9
CORA
I stumble out of Alexander’s office on numb legs and move in a stupor down the hallway. As I pass by the front door, I pause. Just a moment. A half-step of hesitation.
Then I keep going.
There is no escape. Even if the opportunity arises and I can run through an unlocked door or slip through an open window, they have me by the throat.
They have Jorden.
So I duck my head and keep moving, plodding the well-worn path up the stairs to the second door on the right.
When I open the door, I see that my bedroom looks exactly the same as it did the day I left. Every book in its place on the little white shelf in the corner. Every necklace hanging from golden hooks on the wall. Every fuzzy, flower-shaped pillow on my bed.
It’s all the exact fucking same.
Like none of the years in between ever happened.
Tears well in my eyes, and for the first time all day, I can’t stop them. I press the door closed quietly and lean my forehead against the wood. Tears roll freely down my cheeks, though I choke down the sobs so they can’t hear me fall apart.
It’s not as if I’ve spent the last three years missing this room. Every second that I was forced to live in this house, the only thing I imagined was getting away.
But seeing it perfectly untouched—like they always knew I’d be coming right back—is just a little too much for me to process right now. The future has never looked so bleak.
I take a few deep breaths and let the tears stop on their own. I’d hate to get all cried out so early in this nightmare. I’m sure horrors aplenty await me.
I run a hand down the lime green paint on the walls, smiling sadly at Teenage Me’s design aesthetic. My mom hated it.
“Alexander has an interior decorator,” she argued when she saw the gallon of neon paint I came home with. “Let Jennette design your room. That way, it will match the rest of the house.”
That was the problem: I didn’t want this room to match the rest of the house. In here, I wanted to feel like I was a million miles away. Like I was in my own world. One where Alexander McAllister didn’t exist. And when I couldn’t pretend I lived somewhere else, I poured my feelings into journal after journal.
I drop down on my knees in front of the bookshelf. Tucked behind a row of Babysitter’s Club books are three tattered diaries. I gingerly pull one out and flip open the cover.
The first entry doesn’t have a date or a greeting. It’s just chicken scratch penmanship blurred in places by little drops of water. I must’ve been crying when I wrote it.
I have no clue who would choose to live in this hell. My mom is brainwashed and no one seems to see what is happening to me. Alexander is making me break up with Trent because his family isn’t nice enough. His dad is a dentist! His mom works at our school. I don’t even know what that means. “Nice enough?” Before Mom met Alexander, we weren’t “nice enough,” either. We were living on the streets. Mom and I ate at soup kitchens. Does Alexander know that? Maybe I should tell him. Maybe then he’d kick us out. I’d rather eat garbage than spend one more night around his fancy dining room table.
When I close my eyes and focus, I can see Trent’s face. He was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy on the lacrosse team. He had acne and a scruffy goatee, but I thought he looked like a Calvin Klein model. I was in love.
When I asked my mom if I could meet Trent at the movies, Alexander took one look at Trent’s last name and shook his head.
“You aren’t going anywhere with him.”
I turned to my mom for backup, but she wouldn’t look at me. Sometimes, I knew she disagreed with my stepdad, but she was too scared to say anything.
I flip through the journal, reading entry after entry of me pouring my heart out on paper. There were moments of levity. Brief glimpses of the life I managed to eke out for myself amidst Tsar Alexander’s tyranny. But mostly, I prayed for a good man. One who was bigger and stronger than Alexander and would take me away.
“You’re wasting your ink,” I mumble to my past self.
The only reason I got out of this mess the first time is because I left all on my own. No man ever showed up to whisk me into the sunset.
Ivan came close, though.
The thought of him has tears pressing against the backs of my eyes again, and I fight them back. Ivan is gone. He isn’t coming back.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I hear someone in the hall. Just like that, I change my tune. Ivan. He’s here. I’m being rescued.
Then the door opens and it’s Mikhail.
That ought to teach me to pin my hopes to pipe dreams. But somehow, I doubt it. My heart has always been a little too tender for this world.
Mikhail wrinkles his nose and looks around. “Remind me not to let you make any design decisions.”
“I was a teenager.” I casually close my journal, trying not to bring too much attention to it. The last thing I need is my heartfelt words in the hands of Mikhail Sokolov. He has enough of me in hand as it is.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You won’t be here long anyway. Your dad and I were just talking.”
My jaw clenches, my molars grinding together.
Alexander is not my dad. But my correction would fall on deaf ears, so I swallow it down and practice suffering through Mikhail’s bullshit in silence. I’ll be doing a lot of that, it seems.
“I found you a year ago, you know?”
I snap my attention to him, eyes laser focused. “No, you didn’t.’
“You dropped four letters from your name, Cordelia. You didn’t flee the country. Of course I found you.”
It sounds so stupid when he says it like that. I thought I could escape.
“I thought… I thought you found me because of Ivan. Because of the party and—”
“I found you way before that,” he scoffs. “And when I saw the dingy shithole you were living in, I was positive you’d come crawling back.”
He’s wrong to call it a shithole. Sure, my little studio wasn’t in a great part of town, and yes, I had to caulk around the pipes in the bathroom so my neighbor couldn’t watch me through the gap, but it wasn’t a shithole. It was modest. Affordable.
It was freedom.
Or at least, that’s what I thought then. Now, I see it for what it really was: a delusion.
“I don’t get it,” I whisper. “Why did you wait for me? Why spend all of this energy on me? Your daddy could have picked another bride for you.”
Mikhail’s lip curls up in barely-restrained rage. “Because you were promised to me, Cordelia. And I always get what I deserve.”
What he deserves is a ride down a slide made of razor blades into a pool full of lemon juice, but I bite my tongue and meet his eyes. If I have to figure out how to live in this world, I’m not going to spend my days staring at the ground.
