-Emily-
~~~~~~
He takes a step forwards, out of the shadowed alcove: the door swings on its hinges, settles, then stops. All is silent, save for Millie's ragged breathing.
His proximity is devastating.
Ivan doesn't react, doesn't move, doesn't take his eyes off the ghost woman in the corner of the room. He's taller than I remember, more svelte; lean muscle. His chest rises and falls beneath the black fabric of his t-shirt, and I imagine I can see the trembling beat of his heart under the skin – I felt it when I first arrived in Moscow, when he put his testing fingers on the side of my waist and guided me away from a potential brawl. I felt it when we waltzed our intoxicated waltz around the coffee table, when I was clutching the material at the small of his back for balance. I felt it when we lay in the snow-flecked shadow cast by night's blue haze, when my cheek was pressed against his chest, while his hand rested on the curve of my hip beneath the sheets.
He does not blink.
He's flushed-faced, breathless, clearly having fought his way free from the waiters in the restaurant. There's evidence of a struggle; his shirt is twisted, slightly creased where a hand once held purchase, and his blazer sits crookedly on his shoulder. I sense Millie shift to my right. He moves to reach out. I mirror him instinctively; defensive in my yearning.
He registers my presence for the first time.
His expression doesn't change. There's no murderous glower, no perceptible sadism – only a faint glimmer of acknowledgement, as if he's finally put a name to my face.
He wets his lips, then nods in the direction of the restaurant.
"You are not alone?"
His voice is agonisingly familiar. He keeps his tone smooth, untouched by the externalised agitation – it's jolting in its normality; I associate it with an ingrained happiness, a stability of self, a desire that laps the edges of my consciousness. It hasn't changed. I wish he'd changed. If he looked like the man capable of sexual assault, if he sounded like the monster who left women on pavements with gaping throats and flowered adornments, perhaps I could bring myself to loathe him.
When I don't reply, he gets to the crux of his question.
"The detective. Is he with you?"
My silence is my answer. Millie makes a noise that could be interpreted as Sherlock's name.
"You are trying to take her away?"
I nod, mutely captivated.
"It cannot happen," he says. He steps forwards again. "You know that."
He moves slowly, unthreateningly, and places his palm on my arm to lower it–
It is a trigger.
In that moment, I am granted access to the place in my mind that has remained under lockdown since my arrest: I see the door I paused in front of, feel fear, then reassurance, then the prick of a knife at my throat. I re-live the fall from corridor to room, the fall from my sweet surrealism to reality. I see the room with its flowers and its Polaroid photographs and its paintings. The betrayal burns: Jim's betrayal, his betrayal, the betrayal of self. He never loved me. It's the first time I've admitted it, and I see the four words seared into my vision as if branded. The pain peaks. My control disintegrates.
I strike him across the face with resonating vehemence.
Millie covers her eyes with her hands. Ivan is knocked off balance: I watch him stagger, catch himself on the towel rail and straighten up, regaining his equilibrium.
An artificial silence settles over the room.
He lifts a hand to his mouth, presses down, inspects the crimson on his fingertips. There's a welt across his bottom lip. I've cut it open; a small, scarlet slit that'll bruise soon enough. I regret it immediately.
Ivan turns back to me. There's a fevered look in his eyes – a heated brilliance that doesn't come across as entirely sound. I haven't seen it before.
"Спасибo," he says. It takes me a moment to process the Russian. Thank you.
"Why are you thanking me?"
"You have reminded me of something." Blood beads at his lip. "I have been meaning to ask you a question."
He steps closer. The blood is moving down his chin, and I watch with hypnotised fascination as it forms a liquid line. He gestures to Millie.
"When she came to me, she was hurt. There were cuts here," he says, tapping his cheekbone. "And here." He points to his right eye. "Her neck was red. A ring of red."
I stay very, very still. He doesn't drop his smile.
"Was it the detective?" The blood has reached his throat. "Hет? I agree. He is not violent. Was it his friend? Hет. It could not have been. He grieves his wife. Grieving men do not hurt. Angry men do. Angry women, too."
Ivan extends a hand.
"I think," he says, softly. "It was you."
Millie has hauled herself to her feet, but Ivan isn't looking at her anymore. His attention is focused entirely on me; a strange attention, and one that gives his blue eyes with their frosted glaze and dark rims a frenzy, a sort of hunger, one that invites compliance.
I lift my heavy hand, and I place my palm on his.
"It is all right," he says. He holds my hand loosely. "I am only asking. It is curiosity."
The beaded blood quivers on the collar of his shirt, then plunges down, into the fabric. It joins the black with untraceable ease.
"Were you angry with me, lisichka?" There's understanding in his voice. It begs confession. "Did you hurt her?"
Millie cuts across me. "Don't. Don't tell him–"
He lays his other hand on top of mine, his skin warm and smooth and soft above my own.
"It was you?"
The room sways gently.
"It was me."
The light flickers. He smiles, then: there's red slicking white, collecting in the slim gaps between his teeth and glossing their miniature curves.
He looks at me, and, very deliberately, runs his tongue across his bloodied smile.
~~~~~~
The first blow near knocks her unconscious.
