Chapter 23 - Emmanuil
We come to a stop in the underground garage beneath the safe house. She shuts the car off, and we sit in silence for a moment.
From the outside, the place looks like a business block, uninviting, grey, and bland. But inside is a luxury apartment with high security and bulletproof windows. Anya moves first.
“Come on, we have to call a doctor and get him to come see you,” she says, pushing her door open and hurrying around the car to help me out.
I lean my weight into the door frame to lift myself and stand next to the car. Breathing heavily, my hand is clutched against my side. “I don’t need a doctor. The bullet went straight through,” I tell her.
“Emmanuil, don’t be ridiculous. Why are you always so difficult?” She huffs angrily.
“I don’t need a doctor, Anya,” I snap, biting my tongue, holding back the lashing of harsh words I want to spit at her. I am not the difficult one.
But I’m in too much pain right now to have this argument. It’s not just the gunshot, which really did go through, and from experience, I know it’s not as serious as it looks, even though it hurts like hell.
My heart is a fucking disaster. Like the wreckage from a car crash. There are pieces of my heart scattered everywhere, and I’ve spent all morning trying to pull myself together, but with no success.
She left me again.
Anya glares at me in annoyance, then turns her back on me.
“I need the code,” she snaps, standing at the door.
“Zero seven zero three,” I sigh.
“Seventh of March?” She whispers, her voice tight.
I ignore her. There’s nothing I can say to that. When I set the passwords to my safe houses, each a variation of her birthday, I didn’t expect she would ever find out about it or that I would have to explain myself to her.
Anya lets me lean on her shoulder as she guides me to the downstairs bathroom. I sit heavily on the side of the bath, and memories flash in my mind of her on my lap, tending to minor cuts on my arm with tenderness and care.
I shove the memories aside, angry and agitated to be this close to her. But I’m the one who came looking for her this afternoon, tracking her phone and watching her lie on the beach. Approaching her when she got up.
If you hadn’t, she would be dead right now, so something good came of it.
At least that eases my mind a bit. She’s safe. She’s unharmed.
I groan loudly when she splashes alcoholic disinfectant onto the wound. Pain shoots through me, and she lets out a satisfied little grunt.
Did she use too much on purpose? Does my pain make her happy?
Her hair falls over her shoulder as she leans forward, and her beautiful scent washes over me. It’s not her usual conditioner, but it still smells lovely on her.
My heart clenches.
I saw her last night, yet this morning I missed her as though she had been gone for months. Even now, when I don’t have her, with her right next to me—I miss her painfully.
Anya is subdued as she works on my injury. She’s lost in her own thoughts, being gentle now, working carefully.
I show her the tape-stitches that she can use to close the wound up after she’s poured a white powder over it to stop the bleeding.
“You really need stitches,” she argues.
“These are stitches,” I say, gesturing at the tape.
“Proper stitches,” she huffs.
Why does she get me snarky with me? She left me. Not the other way around. And I just saved her life.
You’d think I would have earned some kind of gratitude or grace from her.
Anger grows inside me.
Who the hell does she think she is? What gives her the right to treat me like this?
“Why did you leave? What did your note mean?” The words blurt out of me before I have a chance to consider the consequences.
She doesn’t say anything, and they hang heavily in the air between us as she tapes the last bandage in place.
“Why, Anya?” I demand. I’ve already opened the topic, and I want answers, so there’s no backing down now.
She closes her eyes and stands up, taking a step away from me.
I stand too, and she turns to walk from the bathroom, out into the living room, standing near the bookshelf with her back to me.
“I don’t want to talk about this, Emmanuil. It’s over, can we just let it go and move on?” Her voice is quiet. “Why will the details change anything? You’ve made up your mind about me.”
“I can’t move on,” I shout. “I can’t let it go. And you can’t do this again. You can’t leave me not knowing, questioning everything. It’s cruel and unfair.”
She turns to look at me with shock and hurt in her eyes.
“Cruel?” she asks, barely a whisper. “You were the cruel one this time,” she snaps.
“Although—I deserve it,” she whispers afterwards.
“What the fuck?” I shout, striding towards her, ignoring the ache in my side. I glare down at her. “You don’t get to accuse me of being cruel. Tell me what the fucking note meant.”
I tug her handwritten letter from my back pocket and shove it into her hands.
The white paper is crinkled from reading it too many times, torn at the edges from when I threw it, then carefully folded again and smoothed out as best I could.
It’s my last connection to her. She touched it.
Her hands embraced it. It holds a piece of her, even if it’s not what I wanted to read; it’s still something of her that I was latching onto.
She holds it, staring at it for a long time. Tears roll down her cheeks and splash onto the paper, soaking it so that some of the ink shines through the folded piece.
“It was my father, Emmanuil,” she sighs, breaking down and opening up, finally answering me.
“What did your father do?” I urge her on.
“Towards the end of us being together, you and I stopped worrying about what other people thought. We stopped hiding our relationship.”
“Because we wanted to get married. And we weren’t going to let anyone stand in our way,” I add.
“The problem is that my father was one of the people we stopped hiding from. He found out I was dating you, and his reaction was—intense.”
She sits down on the sofa, still holding the letter. She speaks without looking at me.
“My father lectured me for ages. He pulled me aside one day and told me I had to break up with you or he would end it himself. I listened, but I dismissed his warnings as him being overprotective and controlling. What did my father care about who I dated, anyway? He was never around, and when he was—well, he made it clear he didn’t even like me, so I didn’t care about his opinion, and I didn’t believe his warnings. ”
I walk across the living room, sit down next to her, listening intently.
