Chapter 17 Mara
MARA
The car ride is silent except for the sound of Manhattan traffic filtering through the windows.
I stare at my hands in my lap. They’re covered in blood; sticky and cold and wrong. I keep turning my hands over, looking at my palms, thinking over and over again that these hands killed someone.
I killed a man. I’ve used my hands to read and paint and examine art, to create and appraise beauty, to do paperwork and brush my teeth and make myself food and touch others with love and desire and…
And I killed someone with them.
I'm still shaking. I can't stop shaking.
Ilya hasn't said anything since we got in the car. He's driving with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the center console close to me but not touching. Like he wants to reach for me but is stopping himself for some reason.
He’s taking me somewhere. Back to his home?
I should be screaming, fighting, trying to escape.
But I'm too numb. Too much in shock. My brain can't process anything beyond the immediate: the leather seat beneath me, the city lights sliding past the windows, the blood under my fingernails that has dried to a crust. I killed someone.
It repeats over and over in my head, the fact that he would have killed me—or at the very least taken me to someone who would have used me or hurt me or done horrible things—doing nothing to assuage my guilt.
I blink as Ilya slows and pulls into a parking garage beneath a building in Tribeca. It’s a luxury high-rise, the kind with a doorman and private elevators and a penthouse. I recognize it immediately.
My stomach drops, a sick feeling of realization washing over me. I know this building.
It's directly across from mine.
I look up at it as Ilya turns into the garage, and I can see it clearly even in the dark. The building I've looked at time after time from my own apartment. It was just a part of my view until now, just another building in a sea of them. Now it’s something else.
He's been watching me from here.
The thought comes slowly, like my brain is mired in fog. He's been in this building, looking across at my apartment. He's had a perfect view of my windows, my life, everything I do when I think I'm alone.
That's how he always knew. When I was home, when I was sleeping, what I was doing. He didn't need to break in every time. He could just watch.
It’s how he knows my routine. When I run. The coffee shop I go to. How I look when I…
I know the look on your face when you come.
The violation of it should make me sick. But I'm too empty, too hollowed out by shock to feel anything except a distant sense of inevitability.
Ilya's hand is on my elbow, guiding me out of the car, and I realize we’re in the garage and he’s opened my door.
I let him. I don't have the energy to resist, and where would I go anyway?
Back to my apartment that he can see from his windows?
Back to my life that's been contaminated by violence and death?
Back to a place where one of his enemies can come for me to use me against him, and not even the police can help me?
He takes me through a back exit to a private elevator, and I watch him slide the key in with that same sense of hollow inevitability.
Of course he has this kind of money. I have no doubt we’re going to the penthouse.
That I’m about to be swept into a world of such utter luxury that anyone with half a brain would wonder why I would possibly want to flee from it.
The doors to the elevator open and we step inside. It's just the two of us in the small space, and I can feel him looking at me, but I can't look back. I stare at the floor, at my shoes that have blood on them, reflecting back the reality of what my life has become.
The elevator rises smoothly and silently, pleasant piano music filling the space. I count the floors in my head, a distraction from thinking about anything else. We're going high. Very high.
When the doors open, they open directly in front of the penthouse. Ilya unlocks the door and guides me inside with his hand on the small of my back.
I step inside and the space unfolds before me.
I can’t begin to guess at the square footage.
The interior is warm woods and soft textiles, rich earth tones and creams that I would bet money Ilya had no hand in choosing.
The entire lower floor is open-plan and pristine, as if no one lives here at all, as clean as a hotel.
The art on the walls is museum-quality—I recognize a Monet, a Basquiat, pieces that would cost millions.
Everything is perfect, and curated to project wealth and power and taste. Just not Ilya’s.
And there, through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side, I can see my building.
I walk toward the windows, my feet moving without conscious thought.
The view is dizzying—the city spread out below us, lights twinkling like stars.
And there, right there… my apartment building.
I can see it clearly, can even make out which windows are mine.
The living room where I sit on my couch. The bedroom where I sleep. Where I…
"Mara." Ilya's voice comes from behind me, careful and low. "Come with me. You need to clean up."
