59. Viviana

I'm half-awake when I hear the door open.

I don't think I've slept at all in hours, or maybe days. I have no sense of time anymore. Ever since Anatoly barred my door, I've been in a timeless purgatory. Waiting for Mikhail to decide if I should live or die.

For that reason, I should probably be on edge when a shadowy figure appears in my doorway… but I'm not. I blink through exhaustion, watching as the shape grows closer.

"Has he decided?" I rasp. My voice is hoarse. The last person I spoke to was Anatoly when he barred my door shut.

"Come on. Get up," a deep voice says.

Strong hands wrap around my elbow, tugging me out of bed.

I pull away from whoever it is. It's not Mikhail. That's all I know. It's the only thing that matters.

The smell is wrong and the voice is deep, but it doesn't send shivers down my spine. Or maybe I'm too far gone for spine shivers.

This is what hopelessness feels like, I think. I'm too numb to feel anything at all. Even the things I thought I'd have to be dead to forget.

"Viviana," the voice hisses in my ear, "get up right now if you want to live."

I blink again and it's like I'm coming out of a dream. It's like a filter has just been ripped away from my eyes, finally letting me see the world in front of me.

Anatoly is kneeling next to my bed, his square face etched with solemn lines. It's nothing like the wrinkled smiles and joy I'm used to from him.

"What are you talking about?"

He shakes his head and keeps tugging me out of bed. "There's no time to talk. We only have time to move. Now."

My feet hit the floor, but I don't trust myself to stand. Meals have shown up every few hours while I've been here, but I haven't felt like eating much. The only time I've actually stood up has been to run to the bathroom and heave.

My teeth feel soft and my stomach churns at just the thought. "Are you taking me to Mikhail? Is he going to kill me?"

Anatoly starts tossing things from my closet into a trash bag. "Mikhail would regret killing you. Trofim wasn't the kind of man anyone should mourn. You killed him, but you don't deserve to be punished for it."

I'm frozen by the side of my bed, trying to sort through the muddy soup of information in front of me.

Mikhail doesn't want to kill me, so he sent Anatoly to take me away?

"Why can't I just stay here in the house?" I ask. "Mikhail said we would have a marriage in name only. If he isn't going to kill me, doesn't that mean I'll stay here?"

"If you stay here, you're dead."

The finality in his words splashes over me like a glass of ice water. For the first time in… I have no idea how many days, I feel wide awake.

"But you said Mikhail would regret if he?—"

"Iakov wants you dead," Anatoly explains, shoving handfuls of random clothes into the trash bag. I see him scoop up a bikini and a winter hat in the same fist. "The only way to end the war with the Greeks and keep Dante safe is for Mikhail to marry Helen, but Iakov demanded that we give you to him as an honor killing."

Anatoly is telling me that Iakov wants me dead, but all I can focus on is, "Mikhail is going to marry Helen?"

Anatoly grabs my arm, peering into my eyes. "If we don't move now, you aren't going to get out of here alive. Be sad and jealous later. Right now, you need to live."

I am nowhere close to understanding what is happening here, but I trust Anatoly. So I bend down and yank my duffel bag from under the bed. "Leave the trash bag here. You packed a bunch of nonsense. I've had the essentials packed for days."

Despite it all, Anatoly smirks. "I knew you had some fight left in you, Viv. Now, let's go."

He looks both ways in the hallway and then heads for the stairs. I freeze in my doorway.

"Dante."

Anatoly hesitates, checking to make sure we're still alone. "He's already downstairs in the car. I carried him down asleep."

Dante is a heavy sleeper. Last December, he slept through the back half of a Christmas orchestra concert and for the entire train ride home. Hopefully, he stays asleep through whatever comes next.

The house is dark as Anatoly and I make our way down the stairs and across the first floor.

I keep expecting someone to pop out of the shadows to stop us, but the house is silent. Even Stella seems to be in bed for the night.

I look around, wondering when I'll see it all again. Somehow, this mansion became home. The people inside of it, even more so.

I don't want to leave.

But Anatoly holds the garage door open and ushers me inside. The garage is as dark as the rest of the house, but I don't dare turn on a light.

"Your car?" I assume, nodding to Anatoly's green jeep in the farthest parking space from the door.

Anatoly shakes his head and points to the black sedan in the center.

"We're taking Pyotr's car?"

"He comes and goes all the time," Anatoly explains. "No one asks questions."

Who would be asking questions? The guards? Mikhail?

