Chapter 7

The floor was cold beneath my knees. Or perhaps it was the wall. I couldn’t tell up from down, the ceiling from the floor, or how much time had passed—a second, an hour, an entire night condensed into one long, stretched-out moment without edges.

Voices. Someone’s voices, muffled, as though they were coming through water, through a wall, through something thick that stood between me and the world. I couldn’t make out the words. Only the tone—low, dangerous, or perhaps frightened. Maybe they were the same voice, sounding completely different depending on how close I was to the edge of consciousness.

Someone was calling my name. Maybe.

My hand was heavy. Metal in my palm—cold at first, then strangely warm, as though it were sticking to my skin, as though it had always been a part of me. My fingers trembled around it, but the sensation felt distant, as though I were watching my own hand through glass, through a haze, through someone else.

The sound of breathing. Mine. Someone else’s. I couldn’t tell whose.

The smell of cigarette smoke somewhere behind me, or perhaps that had been earlier, in some other moment that was now overlapping with this one, layers of time melting into each other without any order.

I raised my hand and pressed the gun against my forehead.

The light shattered into a thousand tiny, sharp needles before my eyes, colors bleeding into one another, the sound of the world narrowing into a single taut wire vibrating somewhere deep inside me.

My finger found the trigger before I could even wonder why.

“Do it. Shoot.” Someone said. Maybe they didn’t. I thought I heard it.

The gunshot tore through the silence.

One day ago

I stood frozen, watching as the lawyer, his voice trembling, agreed to marry us immediately, right there, in the middle of the chaos that still hadn’t settled around us. My palms were sweating enough to fill an entire dried-up lake. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be happening this quickly, with not even a moment, not an hour, not a minute for me to come up with a way to avoid it.

I looked around, searching for anything—a glance, a hand, any sign that someone in this room still cared about me. But the café looked like a war zone. My mother was cradling my father’s head in her arms, his blood leaving streaks across the sleeves of her blouse. Victor was kneeling over Claire, who lay motionless, unconscious, blood still seeping through the makeshift bandage around her shoulder. No one, absolutely no one, was paying any attention to us.

I looked at Luka. He was already looking at me—calmly, calculatingly, like a man who knew my every next move before I had even thought of it myself.

“We’re going,” he said.

I shook my head and began backing away, one step at a time, as though that small distance could somehow change what was about to happen. His face hardened into the mask I had already begun to recognize—determination without a single crack—and he grabbed me by the elbow, firmly, decisively.

He turned toward Jonathan. “Take us to your office.”

The lawyer first awkwardly dropped to his knees, searching the floor for the glasses the gunfire had knocked from his head, but when he heard Luka’s voice—cold, with not the slightest trace of patience—“Try seeing without them,” he jumped to his feet as though scalded and started forward without another hesitation.

He hurried us behind the booth, past the restrooms, through a storage room and out a side door leading into the back courtyard. Luka and I followed behind him—he was pulling me by the arm, while I, in some kind of numb shock, didn’t even try to resist. My legs kept moving on their own, as though they belonged to someone else’s body, not mine. Through the shattered window behind us, I heard the first voices of the police as they entered the café—but we were already outside, rushing through the dark courtyard toward the neighboring building.

When we entered the office, Luka closed the door behind us, quietly, almost carefully, as though it mattered to him that no one outside hear what was about to happen inside. He released me in the middle of the room, and I stood there, my breathing rapid and shallow, as though I couldn’t draw enough air into my lungs.

The lawyer looked as though he might faint at any moment—pale, sweating, his hands trembling as he tried to find his way around the desk. Only Luka looked calm. He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, as though we were there for an ordinary meeting rather than in a room where, in a few minutes, an act that would determine the rest of my life was about to take place.

“The papers,” he said shortly. “Now.”

Jonathan began rummaging through the drawers, but without his glasses he could barely see anything—he opened the wrong drawer, then another, muttering apologies that no one listened to. Every second of his hesitation seemed to take a little more from the patience Luka already had so little of left.

Finally, he found the documents and, trembling, opened his little red ceremony book, like someone performing a wedding for the first time in his life, even though this was probably the thousandth wedding he had officiated in Pennsylvania.

I felt something inside me breaking. I grabbed my head with both hands, my hair tangling around my fingers, and began speaking quickly, breathlessly—that I didn’t want this, that I couldn’t do this, that I needed time, just a little time—

Luka grabbed me by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the flesh through the thin fabric of my jacket, and spoke through clenched teeth, his voice so low it sounded as though even he was struggling to keep it that way.

“Do you understand that we were just attacked by people who don’t want this marriage to happen?” His eyes were inches from mine, dark, devoid of mercy. “Do you understand that we have to do this as quickly as possible, because they won’t stop—until they kill us and take everything?”

I nodded. I understood. Of course I understood—I wasn’t stupid. I had seen the blood on my father’s forehead. I had seen Claire lying motionless on the café floor. But understanding something and agreeing to it were not the same thing, and I hated, hated with every fiber of my being, every part of what was happening.

Tears came on their own, hot and fast, sliding down my cheeks as I stood there, more helpless than I had ever been in my life.

Jonathan began reading the ceremony from the book, his voice trembling every other word, and when he reached the part stating that we were there by our own choice, of our own free will, Luka cut him off sharply.

