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He looks surprised by the question. “I’ve done nothing to Kolya,” he says. “We’re family. I would never hurt him.”
“Where is he?”
“If I were to take a wild guess, I’d say he is standing at the altar waiting for you to float down the aisle towards him,” Ravil says with a self-satisfied little chuckle. “If you look to the left, you can see the Grand Ritz from here. Maybe you’ll even spot him through the window.”
I don’t look. If Ravil expects me to take my eyes off him for even one second, he’s delusional.
“What’s the matter, darling?” he asks, turning his gaze back on me. “You don’t look very comfortable. Perhaps a wardrobe change is in order.”
He gestures towards a huge armoire standing tall in the corner. I deliberate for a moment before I decide it’s best to play along. But I keep him in my peripheral vision the whole time as I pad over and tug the doors open.
Ravil doesn’t make any attempt to help me, but I’m thankful for that. I want him to keep his filthy fucking distance.
There’s a bunch of clothes hanging on the inside. All women’s, and all dresses that remind me a little of the outfit I saw Angela in the first time I met her. Floaty materials, soft silhouettes, and pale pastel colors. The kind of clothes you dress dolls in. Feminine and dainty and somehow nauseating.
And so many of them. Why would any one woman need…?
Oh.
My stomach twists when the truth hits me. They’re not for any “one” woman. They’re for dozens. Hundreds. As many women as Ravil and Adrian and the men who work for them can get their hands on.
I snatch the dress closest to me and turn to Ravil in disgust. “You’re a fucking monster!”
He seems amused by my fury. “Why is that? Because I have good taste?”
“The curtains behind you would beg to differ.”
His smile stays in place, but it becomes tighter, more forced. “I see my cousin didn’t take my advice. A woman who talks back quickly loses her appeal.” He points at a folding dressing screen over my shoulder, a bamboo frame with canvas stretched taut across it.
The canvas is marked with art—row after row of dancing little swans. It makes me sick. “If you’d prefer to change in privacy,” he says.
I retreat behind it, making sure I keep his blurred silhouette in my sights. When he can’t see me, I exhale and my whole body sags forward, preemptively defeated. Through a nearby window, I can see the high arches of the Grand Ritz.
Nothing has ever looked so far away.
Don’t you dare quit,says a new voice in my head that sounds the way vanilla would sound if it could speak.Don’t you give him the goddamn satisfaction.
Kolya’s voice is right. I grind my teeth, strip quickly, and pull on the puff-sleeved white dress I grabbed from the wardrobe. It’s not the white dress I was expecting to wear today, but that’s okay.
Soon enough, it’ll be red with Ravil’s blood.
I step out and eye him warily. He’s sprawled on the bed now, hands tucked behind his head like he’s ready for a nap.
“How did you get past Kolya’s guards?” I ask quietly.
He grins. “I had to kill quite a few. The sad part is that they never saw me coming. And of course, I had a mole on the inside, which expedited matters significantly.”
I freeze. He’s giving me a smile that makes my spine feel like jelly. “M-mole?” I repeat. Though I know the answer before it even leaves his lips.
“I think you know her. In fact, I believe you’re related.”
“Geneva.” I breathe out her name like it’s a curse.
He chuckles darkly and nods. “I must say, she’s not nearly as pretty as you are, but she’s a lot more interesting. A lot more cunning, too. She managed to conceal her burner phone from you and my cousin quite expertly.”
I think back to the night of the ball. To all the moments that followed. Geneva had never been a fan of Kolya, but she’d been so vehemently opposed to him right from the beginning that I should have suspected something.
Ididsuspect something, actually. I just chose to believe she would side with me. I chose to believe she would trust me. I chose to believe in my family.
