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Geneva looks eerily calm as I explain all this to her. Not even the part about the Bratva seems to elicit much of a reaction.
“The fact that I’m pregnant complicates things. Ravil doesn’t want Kolya to have a direct heir to the Bratva crown. The man that Kolya killed tonight, he was trying to hurt me. He would have, if Kolya hadn’t… done what he did.”
Geneva doesn’t say a word for several seconds after I finish talking. “Genny?”
She blinks once and her eyes focus on me. Sharper and less puzzled than I ever would’ve expected. And when her voice comes out, it sounds like Milana’s.
Icy. Cold. Detached.
“That’s not the story Ravil told me.”
35
JUNE
“I’m sorry—what?”
Geneva adjusts her position and takes a breath. “Ravil met with me when I landed in Mexico,” she says. “He wanted to tell me the real story.”
“But I just told you the real story.”
“Honey, you’ve been brainwashed,” she says in a tone that’s sickly sweet and condescending. “The big brute out there has gotten into your head. Made you think he’s the knight in shining armor and you’re the damsel in distress. Ravil told me the truth. Therealtruth.”
“I haven’t been—”
“Kolya killed his own father, did you know that?”
I swallow my words. I’m chewing on the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. Even before I say anything, I know how it’s going to go. There’s no way to sayYes, I knew thatwithout confirming her belief that I’ve been taken in by a handsome face and a few smooth lies. “Listen, Geneva, you don’t know the circumstances.”
It strikes me the second I say it that I don’t know the circumstances, either. I just assumed, as with every other decision he’s made in the last few days, that Kolya had a good reason for doing what he did.
Not that it started out that way. When I first arrived in this house, I’d been dead-set on escaping. Somewhere along the way, though, I’d just accepted my fate. Got comfortable. Hell, I literally slept with the man who abducted me.
I feel a disengaging coldness spread through my body. Like real life is peeling off of me, leaving me behind. Is it possible that Geneva is right and I have been brainwashed? Am I a sucker?
My heartbeat starts to feel a little uneven.
“Hey,” Geneva says, grabbing my hand. “I can help you, June.”
I try to breathe through the panic.Think, June, think.Why did I start feeling safe with Kolya in the first place? There were definitely reasons. There were. There had to be. So why can’t I think of any of them right now?
“June. Look at me.”
I focus on Geneva. She looks completely in command of herself. A far cry from the hysterical woman that Kolya and Milana forced into the back of his car in Mexico.
“Ravil was worried about you. That’s why he sought me out. He wanted to make sure he could trust me before he told me any further details. That’s why he hired me.”
“Geneva, I’ve met Ravil. I’ve spoken to Ravil. And so I really, really need you to believe me when I say this: he can’t be trusted. He was trying to win you over. To get inside your head so that you could get inside mine.”
She sighs heavily, like she was expecting exactly that response. “You may be carrying Kolya’s baby, but don’t let that be your life sentence.”
I’m on the verge of telling her that the baby’s not actually Kolya’s, but I stop myself at the last moment. This all just feels sowrong.Those aren’t my sister’s words coming out of her mouth. They’re the words of a yellow-toothed smirker who laid his hand on me in Kolya’s blue room in a way I’m still feeling all this time later.
I brush my hair behind my ears and try to compose myself, though it feels mostly like a failing effort. “It means a lot that you’re here, Genny. It means a lot that you want to be there for me. But I trust Kolya. Ravil is not who you think he is.”
“Maybe not. But neither is Kolya.”
I look at her and she looks at me, and for a moment, it feels like we are what we’ve always been: two people who will never agree. Eye-to-eye in person, yeah, but never eye-to-eye on anything that matters.
