Chapter 21
Alice
An hour later, Beatrice—whose name I learned only after we agreed to holster our weapons—and I had made quite a bit of progress.
We moved Ilya and propped him up against the wall of the warehouse so he didn’t choke on his own puke, found the switch to turn on more lights, and even filled the bucket a few times over so we could wash his putrid vomit down a nearby drain.
Emily’s hands and feet are still bound, much to her chagrin. Bea was kind enough to help her into the metal folding chair. I think she’s getting a kick out of seeing Emily helpless.
As we cleaned, Emily explained the plan she and her cousins had concocted for me.
How she manipulated her PhD program funding so she could research where she knew I was hiding.
Her directive from Clara—her eldest cousin and the next leader of their weird vigilante criminal-yet-crime-fighting enterprise—was to get information about my father’s operations out of me and determine if I could be used as bait to lure him out of Vladivostok.
She emphasized how she advocated for me to be brought under the protection of The Syndicate, to be told the whole truth and given a choice.
“Exactly how much choice would I have had if you brought me in?” I asked, pointing the question more toward Bea than Emily. “If she had told me the truth about The Syndicate, and I didn’t want to cooperate, what would have happened?”
She’d assessed me for a few heartbeats before shrugging.
“We may have killed you, though I’m starting to think Emily would have done almost anything to prevent that. Likely, we would have used you against your will to lure out your father.”
Well, at least I can be fairly certain Bea isn’t lying to me.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” I tell them when there’s no more work to keep our hands and minds busy.
Emily sits up straighter in her chair, and Bea rolls her eyes.
“Using me as bait. My father doesn’t know I’m alive, but even if he did, he wouldn’t risk his own life to save mine.
Doesn’t matter if he thought I was a traitor or a victim. ”
“What if he thought you were a liability?” Bea asks. The question actually gives me pause. I’d never really thought of that possibility before.
“I don’t know a lot about my father’s operations.
Obviously I was aware of his work, and I have had some basic self defense and informational training so I could be a good wife to Ilya, and mother to the heirs we’d produce, but nothing that would make him vulnerable. You likely know him better than I do.”
I shrug, but the strange pit in my stomach is hard to ignore. I’m not even useful to the people who wanted to kidnap me. After all this, the only place I’ve ever had purpose is under the thumb of the men of my father’s empire. It’s a sickening realization.
“You’d be surprised,” Bea replies, her voice a touch more gentle than it's been since I’ve met her. She’s very cold and matter-of-fact, but in a way that feels refreshing and cutting, rather than cruel like Ilya. “Often, a person’s most vulnerable qualities are shared without them even realizing.”
Speaking of vulnerability…
“Bea, would you mind giving us a few minutes?” Emily asks, her expression half grimace, half pleading grin and she stares up at her cousin.
“I would mind, actually,” Bea replies, and I have to choke back a laugh. “You haven’t earned much latitude in this situation, Emily.”
The grimace wins out at those words. Emily’s eyes flicker toward me, conflicted and pained.
“Fair. But I’ll request you don’t tell Clara what you’re about to hear.”
“We’ll see about that,” Bea mutters, turning toward Ilya to check his vitals and eavesdrop.
Emily, still with her hands bound behind her back and ankles to one another, looks nothing short of pathetic as she turns her whole body toward me.
Every inch of her, from her posture to the pleading look in her eyes, feels like a confession.
I haven’t had to face the riot of emotions filling my lungs, replacing oxygen molecule by molecule.
But now, I can’t breathe without tasting bitter betrayal and sweet black licorice.
“I know you have no reason to trust me, but I had a plan,” she says earnestly, rushing the words out like she’s afraid I’ll run from her before I hear her side of the story.
“I wanted to tell you everything last night. But then…” She glances over her shoulder at Bea, who isn’t at all pretending not to listen, but is instead staring directly at Emily.
“Well, you asked for what you wanted. And I wanted to give you complete control.”
“Don’t make your lies my fault,” I demand, my voice much stronger than I feel. “You lied to me from the moment we met. The only time you were completely honest with me was when there was a gun to your head. You’re right, there’s no reason for me to trust you.”
And yet, I hate that I want to. In the very depths of me, all I want is to trust her.
To lay my head on her chest and listen to her heartbeat.
To put my tired hand in hers and know she’ll lead me toward safety.
To trust that she’ll give me control when I need it, and take it when I can’t handle the weight on my shoulders any longer.
“Please tell me you don’t think that.” She sounds as heartbroken as I am. “I swear, I only lied about the things I absolutely had to. Every time I had the opportunity to tell you the truth, to be vulnerable with you, I took it.”
“And that’s supposed to be enough?” I ask, my voice shaking against my will. I wish I could say it was rage making the words unstable, but it’s something far more pitiful. “I’m supposed to be forgive you for lying through your teeth because you told me you were afraid of the fucking ocean?”
She opens and closes her mouth a few times, and I can see every apology in her eyes. Read the forgive me and please trust me like she’s written them in her blood on the concrete beneath us.
But she never voices them.
Instead, her body shifts. She straightens her shoulders, all the supplication gone. In its place is the predatory confidence I saw last night.
It makes my skin flash, and my eyes flicker to Bea, who’s leaning against the wall and watching us like a public performance.
