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That I miss my parents and my sister terribly, and haven’t seen them in a month, since the wedding.
As gunfire continues to thunder from outside, something occurs to me.
We are not being attacked. My husband in nothing but name is, as is his family. To them, yes, it’s an attack.
To me, it’s a distraction.
An opportunity.
The mist on my forehead starts to drip down my face. I reach up to wipe it off. When I pull my hand back, and the moonlight glints in through the windows, horror shakes me.
The back of my hand is smeared red.
It’s blood.
I have to get out of here.
I don’t pack; there’s nothing I want to bring with me. I change into dark jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, shoving my hair back into a tight bun before pulling the hood up over my head and creeping to the door again. This time, when I go to push it open more than a crack, there’s something blocking it.
I look down, and nausea churns my stomach as my hand flies to my mouth.
There’s a body on the ground—a man I vaguely recognize as one of the Krylov guards. Or at least I recognize the half of his face that’s still there.
The rest of it is sprayed across the wall and the door, and probably still misted over my forehead.
Don’t think. Just go.
I manage to push him aside, the blaring twin alarms of adrenaline and fear throbbing in my ears as I step over the body. I keep to the wall, hugging the shadows, flinching whenever I hear a burst of gunfire elsewhere in the house, or outside.
I find more dead Krylov guards, and a few bodies of masked men in black tactical gear. But I keep moving, heading toward the back of the house and the garage full of cars. I could swim, but it’s night, and I know there’s sharks out there. Besides, I’m not that strong a swimmer.
No, if I’m leaving here tonight, it’s over the bridge: the only way off this island. I have no idea if it’s still being guarded, since it’s clear the island is under attack by one of the Krylov family’s many enemies. But if it is, I won’t get across on foot.
I’ll need to drive.
Enroute to the garage, I pass by my father-in-law’s study. Miroslav isn’t inside, obviously. But the door is wide open.
So is the safe he keeps in the bottom cupboards of the bookshelves behind his desk. A suitcase full of bundles of magazine clippings lies overturned on the floor.
Part of me wonders if whoever opened that safe and the suitcase felt anger, fear, or maybe both when they saw what was in there. Another bigger part of me feels guilty for the part I played in that.
I’ve had a lot of time to myself in my month here. I’ve done a lot of exploring. My husband’s sister, Maria, gave me binoculars a few weeks ago, when she saw me watching birds on my frequent walks around the island. I did use them for that—at first. But then I realized what else I could see, if I climbed some of the trees outside the back of main house.
…Like through Miroslav’s office window. Like the front of the electronic combination safe with the LED number pad on it.
Like the code to that safe, when my father-in-law opened it in the secrecy of his office.
Late one night, I went into that office, dodging patrol guards along the way. I opened that safe and found the suitcase brimming with American cash, with a cashier’s receipt labeling it as twenty-two million dollars.
A week later, I did the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I went back to that office and opened the safe. I emptied the cash out into a backpack and replaced it with little bundles of magazine clippings I’d tied up with tape.
A few days later, Florence, my family’s housekeeper and basically my second mother, came to bring me another suitcase full of my things, and to take home anything I’d brought with me before that I had subsequently discovered I didn’t need.
The backpack full of cash went back with her, hidden in the bottom of one of my luggage trunks full of cold-weather clothes I’d packed without realizing how warm Elba was.
Florence didn’t know what she was bringing home alongside my sweaters. But I know she got the note I included later, because she texted me.
Florence
