was done to her, I also have to wrestle with knowing I would have gone after Elena faster if I’d had more faith in her. I was convinced she had left me, and I left her to suffer in Viktor’s clutches like the asshole I am.
It doesn’t matter that it only took a few hours for us to track them down and for me to pull my head out of my ass long enough to see the truth. Within those hours, she might have endured a variety of horrors … things I could have saved her from if I had been there.
I’ll have to live with my own failure for the rest of my life, but I also intend to spend that time making it up to her. Even knowing she might hate me for doubting her, I can’t bring myself to let her go. It might be the right thing to do, but everything within me rebels at the thought of releasing Elena to live a life separate from mine. No one will protect her like I will. No one will love her with the visceral intensity driving me to hold on to her.
Elena sleeps for twenty-four hours, and I spend every second of that time sitting at her bedside. The nurse comes to examine her after she wakes, assuring me that everything is fine. Her body will heal, but it’s her spirit I’m worried about.
My wife isn’t the woman I’ve come to know and love. She doesn’t tear into me for not being here to protect her, or cry on my shoulder over what Viktor did to her. Elena is like an empty shell, staring off into open air as if being haunted by ghosts I can’t see. I might have slaughtered my way through that house to free her, and removed the threat of Viktor so she never has to fear him again … but I can’t fight the invisible. I can’t tear down the memories of what she endured in that basement.
She eats when I coax a tray onto her lap, and lets me carry her to the shower to bathe her every night. She lays limp and placid when I dress her and comb her hair, her eyes dead and unseeing. When I kiss her cheek and tell her I love her, that I’m here and she’s safe now, Elena only stares at me without blinking.
Over time, she finds the strength to move around on her own. Her voice returns, still raspy from being strangled, and so weak it nearly brings tears to my eyes.
“I’m fine,” she says when I ask her if she’s okay.
“I can do it,” she tells me when I try to help her down the stairs.
I hold her at night, and she curls into me as if seeking comfort. But she never talks to me about what happened—never offers me any words other than ‘good morning,’ ‘good night,’ or simple yes or no answers to my questions.
After a week I start to wonder if this will be the rest of our lives—Elena floating around the house in her leggings and sweatshirts, her gaze unfocused and faraway. She doesn’t seem to take pleasure in the things she loves. Her books lay in her lap, open to the same page every time. She stares at the words without reading them, and I have yet to see her turn the page. Her yoga mat is rolled up and pushed into the corner of our closet, forgotten. She lounges by the pool but never gets into the water. When she opens her design book to sketch, the silhouettes of gowns, jackets, and slacks are sharp and frantic—like the outlines of demonic figures instead of fashion models.
My kitten is lost, maybe broken beyond repair, and I can’t seem to reach her.
Is she too traumatized to move forward, or is she punishing me for my sins? I deserve to be punished, to feel alone while lying next to the woman I love and know I didn’t have to lose her this way. I deserve to long for her and be denied every time she sets those shuttered eyes on me, hiding the deepest secrets of her soul.
I kidnapped her, imprisoned her, forced her to accept my dominance and the ring on her left hand.
I did this and I will pay the price for it, even if Elena never forgives me. Even if she never smiles at me or opens her body to me again. There will never