Page 44 of Chained Fate
I whip my head around to see a tall, lanky blonde with facial piercings staring at us with wide blue eyes from some dozen meters away.
“Alina?”she repeats, coming toward us, and I realize who she is.I saw her in the footage my security team pulled up after the incident in the hostel.
It’s the young woman Alina stayed with when she ran away, the one she told me wasnota witness to Alina’s self-defense efforts—a fact the cameras confirmed by showing her leaving the hostel an hour prior.
“Birgit?”Alina exclaims, extricating her hand from my elbow and switching to English.“I had no idea you were still in town!”
“And I had no idea you were here either.You just up and disappeared on me!”She sounds way more accusing than the length of their acquaintance warrants, and I narrow my eyes as I observe their interaction.
While Alina was recovering after the surgery, I had my security team look into this woman, and off-hand, I don’t recall anything too concerning in her file—though there was a mention of a brief relationship with a girl in college.
Could that be it?
Did she view my wife as more than a potential friend?
Motherfucker.Did somethinghappenbetween them in that dingy hotel room?
“Oh, fuck.Your hair…” Birgit sounds shocked as she stops in front of us—close enough for me to slice open her carotid artery with the blade in my pocket.Her gaze jumps to my face for the first time, and she blanches at whatever she sees there, smartly backing up a couple of steps.But she regroups quickly, refocusing on Alina.“That diagnosis you mentioned…” Her gaze drops to Alina’s stomach.“Are you?—”
“Not anymore.”Alina’s voice thickens, and the jealous fury flaring within me sputters and dies, smothered by a hollow ache.
This stranger knows about it all.The cancer and the pregnancy that never was.The baby that was never meant to be, the one Alina had been so convinced was a girl.
I’ve done my best to move past it, but the images still come to me at night, pulling me out of what little sleep I manage—the tears on Alina’s face when she told me she was bleeding, the deathly pallor of her skin when the doctors informed us that the embryo had never truly existed.Worst of all is the knowledge that it’s all my fault.That it all happened because I wanted to tie her to me once and for all, to bind us together as irrevocably as two people can be bound.
Some primitive, irrational part of me still wants it, a child that would be hers and mine—even as fear of what a pregnancy could do to her is front and center in my mind.
“I’m sorry,” Birgit says softly, and I force myself to focus on her and the potential danger she represents instead of the sucking emptiness in my chest.
Even if her relationship with my wife was exactly as Alina presented it—just a kind stranger helping out—the body Valery’s forensic team disposed of makes me wish she’d disappeared from Alina’s life for good.Here in Western Europe, the Molotovs and the Leonovs don’t have the same pull as we do in Russia, so it’s not entirely impossible that Alina would be questioned if some overzealous, too-righteous-for-bribes detective figured out that she was one of the last people to have seen the missing man alive.
Because heismissing, as far as the police are concerned.The Molotovs made sure his body would never be found.They also wiped any and all security footage that placed Alina anywhere near that hostel.The only thing linking her to the dead man is the woman standing in front of me.
Who now knows that Alina is still here in Geneva.
Alina chooses that very moment to look up at me, and the way she pales tells me that I’m not hiding my thoughts well.
“Don’t you dare,” she whisper-hisses at me in Russian before pasting on a big smile and turning to Birgit while demonstratively grabbing my arm in a possessive, wifely hold.“Sorry, I’m being so rude,” she exclaims in a practiced, social-butterfly tone.“Birgit, this is my husband, Alexei Leonov.Alexei, this is my friend, Birgit.She was very kind to me in those terrible days right after my diagnosis.”
The smile that stretches my lips holds zero warmth.“A pleasure.”
I don’t know what the fuck my wife is playing at, but now this woman knows my full name—and by default, Alina’s.
Birgit gives me a wary nod.“Likewise.”Her eyes flit back to Alina’s head and the scars decorating it before she bites her lip and asks tentatively, “How are you… you know?”
“All good,” Alina says, a shade too brightly.“Had surgery to remove the tumor, followed by some radiation and immunotherapy, and just got an all-clear.Didn’t even need to do a full shave, as it turns out, but I kind of like it.”She rubs her head with a self-deprecating smile.
I’m considering what kind of accident could take Birgit out in the near future without Alina finding out and getting upset when Birgit says, “Yeah, looks great on you.”Her gaze flicks to me again.“Though I’m sure your husband misses your long hair.”
My jaw tightens.“And why’s that?”
She shrugs with a cynical half-smile.“All men seem obsessed with that shit.”She touches her own short blond locks.
Alina speaks up before I can eviscerate her friend—verbally for now, given that we’re in public.“Not this one,” she says, squeezing my arm, and when I glance at her, she’s gazing up at me with a smile.Anadoringsmile.
It’s the first time I’ve seen such an expression on her face, and it sucks all the breath out of my lungs.
I forget all about Birgit and the herds of tourists milling around us, my heart thudding violently against my ribs as I soak in that gorgeous, radiant smile.It’s like tasting sunlight.Like stepping into a warm bath after a Siberian winter night.