“A little hypocritical, don’t you think?” Emily asks, leaning forward in her chair to get as close to me as she can without standing. My instinct is to take a step backward, but I hold my ground.
“Excuse me?” I respond, proud that the indignation in my voice hasn’t been replaced with something more revealing.
“You’re not fragile,” she says, and I don’t know how she makes those words sound seductive, like a siren’s call. “So I’m not going to treat you like you are.”
“I don’t—” I start, but she immediately cuts me off.
“You lied to me as much as I lied to you,” she accuses, and I clench my jaw, my tongue sliding to the unfamiliar gap in the back of my mouth nervously.
She notices. Because of course she does.
“You had no idea who I was. As far as you were aware, I was a researcher in the wrong place at the wrong time. And you lied about your entire life, making me trust you when you were drawing danger closer and closer every day.”
“You think we’re even then?” I bite back, taking a step closer to her so she has to crane her neck to meet my gaze. It doesn’t make her any less intimidating. “I did what I had to do to protect myself. You did what you had to do to use me.”
And I’m not wrong. Her sins are greater than mine.
But we both put each other in danger. We both prioritized our missions, the things we needed to protect ourselves and get revenge on the same man, over each other.
When we first met, I would have said that Emily and I couldn’t be more different.
Her strength to my weakness, her anxiety to my fearlessness, her need for control to my desire for freedom.
But it’s clear now that at the core of us, we are cut from the same cloth.
“Bea, tell Alisa what would have happened if I didn’t bring her to Clara,” Emily requests.
I jolt at the reminder that I’m still not safe.
That a half-dead Ilya in the corner is only half my battle, and the two Costa cousins in front of me may still use me to lure my father into the open.
I shift and feel slightly comforted by the warm metal of a barrel tucked into the band of my sweatpants.
It’s likely naive to believe I could outdraw Bea, but at least I’d go down swinging, as the Americans like to say.
“You would have been excommunicated from The Syndicate of Fate. A public award would have been placed on your head, and each member of your family would be tasked with hunting you down and bringing you home for punishment.”
Bea doesn’t seem affected by this horrid explanation, but I suppose she hasn’t been affected by much in the short time I’ve known her. I, however, feel my pulse in my fingertips, and I cross my arms over my chest, digging my nails into skin to avoid acknowledging her words.
“You brought Bea here. You weren’t running from them, you were calling in reinforcements,” I spit out. Emily’s confident, almost lazy grin should be infuriating. I cannot stand that I find it attractive. Something is wrong with me.
“Not to defend my irrational, hardheaded cousin, but she in fact did not call me in,” Bea corrects, the first hint of something like humor coloring her tone. “Clara sent me because Emily couldn’t be trusted to complete her mission independently.”
I don’t want to believe them.
I really want to believe them.
“Ask her why I couldn’t be trusted,” Emily says, her confidence cracking slightly, letting desperation bleed through. I can’t look at her, so I keep my eyes on Bea.
“No,” I say, my voice too quiet to be convincing.
“Tell her, Bea,” Emily directs. Bea pushes her long, dark hair over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows at the back of Emily’s head.
“She doesn’t want to know.”
“Yes, she does,” Emily says, and I can feel her gaze on my cheek, my neck, my lips. “She knows what to say if she really didn’t want to hear it.”
I could say it. It would be a test of Emily’s willingness to listen, to maintain boundaries, to stop when I really need her to.
But I don’t want that word to be associated with these kinds of tests anymore. In the darkest parts of me, where the woman I will be when my father is dead resides, I only want to use that word how it was meant to be used. To take a breath with the person who makes it easier to breathe.
Bea waits a few heartbeats.
“She put your life before the mission,” she says.
Her face is carefully neutral now. Not the easy indifference I’ve seen her wear so far.
I know what it looks like when someone is hiding beneath their own skin, and that’s what Bea is doing.
“She implied that sacrificing you to your father was inherently contradictory to The Syndicate’s values, regardless of his actions against us.
It was clear she’d compromise our ability to enact our retribution if it meant risking you. ”
I swallow hard. My heart feels like it’s beating in my throat, choking me, making it impossible to respond, even if I knew what to say.
It’s wrong to let my own weakness and insecurity drive my feelings about Emily. She lied to me, manipulated me, used me. Just because she was allegedly willing to give up her entire life, everyone and everything she valued, to keep me safe, doesn’t justify her dishonesty and exploitation.
But there’s a small, jagged, broken part of me that desperately wants someone who will sacrifice everything for me. The little girl who only wanted to be something more than a pawn, finally becoming someone’s queen, their most valuable and treasured piece.
Perhaps it’s toxic. An extension of the objectification that my father and Ilya and everyone else that raised and groomed me required. But the queen can move any way she wants on the chessboard. And I have to hope that’s a step in the right direction.
“I don’t forgive you,” I say, the exhaustion and pain I’ve been withholding finally staking its claim on my body. My shoulders sag as I look at Emily, still bound and in her chair.
“You shouldn’t,” she says, and I believe she means it. “But I’d like the opportunity to earn it. And to forgive you too, for nearly getting me killed by your ex.”
Bea moves quicker than I can blink and smacks Emily on the back of the head.
And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I laugh.