CHAPTER SIX

Myra

I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, but I didn’t see my face. Not really. I saw the problem. The object. The beautiful, fragile doll that had started a war between my father and my brother, and was now being packaged up for delivery to a stranger. I hated it

Zyran Theon.

Luca had just texted me. Two words: He agreed.

A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat, but it died before it could escape. He agreed. Of course he did. Luca said he owed him a favor. This was just another business transaction for a man like Zyran. A strategic alliance. A temporary asset acquisition, then would be shipped of to another, I would tossed around like a volleyball. 

I pressed my palms flat against the cool marble of the sink, leaning in until my forehead nearly touched the glass. The conversation with my mother replayed in a fuzzy loop.

“Are you sure about this, solntse?” she’d asked, her hands warm as they cupped my face after Luca had pulled me away. Her eyes, the same blue as mine, were full of a deep, weary understanding.

“Do I have a choice, Mama?”

“There is always a choice. But sometimes… the choices are between bad and worse.” She’d stroked my hair. “Your father and I… it was like this, in the beginning. A deal. Look at us now.” 

Not everyone can have a perfect love story mama.

She’d said it to give me hope. But it only made the pressure in my chest tighten. What if we didn’t become like them? What if Zyran’s cold silence wasn’t a just a mask for a good person, but just… silence? Or hate? What if a year in that silence broke something in me for good?

What if he was like him? What if he hurts me like he did?

The thought made my own image irritate me, I felt a familiar disgust. Not a Zyran or anyone else but a myself, at the supposedly perfect girl.

A familiar, itchy-crawly feeling started under my skin. It began at the base of my skull, a buzzing anxiety, and slithered down my arms. It was the feeling of being a collection of parts that didn’t fit together right. Of being too much and not enough, all at once. The feeling that had started in college, after Jeremy. The feeling that only one thing made quiet.

My eyes drifted from my blurred reflection to the top drawer of the vanity.

I hadn’t done it in over a year. I’d promised myself. After the last time, seeing the clear, shocking line against my skin, the wave of shame that followed had been worse than the relief. I’d thrown the small, precise blade away. But the urge… the urge was a tenant that left but came back with a even stronger urge. What if I am not good a enough for Zyran? what if I was too much? Would he cut the contract shorter? Would I be sent off to that old man? Breathe, Myra, breathe. I tried to talk myself out of it.

My hands started to shake. It wasn’t about wanting to die. Not really. It was about wanting the noise to stop. The fear, the expectations, the feeling of being a passive object in a game played by powerful men. It was about needing to feel something I controlled, even if it was pain. Even if it was a secret. To just let the darkness in my blood spill out a little, just a little.

He agreed.

My fingers trembled as I pulled the drawer open. It was full of mundane things: cotton pads, hair ties, a forgotten tube of lip gloss. And there, tucked behind a box of bandaids, was a single, unused disposable razor. I’d bought it months ago, during a bad week, and then hidden it away, a shameful secret. 

I took it out. The plastic was cool and light in my palm.

This was the real me. Not the beautiful daughter, not the prized mafia princess, not Luca’s beloved sister. This. A girl in a too-big bathroom, shaking, holding a secret that would horrify everyone who claimed to love her. They saw a delicate vase. They didn’t see the cracks underneath.

I rolled up the sleeve of my silk blouse, exposing the inside of my left forearm. The skin there was pale, unmarked. A clean canvas.

The relief was already whispering to me, a dark promise. Just one. Just a small one. To make the buzzing stop. To make it all feel real.

I positioned the razor.

A sharp knock on the bathroom door made me jump, the razor clattering into the sink.

“Myra? You okay in there?” It was Luca. “You’ve been in there forever. Mom made tea.”

His voice, normal and concerned, sliced through the static in my head like a lifeline. The spell broke. Shame, hot and immediate, washed over me. I quickly shoved the razor back into the drawer, yanked my sleeve down, and turned on the faucet, splashing cold water on my face.

“I’m fine!” I called, my voice only slightly unsteady. “Be right out!”

I looked at my reflection again. My eyes were too wide, my cheeks flushed. But the moment had passed. The compulsion, held at bay by my brother’s voice.

I had just agreed to marry one of the most dangerous men in the city to escape a monster. I was trading one cage for another, hoping the new one had softer walls. And here I was, in the bathroom, fighting the oldest demon in my closet.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. The wedding was happening all so soon. The arrangement to ship me off would be made and I had to just go with it, there was no other choice. 

But the quiet war inside me, the one nobody knew about, was still raging. And as I turned off the light and opened the door to my brother’s worried face. Was the devil I knew really going to treat me better than the angel I didn't know?