Chapter Ten
Inna Grace
When Mum left, I barely felt it. Her absence folded itself into the rhythm of our days without leaving a visible mark.
When I was young, Mum was always busy, and Dad filled every gap she left.
She once disappeared for six months. Dad said it was work.
She came back, and I believed him. When she disappeared for good, I kept believing it was work until it was just the three of us. Nobody said her name anymore.
Cole never knew her. He never asked, and nobody offered. The strangest part was that there were no photographs of her anywhere in the house. I began to forget her face slowly, the way you forget the details of a dream the longer you stay awake.
But when Dad disappeared, I felt it. The quiet hope that one day Dad and I would find Mum all went out. What was left with me was Cole and the responsibility of making sure he ate and lived.
When I refused to jump off that building a month ago, I decided to climb mountains for Cole. I meant it then. I would still do that, but this was different.
It was different to marry a complete stranger who looked as if danger were his second name.
If he owned a small café and drove an old car with a broken air conditioner, I could have talked myself into it.
But this man owned a building that reflected the city in itself.
He sent lawyers to doorsteps before breakfast, carrying fake documents.
And now he wanted me to stand in front of a room full of people wearing a $20 million necklace.
I would be a target painted in diamonds around my neck.
I came to the bar because I needed to think. Thinking at home meant staring at the same four walls that had watched me spiral for the past two days. I needed somewhere with noise and drinks that could make you forget reality for a moment. But the problem was, I wasn’t supposed to drink.
I had two options, and neither of them was good.
I had to marry him, as he said. Or find a man in this bar willing to pay enough for me to clear Dmitri’s money and walk away from the mess.
I had scanned the room twice already. It was the middle of the day, and the pickings were thin.
Nobody was looking at me anyway, which was its own kind of answer.
The marriage option sounded better, partly because of Cole, who had been grinning at Dmitri as if they had known each other from a previous life. Cole didn’t warm up to people easily, but something about Dmitri had him showing every tooth in his mouth.
I didn’t know what Dmitri actually wanted: me, or Cole, or both of us.
I looked down at the glass margarita sitting in front of me and immediately saw Cole’s face in it.
It was the universe’s subtle way of reminding me I had left a nine-year-old alone in an apartment to sit at a bar and contemplate my life choices.
He was fine. He was nine, not four. But the guilt sat there anyway.
There was also gastritis. The doctor warned me against alcohol. One glass and I would be looking at a hospital visit. I could not afford to get drunk. But I really needed this drink.
A burst of laughter drew my attention down the bar. Two women sat at the far end, leaning into each other, polished from head to heel. One said something close to the other’s ear, and they both looked at me. My eyes narrowed.
I glanced down at myself. Still wearing jeans and the Coca-Cola shirt advertising a brand that had not paid me a single cent.
I lifted the glass and pretended to drink, mostly to give my hands something to do. But somewhere between pretending and putting it back down, I actually sipped. The burn hit the back of my throat before I registered what I had done.
Nothing has ever tasted that good in my life. It moved through me, like a door cracking open in a room that had been sealed too long.
I took another sip. One glass couldn’t kill me, right?
A man walked up to the two girls and slid into the space between them. I watched how easy it was, how neither of them had to do anything except exist in the right outfit. They were my age. Same city, but completely different lives.
I was sitting in a bar, looking like I had lost an argument with my existence, while girls were being bought drinks by men who wanted them.
What did I do wrong, exactly? At what specific turn did the road go this way?
Fuck my parents.
I took another sip.
Fuck my life.
I took another.
The glass emptied, and I pushed it toward the bartender. He refilled it without asking, and I appreciated that about him.
Fine. I would marry Dmitri. He was rich.
The building alone told me that much. Rich meant that Cole ate properly, slept somewhere safe, and stopped chasing ghosts with me.
If marrying a stranger with good bone structure and questionable morals was what this chapter of my life required, then that was it.
I stopped waiting for better options anyway.
The second glass went down faster than the first. I pushed it forward again, and that was when my body decided to weigh in on the conversation.
The weakness came first, settling into my limbs. Then the burning started, deep in my stomach, climbing upward through my chest and into my throat.
No. Not here, please. Not now.
I picked up the fresh glass the bartender had set down, and my hand was shaking. The glass rattled faintly against the bar top. I pressed my lips together and told myself to hold it together for ten more minutes, just long enough to get outside, into a cab, and back to Cole.
The bar tilted.
“Are you okay?” The bartender’s voice reached me in pieces.
I got off the stool, and my elbow caught the glass on the way down. It hit the floor and shattered. I barely heard it over the noise already building inside my head. I took a step, one hand pressed hard against my stomach, bent slightly at the waist, breathing through my teeth.
A hand closed around my wrist. “You haven’t paid.”
Right. I forgot.
I pulled at my bag with fingers that weren’t cooperating, searching for the change I knew was somewhere at the bottom. My breath came out in short, uneven pulls.
“Miss, you need to pay.”
“I will p—” the word broke apart before it finished. I wasn’t sure if anything I said came out at the right volume.
“Security.” The grip on my shoulder tightened, and I winced, pulling against it.
