Page 150 of The Darkness is Calling

His words are like a knife driven deep into my heart. A lump forms in my throat, and I barely manage to hide my trembling.

He gives up that easily after everything he did?

“If that doesn’t happen by the end of the week, I’ll give you back your freedom anyway, while ensuring the protection you need.”

I remain frozen. If for one second I thought the news of my freedom would make me happy, now I’m strangled by the agony of a moment I feel is not what I want.

“And that’s it?” I say, my voice shaking. “After that bloody show in the cathedral, now you just annul everything?”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want. All I know is that I don’t want to be a prisoner for Bratva.”

“You say prisoner, I would have said marriage. But now it’s clear to me that, for you, it’s the same thing. Unfortunately, I am Pakhan. And if you once had the chance to leave this world, I will never have that privilege.”

His sadness tears me apart.

“I’ll do everything I can to make you happy, dusha moya. Even if that means knowing you’re far away from me.”

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but Artem suddenly rises from the armchair, taking his phone with him, and leaves the room.

In this moment, I feel like I’ve just lost him.

And it’s entirely my fault.

I live each day like someone condemned to death, except I’ve been promised freedom. A freedom I don’t rejoice in, but also haven’t had the courage to challenge until now.

I do it only in my mind, while I spend long hours with my piano, playing every sad melody I know.

Do I love him? Yes. I fell in love with this monster the day the image of his beautiful face wove itself into the musical notes, when I played for the first time under his roof. Maybe even at the Christmas party, when I met his cold, dark gaze, the one that promised me the most forbidden fantasies, but also something more. Death. Or happiness.

Even now, I still don’t know, and because of that, I am alone in the apartment, after four days in which I’ve felt like I’m living with a ghost.

Since we had that conversation, we haven’t eaten together anymore, and when we cross paths in the kitchen or the living room, he hurries to leave the room as quickly as possible. Since then, he has moved part of his personal belongings into another room, leaving me to sleep alone in the large bedroom, which feels colder than a Siberian breeze.

I miss him with an emptiness that robs me of many hours of sleep at night, because my heart aches for him with every day that passes without us exchanging more than a few words. And when we do, they are monosyllabic, forced by circumstance.

I barely see him, because when he isn’t gone, he locks himself in the office.

He gave me another phone, old and without internet, telling me I could use it to talk to Oksana. But my mood is so bad that I haven’t wanted to hear my friend yell at me that I’m an idiot for pushing away the only man who has made my heart truly feel love.

Or scold me for being spoiled, raised by my father to be proud, and that because of it, I now refuse to go to him and tell him the truth. That I love him and that I want us to find a way to be happy... together.

Sighing, I walk barefoot through the apartment. The thin dress I put on today, although white, is meant to make Artem notice me. It stops above my knees, and the loose skirt plays around my thighs, reminding me of the touch of the man I can still call “my husband.” Still. Because there are two days left before Artem is supposed to file the annulment request.

A cold pain pierces me every time I think that I’m one step away from losing him for good. A pain that today makes me feel tears on my cheeks as I stare out the window at the gloomy city, covered in clouds and soaked by the heavy rain that has been falling for hours.

I haven’t seen him at all today, and once again, I wonder if he left earlier than usual just to avoid crossing paths with me. He left fresh coffee in the kitchen, as he does every day, made by him exactly the way he knows I like it, even though he has quite a modern coffee machine. But he was nowhere to be found.

When I saw the pot of coffee he’d made himself, I felt an emptiness that made me sob right there on the kitchen floor.

That was the moment I decided to change this situation and try to talk to him. To understand, for myself, whether his feelings are real and not just a fleeting obsession. Or worse, a plan to secure his hierarchy in Bratva, even though he told me that wasn’t what this was about.

And I believe him. I truly believe him, despite every warning my father gave me throughout my life about men from the Russian mafia.

Artem, in his madness, is without a doubt the only man I trust with my life. And the only one I truly love.

Slowly, my pain transforms into determination, bright with positive energy. I have to talk to him, and hope shines through every pore as I plan each honest word I intend to tell him the moment he comes home.