Chapter 11Ana #2
He set the table so, yes, we’d be near each other, but I wouldn’t have to look at him. And when I approach, I notice my coffee is far lighter than his and he has a mountain of strawberries while I have a fruit salad, no strawberries.
I don’t recall what strawberries taste like, which makes me wonder if I dislike them, and Vasily seems to know that. He knows how I like my coffee, too.
Intrusive thoughts win as I reach for one of his strawberries, just to see if I really do dislike them. He drops his plate with a thud, one sausage bouncing off it and rolling across the table, to slap my hand away.
I make a little whining sound. I don’t even mean it, but ow? Why? My eyes go wide and wet as I’m suddenly flooded with all kinds of new ideas of how he might be a terrible husband to me.
“Allergic,” he says with a pant and a hand on his chest as though he’s even more freaked out than I am.
“The grocery service messed up and sent strawberries, but you’re allergic.
I thought I would eat them all now and then clean up really well.
You’re allergic to kiwis and apples, too.
I checked the juice, it’s all safe, and I’ve already dealt with the grocery service. ”
That kind of sounds like he’s demanded someone be fired. Hopefully they agreed but didn’t actually fire anyone. “Is there an EpiPen here?”
“Six of them,” he says like that’s not an actually insane number. “One in each of our bathrooms, one in the kitchen drawer next to the sink, one in that end table, one in your luggage, and one in my office. ”
Okay, so he definitely cares about my health. That’s something. Probably he doesn’t slap me unless it’s an emergency. That could be a better way to approach this, starting from nothing and working my way up.
“Am I close with my family?” I ask to shake the jitters away.
“It’s just your brother.”
“The one who sold me to you?”
He nods and reaches for a strawberry, only to frown, pick up the bowl, and throw everything— including the bowl— straight in the trash.
Actually insane.
“And you just married me and moved me in with you and your friend?” I ask as he scrubs his hands at the sink and then returns.
He nudges my plate toward me. “Eat, Ana.”
“Answer the question, Vasily.” But I pick up my fork.
“Yes, you moved in with me and...” He sighs.
I get this feeling inside me, almost a memory trying to break out, but it’s stuck. All I have is, “Was it Dima? I’ve heard you mention him a few times.”
He nods. “He was my friend.”
“Was? What happened?”
“Why is he no longer my friend? He was supposed to be keeping an eye on you, and you were kidnapped. Hurt.” His skin glows, a flush of anger at his temples and cheeks. “I’ll kill him when I find him.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” Oddly, I’m not as bothered by that as I think most people would be. Nothing that he’s told me this morning feels wrong. This is my life.
“He let you get hurt, Ana. That is—” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what Dima could have told me to excuse that, but I had hopes. But that was already enough for me to want to kill him. Now, he ignores my calls. He is the enemy, and I kill my enemies. It is what got you this home in the sky.”
Got me? Or him? I don’t push that, though. “What was I doing when I got kidnapped? Was I in Florida? Why was I there?”
“I don’t know.” He stares at me as he says it, a mere statement of fact. “I don’t track your every move, Ana. That’s what Dima was supposed to be doing.”
I give myself a break to think about that as I eat the breakfast Vasily has prepared for me.
It’s simple. I know I could have made some fancy breakfast. French eggs pops into my mind, and I wonder if I’ve made them for him before.
It’s not a bad breakfast, though. The eggs and sausage are cooked properly.
The fruits are all freshly cut. I am enjoying my coffee.
After I’ve eaten a couple forkfuls of eggs and selected some chunks of fruit, I have myself built up enough to say, “So, we’re not really together, are we?”
“It is complicated,” he says over the rim of his cup, and I catch a hint of his accent.
He is a complicated man. I suppose everyone is complicated once you start peeling back the layers.
Certainly, I keep surprising myself with every layer of myself that I uncover, but I’m also starting to wonder if Vasily, when he’s being true to himself, speaks English in a standard American accent, or if his comfort zone really is that thick accent with the stilted English.
“I think I should know. We’ve been married for six years and I’m not on birth control, but we don’t have any kids? Why? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Is because this,” he says irritably, his voice pure gravel as he waves his fork around. “This life? We build because no kids. ”
He starts to stand as though he’s going to huff off and sulk— or kill a guy?
He definitely feels like he’s killed men because he was angry and there was a guy who needed to be killed— but I take hold of his hand and pin it to the table.
It would be nothing for him to break free, but he doesn’t fight me.
“Please, Vasily. I get that this is probably hard for you. It sounds like you were forced into this marriage as much as I was, and I-I don’t know if I was a very nice person to you or if you were nice to me.
I don’t know if we were awful to each other and the best thing I did was walk out that door and not stop until I passed the Gulf of Mexico.
If you finally thought you were rid of me, only for this to happen? Or-or-or if you...”
My heart clenches at the thought that hits me, and the lick of terror up my back feels like it will rob the life out of me, but I’ve already gone too far to keep it in.
“Or if you’re the reason for what happened? If you...” I wince at my thoughts. “If you tried to make me disappear forever?”
