The Marriage (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 3), Bethany-Kris [books for 8th graders txt] 📗

not the same thing. It won’t make a difference to him that Roman married you. In his eyes, you were his property the moment I agreed to the wedding.”

Karine could feel her lungs tightening in her chest again. “I’m not exactly in a position to do much at the moment.”

“You can be. It’s a matter of more details.”

Right, but what kind?

“I won’t force you into anything, Karine.”

He hadn’t even spelled out the damn plan.

She wrung her fingers, clasping and unclasping them tightly in her lap. A thin film of sweat formed on her forehead that she wiped away with the back of her long sleeve.

Karine really only wanted one thing.

“Will I be free?” she asked.

Maxim nodded.

“In the end, you will be. Consider it my late wedding gift to you. I think you’ve earned it.”

FIFTEEN

Roman was in his loft, knocking back his third shot of vodka, and it was barely even noon. Disregarding all pretenses that he cared about what his father demanded he do, he was more concerned with taking care of himself.

The vodka was all he could allow—and God knew he needed something to numb the hell inside his mind. Roman wasn’t touching coke again, so liquor it was. Even Marky’s death wasn’t going to fuck him up. He had to stay clean.

If anything, that would have made Marky proud—that his death pushed Roman’s resolve in that regard. Enough to keep him on his phone, scrolling Narcotics Anonymous meetings available across New York.

Not that he’d tell anybody.

It was a strange feeling to be alone. Especially for a man like Roman who had never allowed himself to feel like he was alone, and that it was a bad thing. Because he had also never acknowledged that he was vulnerable before.

Getting close to people tended to do that. Caring left him wide open to getting hurt.

When his phone rang he almost didn’t pick up.  Ignoring his trembling fingers shaking, he pressed it to his ear. The vodka had settled warmly in the pit of his stomach. He just had to wait a few minutes until it went to his head, numbing him for a while.

It wouldn’t last very long, but it was better than walking around with the memory of seeing Marky lying dead in his father’s driveway. It at least took the edge off his desire to get so high nothing mattered.

“Yeah?” he grumbled into the phone, scrubbing a palm down his face at the same time. He couldn’t even be sure the person on the other end heard him.

“Mr. Avdonin.” A female voice snapped him out of it. It was a voice he recognized—shit, he should have looked at the caller ID.

“This is Sylvia D’Souza, from the Twin Rivers facility in Nevada,” she said.

It was the urgency in her tone that gained all of Roman’s attention in an instant.

“Fuck,” Roman muttered under his breath, running through scenarios in his mind about what spurred on the call. It could only be a few things, and given Karine’s long stretch without an alter appearing, he worried that was the reason. If only because Katina had yet to show herself and not leave chaos in her wake. “What happened? Is she okay?”

The woman on the other end paused.

Just long enough to make Roman stand from the couch, unable to stop his sudden burst of nervous energy, demanding, “Well?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Avdonin. Your wife ... this morning ... a few hours ago—”

“Spit it out!”

“She escaped, sir.”

Roman stilled on the spot, that numbness he’d been craving came without warning, chilling him to the fucking bone. “What the fuck did you just say?”

Because surely ... no, she had to be wrong. He chose that facility for a reason. Their willingness to skirt the law in some cases to help families who could afford their services, for one. And the promise, by Michelle Wang, that Twin Rivers was undoubtedly the safest place to hide Karine given their location, and the security team on sight.

“Mr. Avdonin, please calm down,” Sylvia said, her voice rushed but still hushed on the other end of the call. He could only imagine why—undoubtedly, the facility was trying to cover their asses. “I know this is stressful. We have sent out a search party to look for her.”

“She ran away—what, on foot?” he spat back, not bothering to quell the growing rage. “And you haven’t found her yet? I mean, how far could she have gone without anything to get her there? What the fuck are you useless pieces of shit even doing up there?”

“This happened earlier—by the time they notified me, I wasn’t even on the property today, it had been more than a couple of hours. She wasn’t on foot, actually, and we suspect she might be farther than we can reach because of that. Her father was here to see her today, we had a new nurse working the front desk, and wasn’t entirely familiar with Karine’s file or case. She went off a miscommunication in the file, and allowed the visitation when Karine agreed. They, Karine and her father, disappeared together after. Based on the footage we’ve been able to find, it appears he took her with him when there was a distraction in the dining hall.”

Her father.

Roman ended the call before Syliva said another word. It was all he needed to hear. Everything else fell into place far too easily.

Scarily so.

Maxim had found her—did he convince her or forcibly take her away from the facility? The only thing was—Roman had no idea where he would take her. Nobody even knew where Maxim was or where he’d been hiding all this time.

In an effort to keep Karine hidden from Dima—Roman had neglected the need to keep her hidden from her father, too.

Apparently, the man had been waiting.

Time was up.

*

Roman took the stairs from the loft apartment to the garage below three steps at a time. The loud, rhythmic slap of his shoes to the stairs was the only sound he heard mixed in with his screaming,