Chapter 72 Rae
RAE
LAZAREV GLOBAL — EXIT INTERVIEW
Subject: Everett, Rae
Reason for Separation:
? Voluntary resignation
? Termination
? Heartbreak
The screen stays black. I stay still.
I keep waiting for the moment when what Lukas just said will start to make sense. Any second now, my brain will catch up and explain how this could possibly be true.
That second does not come.
My reflection stares back at me from the dead monitor. I look pale and hollow-eyed. Pathetic, really. A woman who fell for the oldest trick in the book: She convinced herself that a monster could love her just because he fucked her tenderly and whispered pretty things in the dark.
A distraction. Nothing more.
I gave him everything. My body, my trust, and my trauma, all wrapped up in a neat little bow. I spread myself open and let him see the ugliest parts of me: the guilt over my parents, the fear that I’m fundamentally unlovable, the desperate need to be chosen by someone who wouldn’t leave.
And he took it all.
He took it, and he used it, and now, he’s sitting in a cell calling me nothing.
My hands are shaking. When did they start shaking? When will they stop? When will this nightmare be over?
The door swings open behind me, but I don’t turn around. If I move, I might shatter into a thousand pieces, and I don’t trust Kir to help me pick up a single one of them.
His footsteps are quiet on the linoleum. He stops somewhere behind me, close enough that I can hear him breathing. I brace myself for the inevitably smug, smirking I told you so that we’ve been building toward.
But he doesn’t say anything for so long that, finally, I force myself to look at him.
He’s not gloating. He’s not smiling, either. He looks almost as wrecked as I feel.
“I thought you should know who he really is,” he explains quietly. “Before you threw everything away for him.”
“Why do you care what I throw away?”
I sound like a bitch, but I’m long past caring about that. I’m just so tired. I’ve been battered and bruised by these Lazarev men and I just don’t think I have any more fight left in me.
Kir doesn’t answer for a long moment. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the blank monitor like it might offer him something I can’t. When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped of its usual sardonic edge.
“Because I’ve spent my whole life trying to make that man love me. And he never, ever will.”
He tugs at his tie like it’s choking him.
“I don’t want you to make that same mistake,” he continues. “I thought maybe if you saw it, too…” He trails off.
I wait for more. But Kir just shakes his head slowly, as if he’s given up on finding the right words.
“I’ll take you back to your brother now.”
He moves toward the door without waiting for my response. I rise from the metal chair on legs that feel like they belong to someone else and follow him out of the observation room.
We leave the dead screen and all its ugly truths behind.