Satin Princess(28)

“So it could have been anyone. A hired actor and actress. Marina playing pretend.”

“There was blood.” As soon as the words come out of her mouth, she flushes again, this time with embarrassment. “Right. Stupid me. That’s easy enough to fake.” She sighs. “I’m in way over my head here, Anton.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Her eyes go wide with alarm. “Do I have to get used to this?”

I give her a small smile. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you don’t have to. How’s that?”

She looks up at me, and for the first time, the shadows in her eyes seem to lift. “Okay.”

I can’t really enjoy the moment, though. Not when I’m staring at a tape that was never meant to be seen by anyone other than myself and my closest confidantes. How it happened, I have no fucking clue.

But it’s a moot point now. The video is out.

All that matters is what happens next.

“That really happened, didn’t it?” Jessa asks, tipping her head towards the phone. Towards the video.

I wish I could lie, but I can’t. Not to her, not now. “Yes.”

“I might have blamed you for what happened in that video,” she says. “But now, I know Marina. I get it.” Jessa smiles, but it slips away quickly. “She was so damn convincing. Everything about her. We had such an easy friendship.”

“She conned you into giving her your trust.”

Jessa nods. “And she knew just how to do it.”

“How?”

She gives me a guilty half-smile. “She told me about her abusive ex. It was how we first bonded.”

I roll my eyes. “The woman does like to be dramatic.”

“I feel stupid,” Jessa admits in a quiet voice. “Now that I think about it, everything she told me was her version of the truth. Abusive partner. A miscarriage. Running away. It was all there. She just… got me.”

“She likes playing games, Jessa. It’s how she operates.”

“She came into my life the moment you did,” she continues. She pauses long enough to laugh derisively at herself. “I thought it was fate. Can you believe that?”

“Fate?”

“I’d just lost a friend and a fiancé. I was lonely and scared. She made me feel like myself again. Like the old me. A normal girl with a normal life. Damn it, Chris was right about me.”

She trails off, her face creased in shame and regret, and I realize that I would do anything to take these burdens from her. To stroke her face and wipe her pain away.

“Right about what?”

“I have terrible instincts about this kind of stuff. People, their character.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I have no choice but to,” she says. “I thought I could trust Dane, and he was cheating on me for most of our relationship. I thought I could trust Salma, and she lied to me for years on end. I thought I could trust Freya, and she nearly killed my baby.”

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

The question catches her off-guard. “I… I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Answer the question.”

“Anton—”

“Just be honest, Jessa. With me, of course. But especially with yourself.”

“Yes, I trust you,” she whispers in a small voice. “But now, all I can think of is, what if I’m wrong to trust you? What if you try to hurt me the same way all the rest of them have?”

“Do you think that’s likely?”

“That’s the thing—it doesn’t matter what I think. I can’t trust myself,” she says, frustration growing in her voice.

“You’ve made some bad decisions. You’ve made mistakes. But I’d argue that choosing to trust me balances out the rest.”

“Figures you’d say that,” she drawls, though a smile plays at the corner of her lips. “You’re a little biased, though.” Then she changes the conversation. “Is Chris really okay?”

“I thought we just established that you trust me.”

She sighs. “I do trust you. That’s the problem.”

“It’s not a problem,” I tell her gently. “Chris is fine.”

She nods, relieved, and her hair falls around her face. I reach out and tuck it behind her ear. When my fingertip brushes across her skin, she freezes for a moment, as if deciding. Then she leans into the touch.

“Do you think Marina is bipolar?” Jessa asks. “Or, like, schizophrenic?”

“Marina is sick, yes, but not like that. She made her own choices, not some disease doing it on her behalf. The best explanation is that she is a spoiled Bratva princess. She had a father who doted on her. Gave her everything she wanted and more. She expected the same from me, and when she didn’t get exactly what she wanted, she threw tantrums. She made scenes and got violent. And in a few extreme circumstances, she got murderous.”

Jessa trembles a little at the last part. “Was she always like that?”

“Pretty much from the first moment we got married. She wanted to be an equal partner in my Bratva. She wanted a seat at the table.”

“And you refused her?”

“She couldn’t be trusted or counted on. She was erratic, temperamental. She nursed grudges like no other person I’ve ever met.”