10. Viviana

"When are they coming back?"

If someone had told me two hours ago I'd be anxious for the guards to return to drag me to my wedding with Trofim, I would have called them crazy.

Now, I'm the crazy one.

Crazy as in bored. Crazy as in anxious. And crazy uncomfortable in the ill-fitting wedding dress Trofim must have pulled out of some retired stripper's costume closet. It's more mesh than lace and I would not at all be surprised to discover it has tearaway seams.

The girl who helped me get ready, whose name I still do not know, only shrugs at my question.

"You could go find them," I suggest. "See what's taking so long."

I've lost all sense of time, but it has to be late. Or early. She's been fighting sleep for the last hour, her head bobbing every few minutes.

She studies the chains around my wrist to make sure they're still firmly attached to the metal chair. She thinks this is my attempt at an escape. In some ways, I guess it is. I want to escape this room. If I have to suffer through a wedding ceremony with Trofim, I want to get it over with as soon as possible.

There's no sense in delaying the horrible inevitable.

I know there's no chance of me getting out of this house. Not only because Trofim definitely has his beefy, brainless goons stationed at every exit, but also because I am long past having the energy for an escape. I barely have the energy to sit upright in this chair.

I have to admit, the girl did a surprisingly good job with my makeup. When I peeked in the mirror after she finished, I looked halfway alive. Better than the ghoulish vapor of a person I was when I walked in.

But beauty, as they say, is only skin deep. Inside, I feel scraped out, hollow. I have nothing left to give.

Whatever fight was in me is gone now.

I just want to swing from the gallows already.

Locked in the cell, thirsty and shivering, it was somehow easier to stay in the present. I felt like I was on the precipice of something all the time—another meal, another drink of water, another round of Trofim coming to torment me. I couldn't think about anything except when the door would open next.

Now, I know what's happening next and it's an easy slide from thinking about the next hour to think about the next ten years of my life—if I even live to see that many. It's way too easy to think about what's going outside of these four walls.

Like Dante.

Thoughts of my little boy have been strictly off-limits, but now, I can't stop wondering if he misses me.

The better, selfless part of me hopes he doesn't. I want him to be happy, blissfully playing hide-and-seek with Anatoly and telling everyone over dinner what he learned from his tutor. But the desperate, lonely human in me wants to know that he loves me as much as I love him. I want him to be asking Mikhail hourly where I am, even if I'm not sure I want to know what answers Mikhail is offering.

Would he talk bad about me to our son? Would Mikhail try to turn Dante against me?

My eyes burn, but I haven't had enough to drink to waste precious moisture on tears. After I finished the first bottle of water, the girl didn't offer a second. I'm still so thirsty and so weak.

It's impossible to imagine escape when I feel this miserable.

Even if I could somehow get away from Trofim, Mikhail threw me out of the mansion. It's not like he's going to let me pick Dante up every other weekend for ice cream dates and overnights. We aren't going to share custody. Mikhail's new wife wouldn't approve of that.

The image of Mikhail in a tux standing next to the harsh Greek princess I met that night during family dinner… I fold my hands over my stomach, suddenly nauseous.

Mikhail and Dante will move on, if they haven't already. And I'll be here, alone. Even if I end up married to Trofim, I'll be alone in every way that matters. If my baby survives this brutal pregnancy, Trofim will twist them into a monster just like him.

A sob bursts out of my throat.

The girl tries not to look at me, and I don't even have the energy to be embarrassed.

After another five silent minutes crawl by, she finally stands up. "I'll see if anyone is in the hallway."

She disappears. I don't care either way. Alone, with her—it's all the same shit.

Until voices echo from somewhere deep in the house.

She left the door cracked open when she left and someone is talking. Fragments of conversation drift down the hallway to me.

This is the first time I've been left alone with an open door since I got here. A little voice in my head whispers at me to try to break through my chains. To rip the chair out of the floor and run for it.

It's a reflex. An instinct after years of fighting. The difference now is, I have nothing left to fight for.

The voices get louder. Maybe the poor girl actually found Trofim. I wouldn't put it past him to kill some teenager because she dared interrupt his breakfast.

Then someone yells and I jolt upright.

It isn't the girl yelling. It's a man's voice.

Deep, guttural shouts reverberate down the hall and through the open doorway.

Then comes the shooting.

My survival instinct, which has been beaten into a shell of its former self after the last couple weeks, comes blaring back to life. I pull on the chains, ignoring the flare of pain through my raw wrists. Understandably, the metal doesn't flinch.

Okay. Plan B.

I lift my skirts and give the chair I'm chained to a formal assessment.

The chains are locked around the legs of the chair, which is bolted to the ground. But the ground in question is just faux-wood vinyl. Maybe if I rock the chair hard enough…

I grip the bottom of the chair and throw my weight forward and back like the world's least-fun swing set. The chair barely moves at first, but after a few rounds of back and forth, I can feel it beginning to wobble. Then the floor begins to creak and splinter.

The yelling is getting closer every second. I don't have any illusions about avoiding whatever danger is tearing through the halls, but I want to be ready for it.

I've sat in this room for two hours praying for a quick end to this suffering—death or numbness, whichever came first. Now, death is here and the truth is impossible to ignore.

I want to survive.

For my baby.

For Dante.

For myself.

There are footsteps in the hallway. Heavy, pounding steps. Someone is running straight for me.

I drum up every ounce of energy I have and hurl myself forward.

Finally, the floor gives way. The chair hangs suspended for what feels like a minute, but can't be more than a second. Then I fall forward directly onto my face.

My jaw slams into the floor and I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood…

But I'm free.

I sit up and disentangle the chains from the bottom of the chair, then coil the loose links around my hands. It's just me and my homemade brass knuckles against the world.

I face the door and drop into a ready position, ignoring the nausea that twists in my gut and the way my entire body sways with every step.

My tank is almost empty. But after everything I've been through—everything I've survived—there's no way I'm dying here without a fight.

My heart thunders to the same beat as the footsteps. I count down the seconds in my head until the door opens.

I know it's coming, but I'm still not ready when the door flies open so hard it bounces off the wall.

My hands drop to my sides, suddenly too heavy to hold. A sob wrenches out of my chest and I stumble forward, catching myself on the chair I just escaped from. I just can't believe what I'm seeing.

"Mikhail?" I croak.

He stops in the doorway, framed like the most gorgeous picture I've ever seen. As if my deepest, darkest fantasies are playing out right in front of me.

Mikhail holds out his hand to me. "Come on, Viviana. It's time for us to go."