Even if there was an unspoken time frame to his fury.
But some much less intelligent part of my brain was miserable over his anger. I fretted like an uncertain child all night. Should I revoke my belief? My accusation? Or should I force Konstantin to talk to me, even if it was to fight?
All these strange emotions and reactions swirled around my body. My stomach felt like it was filled with lead, my heart felt like it was being constantly squeezed. I was on the verge on tears every night before I fell asleep and woke up every morning with my head in the toilet bowl.
I didn’t like it. I felt like I was learning about my body for the second time. The feeling of newness overcame me, like my entire body had cut a nail too close to the bed.
Voices erupted from outside the library, high and shrill. I caught Danika’s tone, but couldn’t make out the second.
Slowly, I put down my book and made by way to the door. The voices cleared.
“Going on?” Danika was saying. “I don’t understand. What is he saying?”
The clear distress in her voice made me push the door open, peering through into the hallway. Two figures stood, Danika and Roksana. Danika had her arms wrapped around her stomach and her eyes were wide. Opposite her, Roksana was on the phone, her features pinched.
“Roksana—” Danika tried again.
Roksana stuck a finger in her ear to block her out. Her expression became intent, reacting to whatever the other person on the end of the line was saying.
I stepped closer, a futile effort to hear what was going on, but only ended up catching Danika’s attention. Her eyes flared in hurt and her arms tightened around her.
“This doesn’t concern you, Elena,” she said. The words were meant to be harsh, but her tone fell flat, making it sound more like a plea.
I closed the door behind me, cementing my position in the hallway. “You look upset.”
“An astute observation,” she said crisply.
I swallowed down my comment about her stealing my gig as being the sarcastic one but kept quiet. I doubt she would find it funny.
Roksana was growing increasingly more worried. She glanced between Danika and me. “Yes, they’re both here. We’re leaving now.”
We were? “Where are we going?” I asked.
Roksana brought the phone away from her ear, “We need to grab Anton—”
A gunshot ricocheted through the room. Loud and startling, an echo of terror, before the sound of the wall cracking beneath the impact.
We shouted in surprise, glancing up at the hole that now dented the wall.
“You’re not going anywhere, I’m afraid,” came an unfamiliar yet familiar voice.
Heels clacked, as unsettling as the sound of the gunshot.
Slowly, I turned my head and felt my stomach drop. Not from surprise…no, not surprise. More like pity—for Danika and Roksana.
Danika cried out in surprise. “Tatiana, what is going on?”
Tatiana stood at the end of the hallway. No longer did she wear comfortable pajamas or have the complexion of a corpse. Now, she was dressed like a businesswoman, in a sleek gray dress with pumps. Without the swelling of her stomach, I might not have even realized it was the same woman I treated all those weeks ago.
Roksana had gone frighteningly still. She looked sad, but not surprised. Through her eyes of an outsider, I doubted she was surprised at anything horrific she saw her mafia-born friends do. It was probably an expectation, a symptom of how we were raised. Eventually we would do horrific things.
But Danika…She was looking around the hallway rapidly, from us to the floor to the windows. “I don’t…Tatiana?”
Tatiana moved her arm, revealing the gun in her palm. She held it expertly. “That’s enough, Danika.” Her voice…it was Tatiana’s voice but harder and colder. Like she had pulled a sheet of ice over her words.
Danika’s chin wobbled. “Why do you have a gun?”
“In case any of you try to run,” Tatiana noted. She pointed the gun at Roksana, the air leaving all our lungs with the action. “Hang up on Artyom, Roksana.”
“They know, Tatiana,” Roksana said. “You have minutes—minutes—before the men rain hell down on you.”
She laughed. “I’m afraid they’ll find some resistance from my own men, Roksana.” Her lips twisted. “I bet you wish you had said no to this life when you had the chance.”
Roksana didn’t refute her claim.
Tatiana’s eyes danced to me, narrowing as they hit their target. She didn’t move the gun from where it was pointed, only neared her finger to the