My heart is racing, finally hearing the truth, years of confusion coming to an end in this moment.
Anya pulls her mouth to the side, sighing softly, then carries on.
“Of course, when I didn’t break up with you, he was even angrier.
He went out of his way to show me just how serious he was.
First, he told me he would kill you and everyone you love.
Every member of your family. He told me he would make you watch them die and then he would—" she pauses, the agony of this memory darkening her eyes.
“He made it very clear what would happen to you.
“I argued with him, because I was so in love with you and not willing to let you go. I remember the look in his eyes when I told him to go to hell. He let me storm off to my bedroom, slamming my door in anger.
“But that night, in the dead of night, he pulled me from my bed and drove me to one of his warehouses. In a dark, dusty, concrete room underground, he had a man chained to the wall with a hood over his head. I thought it was you. He made me believe it was you. My father cuffed me to the opposite wall, and he tortured this man in front of me. I begged. I screamed. I pleaded with him to stop, but he wouldn’t.
For over an hour in that dark room, he wouldn’t let me look away, and I watched the life drain from this man.
From you. While I stood helplessly, wishing I could be the one who was dying.
“When he unchained me, I ran straight to your side. Your lifeless body, covered in cuts and bruises, lay on the cold concrete floor in a pool of your blood. I pulled you onto my lap and tugged the hood off your head—and it wasn’t you.
“It wasn’t you. I was so relieved, but then so guilty, because his man died in your place. How dare I feel relieved. He suffered because I didn’t listen to my father. And the pain of thinking it was you was still—it was still—"
Her voice breaks as she folds forward, hiding her face in her hands. Her story is so evil, so brutal, that I can’t move as I watch her relive the memories.
Anya fights for control, her hands shaking, as I wait in disbelief.
“Your father,” I stammer, my body burning with hatred for the man.
“My father made his point. He told me I had to dump you and not utter a word of his involvement,” she says coldly.
“And I knew without any hesitation that he would do to you what I’d seen him do to this stranger.
This was the one and only chance he would give me to do as I was told.
He would do it to you, and he would do it to your family.
I had no choice, Em. I had to leave you.
“That night was the last time I ever saw you. I went to your place so that I could tell you in person, but when I looked into your eyes, I was weak. I was pathetic. I couldn’t break up with you face-to-face.
The words wouldn’t come to me. I kept picturing that man’s pain.
You know, I’ve never been able to forget him, but I am eternally grateful that it wasn’t you. ”
I shift closer to her and set my hand on her leg. She flinches.
“So, you had your brother deliver the message,” I say quietly, finally understanding.
She nods. “I’m so sorry, Emmanuil. I was terrified. My brother didn’t even know what my father had done. I just told Kristofer that you broke my heart, and I didn’t want to speak to you. He—he only wanted to protect me.”
“And that’s why he hated me so much. Because he thought I’d hurt you.”
She nods again and looks up at me. “And that’s why I deserve what you did to me now. You don’t owe me anything, Emmanuil. You had every right to take revenge like you did. I broke your heart and never explained why, and what you told my brother in the office—it’s fair. What you did was fair.”
My heart skips a beat.
“What do you mean by ‘what I told your brother?’”
“The revenge, Em, I deserved it.” She sighs softly. “I’m not angry with you. And just so you know, making me fall in love with you again was never the challenge. Because I never stopped loving you.”
I stare at her with my mouth open. My mind is racing.
She overheard what I said to her brother. That she meant nothing to me. That I was using her and making her fall in love with me so I could hurt her.
Fuck.
That’s why she left.
That’s why she was so adamant that there was no point in discussing anything.
“Anya,” I say, my voice breaking as every wall I’ve built to protect myself from her comes crumbling down. She was never the enemy. She was never out to hurt me. And she never stopped loving me.
“Anya, I’m so sorry,” I blurt out, grabbing her into my arms.
She’s stiff in my embrace. “It’s okay. I just wanted you to know the truth. And now we can both move on,” she whispers quietly.
“I can never move on,” I tell her.
Her face scrunches with hurt. “You can never forgive me?” she asks, in pain.
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, I can never let you go.”
She knits her brows, confused. “I heard what you said to my brother, Em. All of it.”
“I know, but I didn’t mean a single word of it.
I was so angry at him for coming to take you away from me again.
I always thought it was his fault. I thought he was doing it again.
I wanted to make him angry. I wanted to provoke him, to push him, to hurt him.
I lied to him, Anya. I lied when I told him you meant nothing, and I was only playing you. It wasn’t true.”
“It wasn’t?” she whispers, her eyes widening.
“No. Not at all. The hurt that I’ve been holding onto for so many years, the stupid plan I had for revenge—it all came from the same place inside me.
A place I tried to bury beneath anger and hatred, but at the core of it all is the fact that I never managed to let you go.
And I never, even in the past, while I hated you with such passion, never stopped loving you. ”
“And now?” she asks, almost afraid of what I’ll answer.
A low chuckle rumbles through me. “And now—I love you, Anya. Still. Always. I love you even more than the day I met you, or the day I lost you. I came to look for you this morning because I couldn’t let it happen again.
Last time I didn’t have the opportunity to fight for you, but this time I was determined to have that chance.
At least if it didn’t work, I would know it wasn’t because I didn’t try. ”
Tears stream over her cheeks, leaving salted streaks along her skin.
“You love me?” she asks.
“I love you, kitten. There isn’t a universe in which I don’t love you.”
She falls into my arms, burying her face and her tears against my chest.