One moment I was upright, and the next I was on the floor. The noise in the bar swelled around me, as if something were shattering nearby. I heard a sound like a burst or a crack, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The darkness came first, and everything else went quiet after.
I woke up to a scent that didn’t belong to me. Leather and underneath it, vanilla and dry wood. My body sank into something soft enough that getting up felt like an unreasonable choice.
Light came in from somewhere above. I blinked at the ceiling, my head heavy. The kind of heaviness that doesn’t come from rest but from the body shutting itself down. The ceiling stretched farther than any ceiling I have ever woken under.
The curtains were open, and the city beyond the windows blurred into an endless view. I was in a bed centered in the middle of a room that had no business being this large.
This was not my apartment.
My heart raced, and I pushed myself upright.
I pressed a hand to my head as the room tilted briefly and looked around.
The polished floor reflected the light coming through the window.
There was a low, leather chair near the window.
The table beside it had nothing on it except a single glass coaster.
I got off the bed faster and started toward the door. Cole was at home alone. I needed to get out of whatever this was and get back to him immediately.
I was three steps from the door when it opened.
Dmitri filled the frame, and I stopped immediately.
He wore a black suit. The jacket sat across his shoulders as if it were made for those shoulders.
The shirt beneath was black, open at the collar by a single button.
His jaw was clean, his hair set without being stiff.
He was looking at me as if he had accounted for every possible version of this moment and was simply waiting to see which one I chose.
I stepped back on instinct. Why was I even surprised?
“You’re awake. Good.” He moved closer, his eyes dropping over me briefly, making me look down at myself.
Holy shit!
I was wearing a nightdress. An ivory, thin-strapped dress falling just above the knees, and it had never belonged to me. The last thing I remembered putting on was jeans and a shameful T-shirt.
“The auction starts in two hours,” he said, eyes dropping to his phone.
I stood there and let that sentence pass through me without finding anywhere to land.
“Do you need help with the shower?” He glanced up.
Several things were happening in my mind at the same time, and none of them cooperated. I was in his house, in a dress that wasn’t mine, being asked about a shower and reminded about an auction I was still not sure about.
Cole.
Where was Cole?
“I should go.” I turned and scanned the room. “Where are my clothes?”
He said nothing. He didn’t look troubled by the question or anything else.
I spotted my handbag on the bedside table and quickly went to grab it. Reaching for it, I was already calculating how fast I could get out of this building and back to my brother.
My hand froze when I noticed a ring on my finger.
I lifted my hand slowly, hoping the thing I was seeing might correct itself if I approached it carefully.
It didn’t. The ring sat on my left hand’s ring finger, catching light coming through the window and scattering it.
It was a gold ring with a diamond at the center.
Smaller stones trailed down on either side and vanished below my finger.
My blood went cold. A ring on that finger meant one thing. Dmitri said I would wear one, and he meant it.
“What—” I turned to face him. He stood in the same position, with the same composed expression, as if this didn’t require any response from him. “What is this? Why am I wearing a ring?”
He just stared, which was an answer enough. I walked back toward him because grown adults talk things through. I was determined to be a grown adult about this, even if everything around me suggested the ship had sailed.
“I think we need to talk.” I kept my voice calm. “Why do you want to marry me?”
Dmitri exhaled and stepped closer. “I don’t think you understand something, Inna. This discussion ended a while ago. Right now, we should talk about the auction.”
“The auction.” I nodded slowly. “Right. Which is tomorrow, so—” I stopped. “Wait. Is the auction today?”
“You need a shower.” He turned toward the door.
I went after him. “The auction is today? That means I was out the entire night?” I followed him into the corridor. “My brother. Where is my brother?”
“He should be with his tutor.”
Tutor?
The door closed, and he was gone, and I stood in the middle of the room with that word sitting in the air.
I tried to line everything up in the right order. The bar, the drinks I had, the chaos, and passing out. So, how did I wake up in this room with a ring that was apparently now mine, whether I agreed to it or not? An entire night had passed somewhere between that bar and this bedroom.
If he brought me here, it meant he also undressed me. That was a thought I was going to put down and walk away from before it made things worse.
I looked at the ring again. It sat there as if my finger had been waiting for it.
Everything else could wait, but I needed to see my brother with my own eyes first.
I started opening doors, looking for my clothes. The third door stopped me.
The wardrobe was enormous, with shelves, rails, and drawers arranged as well as the rest of this place. But what pulled the air from my lungs was what stood in the center.
A silver dress on a mannequin fell in clean, heavy lines from a structured bodice and tapered into a skirt with a long slit cut up one side.
The neckline dipped into a V, simple enough to let the dress speak for itself.
But the necklace draped around the mannequin’s neck made sure nothing else in the room got a word in.
I knew it. It was the necklace that could end several lives if the wrong person decided it should.
I stood there for a moment, just breathing.
This man had a plan. Nobody built all of this, the lawyer, the ring, the dress, the necklace, and the tutor for my brother, for a reason as simple as just marrying them.
I needed to think of my own plan. Because I was already inside this, and the door I came through was no longer visible from where I stood.