She falls heavily, landing on her hands and knees; her head catches the edge of the nearest stall and she makes a noise of genuine surprise, caught off guard by the ferocity of his assault. Her fingers trace the cut across her upper lip – split on the jut of his knuckle – then move down, to her chin, where she bears a red gash courtesy of her landing. He lifts her by the front of her dress, the material taut in his fist, and he strikes again, harder this time, putting his body behind the blows, watching her head twist with the force of impact and spin back to face him. His mind has shut down. He doesn't think, he doesn't have to: it is all barbarity, fuelled by vicious vengeance, heated by a lust he no longer has control over. He throws her against the wall.
"Every mark," he snarls, as he raises his fist. "I know every mark."
Her skin is too dry, too clean. It's not raw enough. He holds her by her chin and brings his elbow down, across her face. There's an internalised crack of crushed cartilage; the bridge of her nose splinters, he feels it shatter, feels the blood seep through his sleeve. It's been so long since he's had his release. The temptation is excruciating. He can't concentrate because of it; he wants the satisfaction, the gratification of a warm body turned cold, but he mustn't, he can't, it would be adulterous. In a world full of people, it must be her. The frustration makes him savage; he takes her throat in his hand, feeling for her jugular, his nails cutting crescents into the skin.
"You will know what it feels like."
Her hands find his wrists.
"You will feel what she felt."
His arms are forced from her neck. He's kicked backwards, brutally, away from this woman who does not deserve the redemption he offers. He steadies himself on the wall, panting. She spits blood, wipes her nose, and takes up a fighter's stance; fists raised, legs apart.
He closes his eyes.
In his head, he replays the night she returned to him. He studies her injuries; the purple flower around her eye, the bruises on her white cheek and throat and jaw, scattered like peonies. The blood has dried, collected at the crease of her lips and the tip of her nose. Pink carnations circle her neck. He imagines the way they were inflicted, pictures Emily Schott's filthy hand around her throat. He hears the crack of bone on skin. He sees her crumpling. He sees her terrified. He sees the cartel days again, the strong preying on the weak, on his glass woman with her softness and her silk and her quiet understanding.
He opens his eyes, and he sees red.
She blocks what she can, but he is too unpredictable and she is not angry – she wills herself to tap into the space in her mind where morality is irrelevant and brutality reigns, but she cannot, not with him, she can only resist. He can't shut out the stuttering film reel in his head; he sees flickers, flashes of strange men in dark alleyways, snippets of sound, snatches of her pale face, rapid shots of the women and the girls and the other, hollow substitutes who bled their thick blood and filled him with an intensity of sensation that burns his mind to recall. He wants it again. He wants to feel her heart stall under his chest.
He takes her hair in his fist and – searing with lust's white flame – swings her head against the marble countertop.
The resultant crack is enough to render her motionless.
She slumps against the sink, exhausted. She's almost ready. He blinks, his vision orange-washed with diluted blood. The breath rattles in her throat.
She doesn't try to stand again.
He runs his hands over his face, darkening it, leaving it glistening in the dying light. He can barely contain himself – it takes all he is not to hold her down and satiate his desire with her slicked skin. He's enjoying this, this carnal surge, this overindulgence. He craves it. She watches him turn away and reach for the bronze towel rail. He tests its stability, judges it weak, takes it in both hands – and then he forces it down, forces the screws from their sockets and tears her execution free. She doesn't speak; there's a calmness about it all, a gentle relaxation in the knowledge that it's over, that she can close her eyes and not have to think again. He kicks her once more, just to feel the dead weight of her torso, and then he raises the metal bar above his head in preparation for its fall–
Someone takes his arm in their hands.
She comes from nowhere, a rush of dark satin and white skin. Her fingers tighten on his sleeve. She must be speaking, because he can hear a voice faintly in the distance, but it isn't enough to bring him back to reality, not now, not when he's so close. He pushes her back, because there are too many bodies and he doesn't quite trust himself to kill the right woman. The one with the dark skin looks up at him, at his heaving shoulders, his desire, his scarlet face and sopping hair. There's an aching sadness in her expression. He raises the bar above his head for a second time.
There's no warning: he feels two cold hands on his jaw, his head is twisted, turned to face the pale one. His arms waver. His mind wars against itself.
With a noise like a wounded animal, she presses her mouth to his.
~~~~~~
-Emily-
~~~~~~
I cough, blinded by the blood and the sweat and the pain that moves out from the bridge of my nose in pulses. Millie is standing between me and my closure, holding his head in her hands, my blood dark and glittering on her fingers. I see him falter. She blinks rapidly, as if the very act stings her lips.
It all happens very quickly after that: he drops the bar, takes her by the back of her neck and kisses her with such intensity she loses her nerve. The gentle initiation is overpowered by passion. She tries to push him away, but it's far too late. Through the film of blood I see her hoisted onto the sink counter, see his hands on her chest, her back, then her dress. It is lifted to her hips. Her legs are forced apart, secured around his waist. He pulls away for breath, and then starts to kiss her neck, relentless in his advance.
She looks at me over his shoulder. Her expression is haunting.
"Go," she mouths.
I shake my head.
"Please," she says, silently, as her dress is torn from the back. The skin of her chest is strikingly pale against his hair. "Please go."
I stagger to my feet. She presses her hand to her mouth, stifling the low, pained moan as he moves. Her eyes smart. His breathing picks up.
It is with guilt's heavy noose around my neck do I turn away.
~~~~~~