If they want to hold my prisoner, they’ll have to look me in the eyes.
“I had no idea I was such a prize,” I drone. “Seems like you’d want a wife who is more interested in interior design and pretty dresses.”
He sighs. “That would be the easier choice. Fuck knows plenty of women have offered themselves up. I sampled many of them. But they didn’t hold my attention.”
“Is it because they were willing? Consent can be so boring.” The question sounds innocent, but I can tell by the flex in Mikhail’s jaw that he knows I’m goading him.
He kneels down in front of me and grips me hard by the chin. “When I was twelve, my dad took me hunting. It’s a Sokolov tradition. Our family’s yearly excursion. To reconnect with nature, earn our place in the hierarchy of things. All that bullshit.”
I try to turn away, but he holds tighter. His face is so close to mine that I feel his every exhale on my skin.
“The first year, I went all day without hitting a single target. Just before sunset, my father shot a coyote in the leg. Once it was crippled and unable to move, he let me shoot it in the head.” He sighs. “When they asked me if I wanted the animal stuffed and mounted for my room—”
“And you complain about my design choices,” I mutter.
His mouth ticks up in a flash of amusement before he continues. “I declined. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t earn it. But the next year… the next year was mine. I tracked a herd of elk for hours. And when my father warned me against taking my shot, telling me it was too risky, I pulled the trigger. And I went home with the biggest kill anyone in our family had bagged in decades.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
Mikhail’s eyes flare for a second. Then I’m snatched off the floor and thrown flat against the wall. His hand is banded around my throat so tightly I can’t breathe. Black dots form on the edges of my vision.
“I don’t need you to be impressed,” he growls. “I don’t need anyone to shoot you in the leg and cripple you for me, Cordelia. Because I’ve tracked you down. I’ve cornered you. And whether you like it or not, you’re going to be the prettiest fucking trophy I’ve ever caught.”
I stretch onto my toes, straining for air. For just a single breath.
Just as I feel my eyes rolling back in my head, Mikhail lets go.
I slide down the wall, gasping. But he doesn’t let me get far. Before I can fall to the carpet, he pins me to the wall with his body. I feel every inch of how much he’s enjoying this moment against my thigh.
“I waited for you, Cordelia,” he whispers harshly, “because I don’t want a half-dead coyote. I don’t want some simpering, easy whore who has been delivered to me on a silver platter. I want to work for it.”
“First time for everything,” I rasp.
His body shoves even closer to mine as he glares down at me. “One day, you’re going to give me everything I want. You’re going to hand it to me with a smile on your face. And that’s when I’ll know I’ve won. But until then…” He slides his hand down my waist and grips my hip. “… I’ll take what I can get.”
The reality of what he’s going to do slams down on me like a cartoon anvil hanging over my head.
Mikhail is going to rape me.
Here and now, in my childhood room, he is going to rape me.
With rough hands, he hitches my leg over his hip and grinds into me with painful thrusts. His teeth scratch across my neck and my collarbone hard enough that I’m sure he’s drawing blood.
“I thought you wanted to earn it,” I gasp, doing my best to hold him off.
He fists my shirt in his hands. I hear stitches popping. “I will. I’m going to.”
“Then don’t take it now.”
I’m about to black out with panic. I can feel my mind slipping away, tucking into some secret, safe space in my brain. I can’t fight him, so I have to get through this. I have to grit my teeth and bear it.
But Mikhail’s grip loosens.
I peek an eye open. I wouldn’t say it is remorse on his face, but it’s a new expression I haven’t seen before. And I jump on it.
“If you’re so sure you’re going to win me over, then wait,” I say, breathless. “You’ve waited this long. Give it some more time.”
He huffs in frustration. “I’ve been too patient.”
“Doing this now will only make things harder. I’ll… I’ll never forgive you.”
He looks down at me, and I can see in his pale eyes that he really thinks there’s a chance I won’t always hate him. The psychopath thinks he has a shot at winning me over one day.
That scrap of insanity is scarier than anything else that has happened so far.
He lets me go and steps back. There’s a bulge at the front of his pants that I pointedly ignore.
“Remember this,” he says. “Remember that I… I controlled myself. I waited.”
Like fuck he did. The only reason he isn’t raping me right now is because I stopped him.
But I stay quiet and nod. “Okay.”
He reaches out and cups my cheek. His palm is clammy against my skin, and I want to cringe away. But I don’t. I need him to believe there’s hope.
“You’re right. The wait will make it so much better, Cordelia.” He drops his hand and backs away. He stops in the doorway, his eyes trailing over me one last time. “I’ll see you soon.”
The moment he is gone and the door closes, I drop to the floor.
All the panic I bottled up and shoved down comes racing to the surface. I cry into my sleeve and bite back loud, heaving sobs.
I knew there was a good reason I was saving my tears.
After what could be minutes or an hour, I shift to my knees and crawl back to my bookshelf.
The journals aren’t the only things I kept hidden. I pull out several books from the first shelf and run my hands along the underside of the wood. After a few swipes, I feel it. Just where I left it.
I peel off the brittle tape and a weight lands in my palm. I close my hand around the polished wood handle.
I stole this letter opener from Alexander’s office years ago. It was the only weapon-like thing in the house I knew he’d never miss.
I take a practice swipe through the air, imagining the thin blade slipping into Alexander’s carotid or jabbing between Mikhail’s legs.
It’s not much, but I know now that no one is coming to save me. No one is going to get me out of this. All of the tears I shed and letters I wrote didn’t do a damn thing.
I’m no princess and there is no happy ending waiting for me. It’s just me versus the world I left behind.
So I might as well be armed.