Satin Princess(92)

“I’m the one who introduced the two of them!” she protests. “I chose to trust her as much as my lifelong friend right from the start. Not once did I suspect she wasn’t who she said she was.”

I grab her hand in both of mine. “Why would you have suspected? The average person is not trained to suss out that kind of deception. You have no reason to expect it in your world.”

“It doesn’t matter. I should have been smarter about who I let into my life.”

I can’t argue with that. It’s a good rule for her going forward, too, but right now is not the time to say so.

“His parents, Anton,” she murmurs as a shiver runs down her body. “What do I say to his parents?”

“He’s not dead, Jessa.”

“How do you know that?” she says, dragging her eyes up to mine. “What if she’s chopping up his body as we speak so that she can send him back to me in pieces? I can’t stop thinking…”

She trails off, dissolving into tears. I grab her by the shoulders and pull her to me. Her whole body shakes and then she sinks into me. She twitches with sobs every few seconds. I ride them out with her, waiting until the front of my shirt is soaked through, and then I pull back so that I can look at her face.

“Do you trust me?” I ask quietly.

She blinks and another fat tear rolls down her cheek. “Yes. Of course I do.”

“Then let me take care of this,” I say. “You’re not used to any of it, I understand that. But this is the lifestyle I lead, Jessa. And you’re going to have to get used to it. Otherwise, you’re not going to survive.”

Her bottom lip quivers. “What if I can’t? What if I don’t have it in me?”

“You know who I am and what I’ve done, and you still stand your ground with me,” I remind her. “That’s half of the reason I fell for you in the first place.”

Her eyes go wide with shock as the words spill out of my mouth.

“You… you what for me?”

I laugh. “For a smart girl, you can be pretty damn slow sometimes.”

That almost ignites a smile. But she quickly stuffs it back down as though she has something to feel guilty about.

“I… hoped for it,” she says tentatively. “But I wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking on my part.”

“It’s not,” I say. “It’s real.”

“You can’t blame me for second-guessing my instincts. They clearly can’t be trusted.”

“We’ll work on that together,” I assure her.

She seems to have calmed down slightly. There’s a little more color in her cheeks now and she’s not breathing quite so hard.

She looks at me for a second and then reaches up to curve her hand against the side of my face. “I do trust you, Anton,” she whispers softly. “I’m just so scared.”

“I know. But you don’t have to be. I’m going to take care of that bitch once and for all.”

“What if it’s too late by then?”

“I’m going to do my best to protect Chris as well,” I assure her.

Her lip trembles again as a fresh wave of sobs threatens to swallow her up. “But you can’t promise me that he’ll be okay, can you?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” I admit. “But I know Marina. She took Chris for a reason and that reason was to lure us in. She only starts hurting people when she has something to lose. For now, Chris is just a card she’s waiting to play.”

I can tell she’s close to dead on her feet. I pull her towards the bed and force her to sit down on it. “You need to sleep. Lie back.”

She does as I say, but her eyes stay fixed on me. “Anton, can you stay with me?”

I hesitate for only a moment. Then, sighing, I slide into the bed beside her.

She places her head on my chest. “I feel so guilty,” she whispers after a long silence.

“This is not your fault, kotyonok.”

“No, not because of that. I mean, a little bit because of that. But this guilt is for something else.”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that I feel so… safe right now,” she says, her voice strained and shaky. “I feel so safe here with you. And I have no right to feel that way when Chris has been abducted by that psycho.”

I wrap my arm around her and pull her close. “Don’t feel bad for feeling safe, Jessa. Chris wouldn’t want you to feel guilty.”

She glances up at me. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“Trusting me is something.”

“I already do.”

“Then close your eyes and let that be enough.”

She does. After a few minutes, her weight sinks into me and her breathing becomes more relaxed.

When I’m sure she’s asleep, I disentangle myself from her and get off the bed. I pull the blinds closed and head back downstairs to my office. Both Lev and Yulian are in there waiting for me.

“She has the friend?” Yulian asks.

“Yes.”

“How is Jessa?”

“Distraught,” I say. “She feels guilty.”

“And Marina is getting bolder,” Yulian points out.