I lug my duffel bag towards the car and notice a blanket-covered lump in the backseat. I toss my duffel bag into the passenger seat and move to open the back door.

"Where are you going?" Anatoly asks.

"I'm going to sit with Dante." I pull open the back door, but before I can slide inside, Anatoly is behind me. He grabs my shoulders and hauls me back.

"What?" I hiss. "I won't wake him up."

"That isn't Dante."

Anatoly holds out a hand to keep me back and peers into the backseat like he's waiting for the lump to explode.

"What do you mean, it isn't Dante?" My heart is like a jackhammer against my ribs. "He's supposed to be here."

Isn't he?

Or was it a lie?

Anatoly doesn't answer me. Instead he grabs the corner of the blanket and whips it back.

"No!" The cry that comes out of Anatoly is guttural. It's dripping with enough shock and horror that I don't need to see anything to know that something is horribly wrong.

The blanket settles at my feet, a bright red stain oozing across the fabric in the center.

No.

I squeeze my eyes closed, too afraid to look.

When Mikhail told me about the moment he found Alyona and Anzhelina dead, I couldn't imagine how it must have been for him. How the sight of your child, limp and lifeless, must haunt your every second for the rest of your life.

I thought, I wouldn't survive it.

That's what I'm positive is about to happen to me when Anatoly backs out of the car… and lays Stella's limp body over the stain.

I'm mortified by my own relief that it isn't my son. Then I take in her white skin. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Stella…" Anatoly smooths her hair away from her forehead and falls over her body. He presses his ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat. I don't need to test it to know she doesn't have one.

"She's dead," I whisper in horror.

Anatoly shakes his head, pumping both of his hands into her chest. Her entire body spasms with the effort, but it's useless. She's been gone for a while.

I grab Anatoly's shoulder. "She's dead, Nat. She's gone. We have to?—"

I don't know what we have to do. Who did this? Why?

"You can't be gone," Anatoly moans. He presses his forehead to her body. "Please, baby, come back."

My heart cracks and shatters for him, but another horror is dawning over me. I look in the car, but it's empty. Just a bloodstain where Stella was dumped.

"Where's Dante?" I try to jerk Anatoly away from Stella, but he's so much stronger than me and lost in his own grief. "Nat, where is he? Where's Dante?"

"Don't worry, Viviana. He's safe."

The third voice finally snaps Anatoly out of it. He lets Stella go and sits up—just in time to watch as Pyotr raises a gun and shoots him directly in the chest.

Smoke swirls from the gun in Pyotr's hand as Anatoly topples back over Stella's body.

I can't even scream; I'm so shocked, I just stand there. My hands are clapped over my mouth. My heart is a useless, clenching fist in my chest.

Then a shrill scream slices through the air.

Pyotr struggles to keep hold of the small body plastered against his leg, but he manages to grab my boy by the collar and hold him back.

Dante is weeping, lunging for Anatoly's motionless body on the cement floor. And my heart bleeds. Nothing else matters except getting to my son.

I reach for him, but Pyotr turns the gun on me.

"Don't move until I tell you to, Viv." His voice is a cruel sneer. Nothing like the kind, soft-spoken man who was in my room the other night, offering me tales of his own sorrow and promises of freedom.

None of this makes any sense. I have no clue what is happening.

"What are you doing? Why did you—" I look down at Anatoly's body on the ground and I can't even say the words.

Why did you kill him?

"Was Anatoly telling me the truth?" I ask, trying to make sense of this. "Was he saving me or are you—Is this your plan? I would never have agreed if I knew you were going to do this."

I want Mikhail. The thought pangs through me with bruising force.

"Mama!" Dante weeps. He's clinging to Pyotr's leg because he's five and he needs someone to hold. He shouldn't be seeing any of this. I should be the one comforting him. I want to protect him, but I can't. I don't know how.

"Let him go," I beg Pyotr.

Pyotr starts to open his mouth, but behind me, the garage door slides open and yet another figure joins the fray.

"I wondered if you'd try to escape your fate," Iakov says with a sigh. His hands are in his pockets, oddly relaxed given the scene in front of him. "This is why I like to handle matters like this in person. If you want someone killed right, you have to do it yourself."

The last person I expected to see here tonight is Mikhail's father. Then it hits me: he's Trofim's father, too.

"Whatever this is," I beg, "let Dante go. Take me instead."

A smile twists across his face. "Actually, I think I'll take you both."