Page 209 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
Her wedding ring.
My ring.
The platinum band lies in the dirt, streaked with mud, the narrow diamonds catching the gray light.
For a moment, I can’t pick it up. I stare at it like if I don’t touch it, the meaning will not settle.
Then I take it between my fingers.
It’s cold. Too cold.
Viktor comes up behind me and stops dead when he sees what I’m holding.
No one speaks.
There’s blood on the stone near the canal edge. Not a pool. Not enough to prove anything. Enough to make the mind do terrible work.
I look over the wall at the water. The canal moves slowly, dark under the sky. It could take a body beneath the surface and carry it under the next bridge before anyone saw. It could hidea woman in a black coat. It could swallow every answer before I arrived.
No.
The word doesn’t come out. It stays inside me, hard and useless.
Whatever happened here, someone tore my name from her hand.
The rage comes then.
Not hot. Not uncontrolled. Something far worse.
It moves through me like a door shutting on every human part I have left. I’m going to find and kill everyone responsible.
And I’ll start with Dmitri.
31
ANYA
Cold.
That’s the first thing I know.
Not pain. Not fear. Not even my own name.
Cold.
It’s everywhere. In my mouth, my nose, my ears, my bones. It drags at me, heavy and dark, filling my lungs with panic before I understand I’m still alive enough to panic.
Water closes over my face. I try to breathe and swallow river instead.
My body convulses. My arms move weakly, uselessly, as if they belong to someone else. There’s light somewhere above me, gray and broken, but every time I reach for it, the water pulls me back down.
Something burns in my side.
No, not burns. Tears. A sharp, hot ripping pain beneath the cold.
Then there are hands on me. Someone grabs the back of my coat and hauls me upward. My face breaks the surface, and I choke on air so violently it feels like my chest is splitting. I cough, gagging, water spilling from my mouth as a man drags me toward the bank.
“Hold on,” he grunts. “Hold on, I’ve got you.”
