Chapter 12 - Vera
Two weeks.
That was how long it had been since everything had changed, and somehow, nothing had changed at all. If someone had asked me whether sleeping with Nico had fixed anything between us, I would have laughed in their face. The answer was obvious.
No.
It hadn’t fixed a single thing. The truth was almost cruel in its simplicity.
For one night, we had found our way back to each other.
For one night, we had forgotten everything that stood between us.
For one night, I had seen the man I loved instead of the stranger who had dragged me away from my own wedding.
He had been perfect in every way imaginable, and it had truly felt as if I had been transported back in time to when we were together and happy.
But then morning had come.
And Nico Romanov had rebuilt every wall he had torn down.
It almost would have been easier if he had been angry with me, since anger required emotion.
Anger meant engagement and showed that he cared.
Even if just a little bit. Instead, he had become distant and cold.
He spoke to me only when necessary. It could be a question or an answer to something I would bring up.
He hadn’t once tried to come close to me again, even when I had been parading around in lingerie whenever he was in the house. He hadn’t even looked at me.
The first few days after that night, I convinced myself he simply needed time.
The next few days, I told myself he was processing everything.
But by the end of the second week, I was forced to accept reality.
He was doing it on purpose. The realization irritated me more than I cared to admit.
I knew he was still attracted to me because every time I flaunted myself around him, he would suck in a sharp breath and disappear as if he needed a distraction.
That did bring me some satisfaction, but it was still not enough.
I sat alone at the kitchen island one afternoon, stirring coffee I had no intention of drinking.
The house was quiet. Far too quiet.
I hated how familiar it had become. I knew which floorboards creaked.
I knew which windows caught the sunset first. I knew where Nico kept his whiskey.
I knew which chair he preferred in the living room.
I knew exactly how many seconds it took him to cross the house from his office to the kitchen.
That knowledge should have disturbed me.
Instead, all of it felt natural. And that was probably the most disturbing thing of all.
I turned to look as I heard footsteps, knowing fully well it was Nico. I could guess him from the sound of his breathing, the pattern of his breathing, or the faint timbre in his voice. He was etched into my skin in ways that were impossible to let go of. My pulse immediately betrayed me.
I hated that too.
Without looking up, I knew he was just a few paces away.
Nobody else moved through space the way Nico did.
He was measured and quiet and utterly dangerous.
He entered the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and started walking away again.
There was no greeting or light conversation.
Nothing. I almost felt invisible, as if he hadn’t even realized I was sitting there.
I stared at his back before calling out. “Nico.”
He paused, turning around slowly. “What?”
I clenched my jaw. “What kind of answer is that? Actually, why are you talking to me like that?”
“The kind of answer you asked for, Vera. And I wasn’t talking to you; you called my name, so I had to stop.”
My eye twitched as anger burned through me. He had been a complete asshole for a while now, and I had been ignoring it, but it was getting too much now. He kept walking as if I didn’t even matter.
“Nico?” My tone was louder now.
He paused with a sigh and turned around once again. This time, irritation was visible in his expression. “What do you want, Vera? Because some of us have things to do around here.”
I stood. “What the fuck is your problem?”
His eyebrow lifted. “You’ll need to be more specific than that because I don’t remember doing anything.”
I laughed, but the sound held absolutely no humor.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You don’t look at me or talk to me or sit with me or even pretend that you see me. You have been acting like I don’t exist.”
“No,” he replied calmly. “I’m acting like you do; otherwise, I won’t be standing here wasting my time talking to you.”
The words hit harder than I expected, and for a second, neither of us spoke.
Without waiting for my reply, he turned around and walked away again, and I was left standing there, furious.
I needed to do something, anything, because the whole Nico situation was only pissing me off with every passing day. I was losing my mind.
Until now, I hadn’t tried contacting anyone, but I really needed to talk to someone else.
Just a few days ago, while looking around the house, I randomly found a burner phone in one of the drawers in the library.
I had been tempted to use it right there and then, but the urge to contact someone hadn’t been that strong.
But it was getting out of hand now. I needed to try to talk to someone before I went insane.
I raced to the library and took the phone out, pretty sure that Nico didn’t even know I had found it.
The phone felt impossibly heavy in my hand.
It represented a lot of things. Freedom.
Escape. Information. Choice. And for the first time since arriving here, I had access to the outside world.
I could have done a lot of things. I should have immediately called the police or my dad.
I could have called someone I trusted and asked for help and demanded extraction. I could have called Adrian even.
Instead, only one name appeared in my mind.
Ava. My best friend.
I typed in her number, and my thumb hovered over the screen before finally pressing call. The line rang once. Twice. Three times. And then she finally picked up.
“Hello?”
The sound of her voice shattered something inside me.
Tears immediately burned behind my eyes.
The last time I had heard her voice was the day of the wedding when she had hugged me and asked me to change into my wedding dress because the ceremony was beginning soon.
I was sure she would have been worried about me as well.
A sob escaped me, and I could hear a sharp intake of breath on the other side.
“Vera? Vera, is that you?” It only took her one second to recognize me.
I covered my mouth. Suddenly, breathing became difficult.
“Oh my God,” Ava whispered. “Vera? Vera, please speak. I know it is you on the other end. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Where are you, Vera? I will come get you right now!”
“I’m fine, Ava,” I finally whispered, controlling the sobs that kept coming.
“Jesus Christ.”
I closed my eyes, and for several seconds neither of us spoke, even though I could sense she was still panicking.
