Page 11 of My Wedding Night Massacre

I sleep in the way that isn’t sleeping, drifting in and out of something that doesn’t rest me, the loop running whether my eyes are open or closed. Slava on the concrete, his body lifeless and covered in blood. I’ve stopped trying to interrupt it. I just let it run, lying on the bed, watching the ceiling change color as the light moves through the day.

I don’t cry much anymore. That part seems to have run out somewhere around day four. What’s left is quieter and more frightening, a grey flatness that sits over everything, that makes the ceiling, Nadia’s voice, and the sound of my father’s calls through the wall all feel equally distant, equally unreal, equally beside the point.

Nadia watches me. I notice the watching, the way her eyes track me when I move, the way she positions herself carefully without making it obvious. There’s a vigilance in her that I recognize but can’t find the energy to address. I think, distantly that she’s afraid, but then the thought dissolves before it finishes fully forming.

“You need to eat,” Nadia says on the fourth evening, setting a bowl of soup in front of me. I look at it, taking in the rising steam.

“I know,” I say.

But still, I don’t eat it.

She sits across from me, hands wrapped around her own cup, watching. “Tell me what you need.”

I think about it honestly. What I need is for all of this to not have happened. What I need is Slava’s hands, his voice, and his smile. What I need is something that no longer exists.

“I don’t know,” I say, because it’s kinder than the truth.

The flatness gets worse on the fifth day. It isn’t dramatic, that’s what’s frightening about it, no sharp edges, no urgency, just a slow, steady dimming, like a light being turned down so gradually you don’t notice the room getting dark until you can’t see your hands. I move through the morning automatically, the bathroom, the window, the bed again. I sit on the edge of it, look at my hands in my lap, and try to remember why any of the next hours matter. No matter how hard I try, and I do try, I come up empty.

I think about Slava. Not the usual loop of his death this time, just him. The way he’d looked at me the first time I walked into the room where he was negotiating a deal with my father, that quick look that became the reason I stopped being able to think clearly in rooms he was in. The first time he said "I love you," he didn’t build up to it, soften it, or make it into a moment. He just said it, matter-of-fact, like he’d been carrying it for a while and had run out of reasons to keep it to himself. I think about his hands in my hair, and then I think about those same hands slack on concrete. The distance between those two images is so vast and so unbridgeable that the part of me still reaching for him simply goes quiet, like a muscle that’s finally given out.

Realizing that Slava can never come back to me, I get up and go to the bathroom. The door closes with one final soft click behind me.

The sharp blade stares at me from the open cabinet, and my hand reaches for it on its own. I stretch out my other hand as my brain prepare to feel the pain, but there was not a single sting as the blade slices through flesh and then goes deeper. It is as though my body has forgotten how to feel. Or maybe it has already chosen to follow Slava before my brain caught up with the same decision.

Blood begins to gush out, and I watch as my life force leaves my body. I sit on the cold bathroom floor. The room is very, very quiet. I’m not crying, and I’m not afraid. But I am very, very tired in a way that sleep hasn’t touched in five days. The tiredness has weight to it now, a gravity pulling me down and inward. I think about Slava on the other side of whatever comes next. The thought doesn’t frighten me the way it should.

Wait for me, Slava, I’m coming.

I don’t know how much time passes. I know at some point Nadia’s voice comes through the door, my name, once, twice, in the tone that means she’s already afraid of the answer. Some distant part of my brain processes the opening of the door. Her face comes next, followed by the horrified sound she makes. It’s a sound I’ve never heard from her in twenty-three years, and then there are hands. Her hands first, and then other hands, voices, movement, then my eyes begin to close.

I’m sorry, Nadia. My sweet, loyal Nadia. I’m so sorry it was you who found me.

When I next open my eyes, my wrists are wrapped. I notice this before anything else, the texture of the bandaging, the slight pressure of it, and wonder if there are medical facilities in the afterlife.

I turn, hoping to see Slava, but instead, Nadia is in the chair beside the bed. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying, fully and completely, while holding my other hand in both of hers and looking at me with an expression that has nothing fake in it, nothing controlled, just raw terror slowly giving way to relief.

“I’m here,” she says. Her voice is wrecked. She is wrecked.

Damn, I failed.

“Don’t do that again.” Her hands tighten around mine. “Please. Whatever you have to promise me, promise me that.”

I don’t answer because the promise feels too large for my throat right now, and I do not want to lie in her face. So, I squeeze her hands instead. She closes her eyes, presses her forehead to our joined hands, and breathes.

My father comes in the evening.

He stands in the doorway in his jacket, looking more composed than one would expect given the circumstances. His eyes go to my wrists first. Then my face. He doesn’t ask if I’m in pain. He doesn’t ask if I’m frightened. He stands in the doorway and looks at me the way you look at something you own that’s been damaged, deciding what it’s still worth.

“This won’t happen again,” he says.

I look at the ceiling.

“You’re not permitted to do this again.” His voice doesn’t waver or soften. It’s an order from your Pakhan. “You’re valuable, and I won’t allow an asset to be lost over ridiculous sentiment. You aren’t only the legal heir to the Yeleshev estate, but you’re also my daughter. Your actions reflect on me, so you will conduct yourself accordingly. Understood?”

I feel his eyes on me, but I refuse to meet them with my own.

He waits for a moment. I’m not sure whether he expected me to argue or explain. In the end, it doesn’t matter because he decides that the silence is compliance enough. “The door stays locked. Someone will be outside at all hours. Nadia has been given her own set of instructions. You’re lucky I don’t blame her for your failure. This time, at least.” He straightens his cuff. “When you’re ready to behave like a rational person, we’ll discuss next steps.”