He flies away from me, like my words themselves are this terrible repellent. This time when he throws a fist, it goes right through the wall, and as he storms back to me, the sound of plaster raining down inside the wall is like the sound of my demise.
He wanted me dead.
He tried to have me killed.
He did it in a way no one would know was him, whether to get insurance money or appease my brother or blame whomever it was he hired.
He thought he got away with it, and then I guessed it.
He’s going to kill me now.
My heart leaps into my throat. Embarrassingly, I let out the faintest, most pathetic squeak, and I pray that there really is nothing past this because I don’t want my eternal soul to remember that was the last sound I ever made, even when my murderer was right there and I could have screamed for help or thrown a plate at him or something.
Anything instead of just sitting here staring at him.
He’s a single step from me, close enough he has only to reach an arm out to snap my neck.
He falls to his knees in front of me and drops his forehead to my thigh, partially out from under the table from the way I’d twisted my body to face him while we talked.
“You were supposed to be safe!” he swears, violence in the promise.
Honesty. Anger. His hand goes around my opposite knee, pivoting me and making a lap for him to rest his head on.
I’m still catching my breath from my fright, but I can’t hate the way he manhandles me.
God help me, I enjoy the way he shapes me to fit his exact needs.
And if he needs to hold me, to tuck his hand in the small space carved out by the sharp angle of my chair back and the rounded curve of my butt, that means I’m needed.
“That was the one thing Dima was supposed to do. He was supposed to stay out of your life but make sure you were safe, no matter what that meant. If I never saw my best friend again, it was fine because he was keeping you safe wherever you were while I made this life right here. He saved your life once, you know that?”
“Really?” I reach for his hair tentatively, holding back reminders of why I obviously don’t remember this.
I don’t doubt that we had a sex life, and knowing how good it can be, I’m sure we took great pleasure in each other. But we were nothing more, and no one was hurt by the thousands of miles we ultimately put between us.
I expect some harrowing story. I’m understanding better now why I have a tattoo where no one can see it unless they’re going places they really shouldn’t, warning them off.
So I’m not sure if I should laugh or die of humiliation when Vasily says, “You ate kiwi. Dima gave you the shot. The EpiPen. You were on the phone with a friend when you collapsed. He was in bed, but he heard her screaming over the phone. There was an EpiPen in the apartment, but he didn’t know where it was, so he called Igor to hunt one down, and he did the mouth breathing thing— the CPR?
— while he waited for Igor. So Igor saved you, too, and your friend, but Dima really was the one who kept you alive. ”
“That was nice of him,” I murmur, wondering how stupid I must be if I was just eating kiwi all willy-nilly like that.
“He was the one who brought kiwi into the apartment. I almost killed him for that. You stopped me. I will kill him now. I won’t let you stop me this time.”
Hmm. I’m glad he didn’t kill his friend before. I don’t know that I’ll try to stop him this time, but it sounds like he’s as clueless as I am about where Dima is. I get a good sensation in my stomach when I think about his name, though, which is far better than I can say for Kostya.
“What’s my brother’s name?”
“Tony.”
Didn’t like the feel of that either.
“Who were you talking to on the phone? The call that woke you up?”
The tension in Vasily’s shoulders finally starts to melt away. It’s a slow process, but with each breath, he softens. “That was Kseniya. My sister.”
My sister-in-law . That sits oddly, but the name hits the same warmth Dima’s does.
These are friends, I’m sure of it. And now I’m worried about Dima.
Shouldn’t Vasily be worried too, if that’s his best friend?
Shouldn’t he be worried that his best friend is missing, just like the other person Kseniya called about, instead of being mad that I got hurt on his watch?
“Vasily?”
He nudges at my robe, parting it just enough that he can rub his nose and lips over the bit of inner thigh exposed by my knee. “Hmm?”
“Do you love me?”
“Da. Always.” His grip tightens around my butt, and his kiss to my knee is much more emphatic. “No matter what happens going forward, you need to know that I’ve never stopped loving you, regardless of everything.”
That definitely has me concerned about what my memories will bring back. I’ve already had thoughts that I’m the bad guy in our story, and those thoughts come right back. “Do I love you?”
“I cannot know what’s in another’s heart. You wouldn’t have to ask me if I loved you otherwise, right?”
“Was yesterday the first time I told you I loved you?” God, I hope not. I said it based on an assumption. He’s my husband, so it only made sense. But I would never want to say it if I wasn’t honest about it.
He grins up at me. “Of course not. It has...” He exhales, nods to himself, reassuring himself before he continues his thought. “It has been a long time. But you meant it the first time you said it to me, six years ago, and I thought you meant it yesterday, too.”
“What if I didn’t?”
“I suppose we’ll have to make sure that you mean it next time, then,” he says as he gives my chair a tug away from the table, unties my bathrobe, and parts my thighs.
“Vasily! What about everything that’s going on right now? ”
“Ana, I didn’t make it all the way up to the fortieth floor without having a bunch of men beneath me to handle issues. Now shut up and let me eat my wife’s pussy.”
“Vasily.”
“Moya zhena.”
“You were eating strawberries. I don’t want my vagina to go into anaphylactic shock.”