Ava and I had been friends since we were little girls, and if there was someone who knew how much I hated my father, it was her.
She was also the only person who knew the truth about how I had ended things with Nico and why I had agreed to marry Adrian.
She had tried to talk me out of it, but she had known it was all pointless. I had already given up.
“Vera, where are you?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“I’m with Nico,” I finally replied, wiping the tears off my face.
“Nico?” she was shocked. “Oh my god, so you ran away on purpose? Why didn’t you tell me, Vera? I thought you had been hurt. I could’ve helped you escape with Nico if that was the plan all along.”
“I didn’t run away with him, Ava,” I sighed. “He kidnapped me from the wedding.”
“Kidnapped you? What do you mean?”
Then all the words started pouring out. Everything.
I told her about the kidnapping. The safehouse, and how I later found out he had been stalking me.
The arguments, fights, and confusion. The fact that I told him the truth about everything, and how I had never cheated on him.
The sex. The love. The hurt. His behavior towards me now.
Every single thing.
I talked until my throat hurt, and Ava listened through all of it.
When I finally finished, the silence that followed felt strangely gentle, as if my head was in her lap like countless times before, and she was softly stroking my hair and telling me the world wasn’t an awful place after all. That I still had her.
“You still love him, Vera.”
It wasn’t a question. I stared at the opposite wall.
“Yes, I do. I never stopped loving him, Ava. I don’t think that is even possible.”
The answer came easily. Too easily.
“Does he know? Have you said this to him yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I laughed bitterly. “Because even after I told him I never cheated on him and it was all a lie, he never tried to fix things with me. He didn’t make up with me.
He slept with me and left me all alone, and now he doesn’t even look at me.
He doesn’t want me back, Ava. I have hurt him too much for that. ”
“Does he know why you lied? Did you explain your reasoning to him?”
“I didn’t.” I sighed. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
I closed my eyes. Because I was afraid. Because the truth was bigger than the lie. Because the moment I told Nico everything, there would be no taking it back. Because if he looked at me afterward and still didn’t believe me, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
“I don’t know if he’ll trust me.”
Ava was quiet, and then she asked the question that changed everything.
“Will you be honest with me about something, Vera?”
“Anything.”
“It has been almost two months since your absence, and you know Mr. Stavros well enough to know that he has been losing his mind about this thing. You know that what Nico did was wrong, and you two have been fighting as well. Despite all of this, have you tried escaping the safehouse even once?”
I was quiet for several seconds, not knowing how to respond to that.
“Ava…” I trailed off.
“Don’t worry. I know the answer to that already. On the day of the wedding, when he came to kidnap you, did you resist? Did you shout? Did you call for help?” she asked, once again throwing me down the same pit.
“I didn’t,” I sighed deeply. “I remember being rather relieved when I saw him, as if all my prayers had been answered.”
“Vera, tell me, do you even want to leave?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Do you want to leave, Vera?”
The question caught me completely off guard. My mouth opened and then closed again. I had spent weeks focusing on surviving each day. On managing Nico. On worrying about my father. On navigating the disaster my life had become. I had never actually asked myself that question.
Did I want to leave?
The answer should have been obvious. I was being held against my will. My life had been destroyed. My future had vanished. Any sane person would run the first chance they got. Yet something uncomfortable settled inside my chest. Because the truth was, I hadn’t tried. Not really.
I could blame the circumstances, the security, or even the logistics, but deep down, I knew better. I had never truly attempted escape. Not once. Not because I couldn’t, but because I simply didn’t want to. The realization hit like a physical blow, and Ava must have sensed it.
“Oh.” I slowly sat down, sinking into the couch. “Oh.”
The word escaped me as I stared at the floor, and suddenly everything felt different. Not because circumstances had changed, but because I finally understood my own choices.
“I don’t want to leave him.”
The confession sounded terrifying. Ava didn’t react immediately, but when she finally spoke, her voice was soft.
“I know.”
I laughed weakly. “Apparently, I didn’t.”
“You love him, Vera. No one can blame you for not wanting to leave him. You never wanted to marry Adrian in the first place. It has always been Nico.”
“That doesn’t excuse anything he has done.”
“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.”
I rubbed my forehead. “He’s angry with me.”
“He has his reasons.”
“So do I.”
“Then stop acting like only one of you gets to be hurt.”
That made me pause. “Excuse me?”
Ava sighed. “Vera, you’ve spent this entire conversation talking about his pain.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re treating your own pain like it matters less.”
I didn’t have an answer for that because maybe she was right. Maybe I had spent so much time feeling guilty that I forgot I was hurting too. Eventually, she spoke again.
“You need to tell him the truth.”
I immediately shook my head. “No.”
“You can’t keep hiding it forever.”
“Watch me.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“It is if I never tell him.”
Ava groaned, and I almost smiled. Almost. Then reality returned, which included my father and the threat he had delivered. The reason this entire nightmare existed. Fear settled heavily inside my stomach.
“What if it’s too late?”
“It isn’t.”
“What if he hates me anyway?”
A long silence followed, and then Ava answered quietly.
“Then at least he’ll hate the real version of you.”
The words stayed with me long after the call ended.
Eventually, I hid the burner phone exactly where I found it and returned to my room.
The house somehow felt different now. Not because anything had changed, but perhaps because I had.
For the first time since all of this started, I knew what I wanted.
Not freedom. Not escape. Not distance.
Just Nico.
The realization terrified me because wanting something and getting it were very different things. Especially when that something was Nico Romanov.
But I was nothing if determined.