Chapter 10
Indigo
The crash of the good porcelain I’d bought when we first moved into the house against the hardwood was the only thing that made me feel better about my situation. I stared at the eggs and orange juice spreading across the floor and tried to breathe normally. I was pissed.
It had been a week.
A week of four walls. I wasn't used to this shit anymore. I wanted to dance, but there was no music. Not even a TV.
He wouldn’t tell me where we were.
He left a book on the nightstand, though. The Virtues of a Wife. He'd highlighted passages and added his own notes in the margins. And on page one, he left a note: They don't run. This motherfucker thought he was funny.
I ripped it up and I threw that at the wall too.
He was at the door in seconds. He stood there, taking in the mess like it was simply data to process.
"You done?" he asked.
I sneered at him. “I’m tired of you saying that shit in that monotone-ass robot voice of yours.” I grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and heaved it at the wall. It exploded. "But to answer your question… now I'm done."
He didn't flinch. Just watched me.
"What?" I shouted. "You want to drug me again? Put me back to sleep so you don't have to deal with me?"
"I'm dealing with you right now."
"You're holding me hostage!"
"I'm keeping you alive."
I laughed. It came out ugly. "Semantics when it equals the same fucking thing, Malac."
He stepped into the room, kicking a piece of broken glass out of his path. "I want to talk to you. You ready to talk?"
"We’ve talked. You’ve spent a week interrogating me like a hostile witness.
Why did I leave? Why did I strip? I’ll tell you again, but this will be the last time.
I left because you are the reason my baby died.
I stripped because it was fun throwing this ass and having men worship me.
I went from my father’s house to yours—you’re both narcissists with God complexes.
I needed freedom. I basked in it after I left you.
And I want to reiterate—and maybe you’ll be able to comprehend it in that mechanical skull of yours—I left because of the baby. .."
My voice broke, but I forced myself to finish.
"The baby died because you were too busy playing God’s hand to notice the devil’s hand in your own house."
I was shaking now.
"You want me to repeat it as a list so you can compartmentalize it?
" My voice got louder. "Your indifference. Sasha in my house. In my bedroom. In my face for two years while you did nothing. The baby." My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "You let her kill our baby, and you wouldn’t let me kill that bitch. That’s why you got a hole in your chest now.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Something that looked almost like hurt.
I stood there, chest heaving, my heart drumming in my ears. I waited for the explosion.
Instead, he just stepped closer. His boots crunched on the glass of the shattered lamp, a sound like breaking bones.
"I didn't let you kill her because you didn’t even give me a chance to listen to your explanation, Indigo." His voice was so calm it vexed the fuck out of me.
"An explanation?" I spat the word out like it was poison, my hands shaking as I shoved against his chest. He didn't move an inch, and that pissed me off too.
"Why the hell do you need an explanation?
You were supposed to just know. You were supposed to look at me—and choose me.
Automatically. Without a trial. Without a goddamn deposition! "
I stepped into his space, my finger digging into the hard muscle of his sternum. "You were supposed to kill the bitch just because I asked, Malachai. You made these promises. You were supposed to protect me. You were the one that wanted to marry me!"
His hand came up slowly, wrapping tightly around my wrist, stopping the finger that kept jabbing into his chest.
"If I were a narcissist, I would have let the Volkovs have you just because you left. I wouldn’t care what happened to you after,” he said, his grip firm.
“You have a history of throwing tantrums, Indigo.
I needed to know the difference between you being angry and you being in danger.
Between something that could be fixed with a conversation and something that required blood. "
I yanked my wrist. He didn't let go.
"Bullshit."
"I was asking for a conversation, and you stabbed me." His eyes held mine, pinning me with a cold, unrelenting weight. "In the chest. With a kitchen knife. You didn't ask me to listen. You didn't explain. You just reacted."
"You deserved it. You protected that bitch," I hissed, though the memory of the blade sinking into his skin made my own stomach lurch. I hated that even an ounce of remorse still lived in my chest.
"I wasn’t protecting her—and maybe I did," he conceded, his voice dropping into that low, mechanical vibration.
"But you know I don't process things like other people, Indigo.
I don't operate on 'feeling.' I operate on information.
You accuse me of being indifferent and narcissistic.
You are too." His head tilted. "Any time things don't go your way, you destroy something.
The keypad. The car. The plates. Shoes. Clothes.
You don't ask for what you need. You don't explain what's wrong. You just break things or you run."
I let out a short laugh. “That’s not narcissism, Malachai. That’s what happens when nobody’s listening.” I yanked my wrist again, even though I knew he wouldn’t let go. “You want calm, rational explanations? Then act like someone I can actually talk to.”
His voice stayed calm. Flat when he responded. That made it worse.
"I was listening. You were yelling unintelligible things.
I was trying to find answers before I made a decision.
Because that's what I do. That's who I am.
You knew that." He paused. "But you just want me to follow your command.
You want blind obedience. Kill your brother.
Kill Sasha. Automatically. Without question. "
He stepped further into my space.
"But if that was who I was, things would have been different when you set fire to my car.
You knew that car meant something—one of the only things I kept from my father.
" His jaw tightened. "I would have made you watch while I torched something you loved.
Maybe broken your leg so you couldn't dance. "
He stepped even closer, looming over me.
"If I was what you wanted, I would have grabbed you by the throat the first time you slapped me.
Pinned you down and reminded you exactly who you were dealing with.
I wouldn't have let you bite me until I bled and then asked if you felt better.
" His hand came up, hovering near my face. It didn’t touch me, though.
"I wouldn't have handed you the knife to stab me. "
I responded the only way I could at the moment, trying to shift some of the guilt his words created back onto him. "I replaced the fucking car."
He shook his head, looking completely exasperated. "Indigo, please, stop this. I haven't slept well in seven hundred and thirty-one days. I haven't tasted food right. I can’t feel the fucking sun. How do we resolve this?”
I looked at him—really looked at him. His eyes were hollow. He’d lost weight. Before, his eyes had looked empty; now they just looked tired.
Had I made the Hand of God… human?
Good. He needed to feel some type of emotion other than anger and possession. The kind that sat in your chest and didn’t move. The kind that didn’t bleed out… just stayed. If I had to live with the ghost of our baby, he had to live with the ghost of the past me.
I reached out, my fingers tracing the sharp line of his jaw, caressing his face. "We resolve it when you let me kill the person who killed my baby—and that’s not possible."
I waited for his response, expecting him to shut down.
Instead of speaking, Malachai just closed his eyes, leaning into my hand like my touch was the only thing giving him peace. When he opened them, the weariness was gone. I saw the devil in them.
"Okay," he said, his voice terrifying calm. "Get dressed."