Page 35 of Pas de Trois
My pulse kicks into overdrive knowing where he’s going, knowing that my love is going to suffer the same as I did being trapped in that transparent box in the basement. With my heart racing, I have to work twice as hard to build my walls back up, but I manage to do it somehow.
Renata snaps her fingers to get my attention—literally snaps her fingers. I jerk to look at her and I know my expression is filled with the indignation I feel toward her. Her expression nearly mirrors my own.
Malice reflecting malice.
“This way,” she says, leading me up the staircase. “Leave your suitcase. It will be brought up shortly.”
I wonder what happened to the silver hard-shell suitcase that was packed for me when Vigo first took me away from Nikolai. I never got to peek inside it to see what Nikolai had packed for me. Nearly all my belongings—at least my most treasured items—had remained in my room at Mikhailov Manor, and they’re in the suitcase I brought with me today.
Maybe Nikolai hadn’t packed me anything at all when he sold me.
Vigo had my silver suitcase discarded when I first arrived, so now I have Ezra’s black suitcase full to the brim with everything I treasure and anything I thought might be important to Ezra. I have my box of photos of my sister, my most recent worn-in pair of ballet pointe shoes, and clothes for the both of us.
I have my underwear—such a simple thing that I never would’ve thought twice about before. Since that luxury had been stripped from me while I served as one of Vigo’s broken dolls, it was comforting to know I had a way to cover myself now…to protect myself.
Vigo’s dead.
He’s gone.
I have to remind myself frequently that I killed him because it still feels like a dream, a nightmare. The ghost of him still haunts me.
As I carefully ascend the steps behind Renata, we pass Olivia—their former talent slave and now Lorenzo’s fiancée—coming down the stairs. Her forehead wrinkles in confusion as she sees me with Renata who is, by all accounts, unnaturally calm for escorting the woman who murdered her brother.
I murdered him.
I’m a murderer.
We reach the balcony landing and we turn right—in the direction of Vigo’s room, where I was tortured, humiliated, left to die a slow and horrible death, and down the hallway where I killed him.
My breath catches in my throat.
My steps slow as faint, distant voices from a memory leap to the surface of my mind.
Nikolai demanding that we leave.
Ezra urging me along.
Vigo threatening to come after us, to torture and kill Ezra and force me to watch.
The phantom pull of my hand as it covered Kostya’s on the gun, my finger curling over his, aiming, and squeezing the trigger.
“Anya,” Renata snaps at me again and my head jerks up to look at her.
I’m standing in the same spot, looking down at the dark stain on the carpet where Vigo’s blood was spilled by my hand. When I look up, the voices in my mind fade and drift away, and I come back into reality. It takes me that long to realize we’re standing in front of Vigo’s bedroom door.
“You’ll be staying here.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, I’m not staying in Vigo’s bedroom. Find me another room,” I demand.
I feel uneasy being so bold. Nikolai spent years grooming it out of me, and taking it back is proving to be intensely challenging.
“There is no other room, Anya. You’ve seen our extended family is here and all the guest rooms are occupied. Unless, of course, you’d like a box in the basement.”
Truthfully, I consider it. At least then I wouldn’t be living in the space where I’d been tormented endlessly, forced to live with the ghost of the man who brought me to the brink of death so viciously. But I can only imagine what Ezra would have to say about that.
A twinge of pain pulls through my side. I place my palm over the ache and that motion alone reminds me that I’m pregnant.
I’m pregnant.
