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And then, she speaks—so soft and quiet that I almost thought I imagined it—from her trembling lips.
“Yes, dear?”
I blink, and my own vision grows blurry and hazy. “Please stay with me for just a few minutes,” I beg in a small voice. “Please talk to me. Please don’t leave me alone in this place.”
Casting one final, furtive look at the door, she gives me a quick nod, and then strides over beside me. I look up at her when she arrives, my hands still wrapped around my knees as pain stabs throughout my body.
“I can’t stay for long, dear,” she whispers. “Alla Antonovna … She’ll …”
“I know.” I nod. “Please, can you just sit with me?”
Nodding, Ivica sits down on the edge of the bed and looks at me with her kind eyes brimming with tears, and I feel the pinpricks of pain from Alla’s cruel needles again.
Slowly, she reaches out with a single hand and I wince from pain when she brushes my arms. She quickly withdraws, but I grab her hand in mine before she can, biting back the urge to cry out.
If I scream, Alla will hear, and then it won’t just be me that she hurts.
Ivica scoots a little closer and then suddenly, she pulls me into a hug like a mother. Not my mother, but the mother I wish I had. I wrap my arms around her, ignoring the searing pain overwhelming my body as I hug her back, unable to stop the tears overwhelming my eyes.
“Where did he go, Ivica?” I whisper, and I feel her embrace tighten at my question.
“He left with Gerasim Petrovich, and the best killers of the bratva,” she replies. “They’re going to go save Alisa Yurevna.”
His sister … I think. Of course that’s why he left. That’s the only reason why he’d leave.
I don’t blame him for that. If our roles were switched, I would’ve done the same thing.
But does he know just what kind of monster he left me with?
Did he even have a choice?
“I’m scared, Ivica,” I confess. “I’m scared of what she’ll do to me when she comes back tonight.”
Ivica breaks the hug, holding my shoulders gently in her hands, and asks. “Did she use her needles?”
Tears well in my eyes. Just how many other people have suffered at the hands of that cruel woman? Slowly, I muster a tiny nod. Almost as if I’m afraid that somehow, Alla is watching.
“Oh, Emily Samovna …” a single tear rolls out from Ivica’s eyes. “She shouldn’t have. You are Konstantin Yurevich’swife.”
“Not to Alla, I’m not.” I shake my head. Then, with a trembling breath, I say, “I can’t stay here, Ivica. I won’t survive if I do.”
Ivica recoils when I say those words. Her kind eyes are shimmering in the morning light. I can pick out the fear in them. Slowly, the fear gives way to sympathy, sympathy shifts into understanding, and finally, understanding transforms into something else.
Something that makes me feel safe.
Something that tells me that she’llneverhurt me.
“Where will you go?” she asks me.
“Home,” I say. “To America.”
I can always go back to New York and stay with Nadia for a little while. But eventually I have to go and face the reality of my expulsion, of Olivia’s death, and of my parents demanding information so they can get the money from her life insurance.
But those are problems that I can handle.
Anything is better than the hell that awaits me tonight when Alla returns with her needles.
Or once she confirms that Iampregnant with Konstantin’s child …I shudder.
