Page 29 of Ivory Oath

“You’re lying.”

“And you don’t know everything,” I bite back.

I don’t mean to come across as harsh, but days without sleep combined with the existential dread swirling in my head are bound to make a girl grouchy.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” I sigh and pinch the IV tubing between my fingers. “I just spent the last few days chained to a bed. This is different, but it doesn’t feel different.”

He tugs a hand through his hair again. It’s immaculately disheveled. “You were supposed to get out of the city. I didn’t think—if I knew?—”

“You didn’t know.” Why I feel the need to let Mikhail off the hook, I’ll never know. But I do. I don’t want him to beat himself up over what his brother did.

He drops down on the end of my bed, his weight tugging my legs towards him. “But did you? Did you know Trofim was alive and looking for you?”

“If I had, you never could have gotten rid of me. I would have tied myself to the gates like the environmentalists who chain themselves to trees.”

Mikhail doesn’t smile. I don’t really expect him to.

None of this is funny.

“Tell me what happened. All of it.”

I nod. “Well, you know that my dad wanted me to kill Trofim. If he was dead, then it would clear the way for you to become pakhan and it would give Dante a direct line to leadership. All of that would have benefitted my father. But for me…” I breathe through the tightness in my chest. “Everything I did was about my freedom and Dante’s safety. That’s why I did what I did.”

“What exactly did you do? I’m sure you’ve noticed, but Trofim is alive. You didn’t kill him.”

“Unfortunately,” I grumble. “But that’s what I went there that night to do. I got there and everything went exactly like I planned. I knew Trofim would buy that I was there to apologize to him and make things right, and he did. He walked me straight back to his bedroom and kissed me.”

Mikhail’s hand tightens into a fist. I look away. If I reach out to touch him now, I’ll never get through the rest of this story.

“He threw me down on the bed and I knew if I didn’t do it right then, I wouldn’t get the chance. If he found the knife strapped to my thigh, things would have ended a lot differently. So, as he climbed over me, I drove the blade into his stomach.” A shiver moves down my spine. “I still have nightmares about his blood coating my hands. It felt like hot oil and the knife slipped out of my hand. I knew as soon as the blade went in that I couldn’t kill him. Taking another person’s life, even someone as evil as Trofim, wasn’t something I could live with.”

“So you knew he wasn’t dead?” Mikhail asks, brow furrowed. “When I accused you of killing him, you knew?—”

“I knew he wasn’t dead when I left,” I explain. “Trofim was yelling and stumbling around the room. I got up and ran before he could figure out what was happening. But I had no clue what happened afterward. I figured it just… ended.”

Mikhail frowns. “You didn’t finish the job. You could have told me that. I accused you and you didn’t say anything.”

“I wanted to. I tried. But I also didn’t think it made much of a difference. As far as I knew, Trofim was dead. It had been six years since that night in Moscow and I hadn’t heard a word about Trofim. Not one peep. Until you told me he was dead. So I thought… I thought I killed him. I thought that maybe one stab was all it took.”

Mikhail is quiet for a long time. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. If he believes me, if he’s still mad at me for lying.

And the longer we sit in the quiet, the more I don’t even know what I’m thinking.

Do I care if he believes me? He may or may not be mad, I don’t know, but… am I?

He dumped me on the curb like an old mattress so he could marry some other woman. He did it to keep Dante safe, sure. I get that. I can understand the impulse—I’ve spent the last six years of my life doing everything imaginable to protect Dante, including flying around the globe to stab Mikhail’s brother in the stomach. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that.

But there’s a big difference between understanding Mikhail’s motivations and being just peachy about the way I was treated. Deep down, I have to wonder, Aren’t I worth protecting, too?

Mikhail tugs another hand through his hair and I can see he isn’t wearing a wedding ring—mine or anyone else’s.

“Why did you come for me?” I can’t bring myself to ask him about Helen directly. I’m pathetic enough, naked except for a hospital gown with smudged wedding makeup on. No need to look like a possessive psycho on top of all that. So I inch as close to the question as I can without tumbling over the edge.

“I already told you: you weren’t supposed to be there with Trofim.”

“Okay, but why did that matter?” I press. “You sent me away. It’s not like I was your responsibility anymore. It wouldn’t have made any difference to you whether your brother was torturing me or not. You could have left me.”

“No,” he retorts. “I couldn’t have.”

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