Another girl who was helping me get ready for the wedding left the room, the door closing silently. Marina glanced up at the now closed door then looked into my eyes in the reflection.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
My chest ached painfully, and I gave her a sad smile.
Over the last five years, Marina had been a constant, supportive figure in my life. As a maid for my father, she was undoubtedly afraid, just like me, just like anyone and everyone who was connected in some way to the bratva, and so that had her keeping her head down and doing her job.
She’d braid my hair as I lay in bed crying, whispering how I wished things were different, how I didn’t want to be with someone I didn’t love. She’d sing to me, Russian lullabies she said her mother had sung to her when she was little.
She became a mother figure to me, and I latched onto her love.
And once my engagement was official, I asked her for help in leaving. I knew there could be repercussions in asking for help, especially since my father’s staff were tied to him, almost feeling obligated and forced by fear to bring any indiscretions to his attention. I’d taken that risk, because I didn’t care if I died, didn’t care about anything else at that point.
My life was hollow, an empty vessel. And I refused to let my father fill it with his agendas and Maximillian’s evil.
At first, she’d just given me a sad smile and told me things worked out how they did, that sometimes our path wasn’t meant to be our own. It was only after the engagement party where I’d been flaunted and pulled in every direction, shown off as not a strong woman or an individual, but as a pretty thing to hang on a man’s arm, that I knew I had to take matters into my own hand.
Escaping my father’s compound was impossible, what with his guards patrolling the property around the clock, the security cameras… always someone watching.
But I’d try and try and try until I couldn’t, until the breath left my lungs one last time.
And it was when I was planning an escape, knowing I probably wouldn’t get far, that Marina stopped me at the back door, taking my hand and leading me back upstairs, shaking her head slowly. She shut my bedroom door, sealing us in. And then she’d said, “If you want help, I will help you. But we will do this the safe way. The smart way. We will plan this. We will make it so you survive.”
And I cried, clutched her hands to my chest, and thanked her. And it had taken time, a lot of time. I believed that Marina hadn’t thought twice about helping me, because she had nothing else, no other ties. She had no children, her husband having passed away years before. She was alone, a live-in maid at my father’s compound, seeing his cruelty, his brutality. She’d been stretched thin by everything she witnessed, the secrets kept.
She was tired of it.
Just like I was.
I was brought back to the present, in the suffocating draft, my hair done, my makeup perfect.
The very thought of tying myself to Maximillian had my heart rising in my throat. He was cruel and evil, maybe even more so than my father. And at our engagement party when he leaned in and said against my ear all the disgusting and vile things he’d do to me on our wedding night, I knew I’d rather be dead, rotting in the ground, than spend my life with him.
“Today is the day, little mouse.” Her voice was whisper-soft, thin as air.
My bedroom, along with my father’s study, and his bedroom, were the only rooms in the estate without cameras. But still, I didn’t trust him. Still, I knew he had eyes and ears in the wall.
I nodded, my heart racing. Today was the day. I refused to let this wedding go through.
She started whispering, explaining what the plan was, how once I was out of the staff door there would be someone waiting to take me to a safehouse, to hide me until we could figure out how to get a passport, change my name, and leave the country.
These were all things I’d thought about, but I had no connections like that. I knew Marina did, and that surprised me. She was always so quiet, so diligent in her work that to think she knew anyone who could help me like this, who would go against my father, had me thinking there really were guardian angels, and she was mine.
And although I had no misconceptions this would work, trying was what I had to do. No matter what.
I wouldn’t be able to leave the country right away for obvious reasons. My father would be looking for me in every crack of the city, and traveling would be far too dangerous.