Page 18 of Beautiful Agony

LACEY

FOUR WEEKS LATER

I tracemy fingers over the fading marks on my neck, barely visible now in the morning light filtering through the curtains. Vadim sleeps beside me, but there's a careful space between us—like an invisible wall neither of us dares to breach.

His breathing is steady, peaceful.

Sometimes I catch him watching me when he thinks I'm asleep, his gray eyes filled with a mixture of longing and uncertainty that matches the ache in my chest.

We're trying.

God, we're both trying so hard to move past that night on the stairs.

But the guilt lingers like a shadow—mine for pushing him to that edge, and his for giving me exactly what I demanded.

And the fear that we might do it again rears its ugly head each time we approach each other.

I slip out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake him. My silk robe whispers against my skin as I pad to the bathroom, feeling oddly rough and tight for the last several days.

In the mirror, I examine the last traces of bruises. They're almost gone now, like the physical reminder of that night is trying to fade even if the emotional wounds are still raw.

I make my way down to my office, the hallways of Pankration oddly quiet in the early morning hours.

From my office window, I can see where they've cleared the trees behind the conservatory. The space looks naked, exposed. That path—the one Olga led me down—now sits under constant surveillance. Another reminder of how close I came to destroying everything.

My fingers trace over one of Irina's sketches, a cocktail dress with an innovative draping technique. I've been trying to figure out how to translate her vision into reality, but something about the construction keeps eluding me.

For three weeks, I've buried myself in Irina's final collection. Her sketches are scattered across my desk—beautiful dresses that will never see her finishing touches. Each time I look at them, I hear her laugh, see the triumphant look in her eyes in Paris right before all light faded from them.

The pain of her loss still feels fresh, even now.

As for Vadim, he's so busy tearing down Kirsan's empire piece by piece that I'm often asleep by the time he comes to bed.

We're both running from what happened that night, finding refuge in our work rather than facing the growing distance between us.

A wave of nausea roils my stomach, and I swallow it back. It's been like this for a few days now.

A knock at my door makes me jump. For a moment, I think it's Vadim. But when I look up, I see Lenka standing there, her weathered features holding their usual quiet dignity.

"Ms. Huang is here to see you," she says.

My heart leaps at Megan's name. After everything that's happened, the thought of seeing my sister feels like a lifeline being thrown to a drowning woman.

"Tell her I'll be right out," I say, gathering the sketches into a neat pile. My hands tremble slightly with anticipation.

After I returned to Pankration, Vadim caught me up on everything that has happened. Apparently, Megan has been staying at a safehouse in Monroe since the last time I saw her at the police station.

I learned that she's been working with him, while they come up with a strategy to expose Kirsan's operation through carefully crafted stories in the Seattle Voice. A twinge of guilt had run through me when I first learned it, mostly because I had been so opposed to the idea when she suggested it.

Above all, though, was the relief I felt in knowing that she's safe.

But knowing isn't the same as seeing.

I miss her infectious laugh, her quick wit, the way she can read my mood from the smallest change in expression. I miss having someone I can be completely honest with.

I feel a flutter of excitement in my stomach that has nothing to do with the morning nausea. For the first time in weeks, I feelsomething close to normal anticipation, unmarred by guilt or fear or uncertainty.

Just the simple joy of seeing my sister.

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