the shadow of an arm curled over her head.
It's beautiful.
Whoever she is, the artist must love her dearly. Looking at the corner of the canvas, an icy finger runs up my spine.
A. Morozov
Oh fuck, he painted it. Please, God don't let him be left-handed!
I feel sick, remembering the discarded easels, scattered carelessly downstairs.
All the canvases turned to face the wall.
The ugly comment from the Albanian guard rises up, unwanted, in my memory.
"Who cares if he lost a hand? As long as it's not the one he uses to jerk off. "
My family did this to him.
Sitting on the big four poster bed, I cry.
I cry for the life that's been dismantled and taken from me.
I cry for Alexsey's gift as an artist, torn from him.
Then, I cry because I wish that wonderful night in Boston had been spent with someone else.
I'll never forget how he looked at me that night, his eyes tender, sometimes rapacious but always admiring me.
I hate how he looks at me now, the contempt and disgust.
Like I'm someone to despise. Someone to hate. And I can't even blame him.