I turn to look at him. He's standing a few feet away, giving me space, his expression unreadable. In the soft light of his penthouse’s living room, I can see him clearly. He’s as handsome as ever, standing there in surprisingly casual clothing. He must have been relaxing when he…
How did he know what was happening?
My mind is too tired to sort through the possibilities. He did know, and that’s all that really matters. I’m here now, and I can see from the set of his jaw, the possessive gleam in his eyes, that he has no intention of letting me go.
I nod, exhaustion sweeping over me. I'm covered in blood. I need to clean up. Those are simple facts, manageable tasks in a world that's become unmanageable.
He leads me through the penthouse and upstairs to a bedroom.
The master bedroom, I assume, though it's larger than my entire apartment. There’s a king-size platform bed with expensive-looking linens, more art on the walls, and another wall of windows with that same sprawling view of the city.
The bathroom is through a door on the right.
It’s all marble and glass with a shower that could fit four people and a soaking tub that looks like it belongs in a spa.
Ilya goes to the sink and turns on the water, testing the temperature with his hand. Steam rises, and he adjusts it.
"Come here," he says, and his voice is gentler than I've ever heard it.
I move toward him mechanically. What’s the point in fighting? I’m here, and I can’t escape. I’m too tired to run even if I could think of where I would go that would be safe.
He takes my hands in his, and his touch is surprisingly careful, almost tender.
He holds my hands under the running water, and I watch the blood swirl down the drain.
Pink at first, then clearer, as he scrubs gently at my hands with a cloth and soap that smells like honey.
He pumps more soap into his palm and lathers my hands, his fingers working between mine, cleaning under my nails, washing away the evidence of what I did.
The intimacy of the gesture is jarring. This man who's been watching me, stalking me, terrorizing me, is now washing blood from my hands with the gentleness of a lover.
I stare at my hands, half-expecting the blood to return, smearing my skin permanently. But except for the flecks beneath my fingernails, Ilya has washed me clean… there, at least. He must have experience with this, I think dimly.
I start shaking again. My whole body is trembling, my teeth chattering even though I'm not cold.
"It's shock," Ilya says quietly, turning off the taps. "Your body is processing the trauma. It's normal."
Normal. Nothing about this is normal.
I can still hear the sound of the sculpture connecting with that man’s skull. I can still see the blood, his eyes going unfocused.
I killed him. I killed him. I killed him.
The thought loops in my mind, and I can't make it stop.
Ilya reaches for a towel and dries my hands carefully, then cups my face in his, tilting my head up so I have to look at him.
"You did what you had to do," he says, his icy eyes locked on mine. "He was going to hurt you. You survived. That's what matters."
"I killed someone." My voice sounds strange, distant, like it's coming from someone else.
"Yes. And you're alive because of it." His thumbs brush across my cheekbones, and I realize there's blood on my face too. "You're alive, Mara."
He wets a fresh washcloth and starts cleaning my face. The warm cloth moves across my skin, gentle and methodical, across my forehead, down my cheeks, around my mouth. He's careful around my eyes, tilting my head to get the right angle.
There's blood in my hair too. I can feel it, sticky and drying.
He wets the cloth again and works it through the strands near my face, patient and thorough.
The whole time, he's murmuring something, in Russian, I think, though I can't understand the words.
The cadence is soothing, almost hypnotic.
"You're safe now. I have you. You're safe," he says finally, in English.
I'm not sure I believe him. But he sounds so sure of it.
When my face is clean, he steps back and looks at me, assessing.
Then he reaches for a bottle sitting on the counter that he must have brought up with us, had in his hand without my realizing it.
There’s a glass next to it, and he pours a little of the clear liquid into it and hands it to me. "Drink."
I take the glass with shaking hands and bring it to my lips. It smells like pungent alcohol, and I realize it’s vodka, but I take a sip anyway. It burns going down, sharp and clean, and the sensation is somewhat grounding, reminding me that I'm real, that I'm alive.