“Skip that part.”

The lawyer swallowed and obeyed, flipping the pages back and forth until he found where he was supposed to continue. He skipped straight to the end.

“Do... do you accept Vivian as your wife?” he asked, addressing Luka, his voice barely audible.

“Yes,” Luka said immediately, without hesitation, without the slightest trace of doubt—and yet he didn’t even look at me when he said it, as though I were merely another item to be confirmed rather than a person standing in front of him.

Jonathan turned toward me. “And you... do you accept Luka as your husband?”

I remained silent.

My body trembled, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. I shook my head slightly, barely noticeably, biting my lip so hard I could taste metal. I couldn’t. I couldn’t say that word, regardless of everything that was happening, regardless of the threat still hanging in the air like smoke after gunfire.

Luka suddenly turned toward me. I didn’t even have time to understand what was happening before I felt the cold metal of a gun against my temple.

“Answer the question,” he said, his voice completely calm, completely controlled, and that very calmness frightened me more than any shout he could have uttered.

Jonathan raised both hands, the papers falling from his lap. “This—this is illegal. I can’t allow this to—”

“Shut up,” Luka said without taking his eyes off me, and the lawyer fell silent instantly, as though someone had physically sealed his mouth shut.

He stared at me without blinking while everything inside me, absolutely everything, collapsed—the last hope that I would find a way out, every thought that someone would appear and stop this, every tiny illusion of hope I had carried since the moment he pulled me from the car beside Eliot.

Outside, through the shattered window behind him, I could still hear the sirens wailing, getting closer and louder, like a horrifying accompaniment to what was happening inside.

I closed my eyes.

“I do,” I whispered, my voice so quiet that I could barely hear myself.

I wiped away my tears, and a small, irony-tinged smile appeared on my lips. I had drops of blood on me—whose, I didn’t know—instead of a wedding dress. Instead of a ring, I had a gun pressed to my head, and instead of wedding music, police sirens played live at my wedding.

When I opened my eyes again, the gun was gone—he had tucked it back into his waistband as though he had never even drawn it—and Jonathan, his hands trembling, held out the marriage documents and a pen.

"By the authority vested in me,” Jonathan said, closing the folder, “I now pronounce you husba..." I didn't listen. I didn't care. The words felt wrong in my ears.

My fingers were ice-cold as I signed my name on the line he showed me. The letters came out crooked and uncertain, nothing like my usual signature. I watched my own name being etched onto the paper and knew, with complete, cold certainty, that it wasn’t merely a signature.

It was the beginning of the end of my life.

My depressive thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of a phone. Luka pulled it from the inside pocket of his jacket, glanced at the screen, and something in his expression immediately changed—not fear, never fear; there had never been anything as recognizable as fear in him, but some kind of urgency that hadn’t been there before.

“Yes,” he said, his voice brief and businesslike. He listened for about ten seconds, then said, “Have a car waiting for us behind the building in two minutes.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

He turned toward Jonathan, who was still kneeling on the floor, gathering the scattered papers with trembling hands, papers he had accidentally knocked out of a drawer and sent flying everywhere. “Take care of the rest of the paperwork. Everything needs to be in order by tomorrow morning.”

The lawyer nodded, far too frightened to say anything more.

“Let’s go,” Luka said to me, already heading toward the door.

“Where?” I asked, not moving from my spot.

“To my place.”

“No.” The word escaped me before I had time to think. “I’m not going anywhere until I see if my parents are okay. Didn’t we agree that we’d live on Uncle Thomas’s estate? Why are we suddenly going to your place, why do we have to leave immediately—” My voice kept rising, and I was losing control of it just as much as I was losing control of my breathing. “I want to go home. I want to pack, I want to see my mother, I want—”

“We don’t have time to argue.” He turned toward me, and there wasn’t the slightest room for negotiation in his eyes. “Your parents will be fine. Right now, we need to go somewhere I know we’ll be safe until we figure out what to do next.”

“As if I can trust you—”

He didn’t answer. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, then picked up my bag, which I had completely forgotten I even had with me in all that chaos, and headed toward the office door so quickly that I practically had to run to catch up with him.

“Faster,” he said without looking back.

We left the building through the same side exit we had used to escape earlier, and as we crossed the courtyard, I kept turning my head in every direction, searching for anyone familiar—my father, my mother, anyone from my family or his. There was no one. Only police lights flashing somewhere around the corner, blue and red, reflecting off the wet asphalt.

He got me into the car almost roughly, ran around it, and took the wheel, and before I could even fasten my seat belt, we were already speeding down the narrow alley behind the buildings.

But that street was blocked too.

A police officer signaled for us to stop and approached the window with a flashlight in his hand. When he illuminated Luka’s face, something in his demeanor immediately changed.

“Mr. Devereaux,” he said, his voice suddenly more respectful, almost nervous. “Is everything all right with you? We have injured people from the café. You should come with us to the station to give a statement—”

Luka looked at him sternly, with a gaze that allowed no further explanation. “I’ll call your chief personally to give a statement. Right now, I need to leave urgently.”

The officer paused for a moment, as though weighing whether he was allowed to insist, then simply nodded and motioned to another officer to move the tape blocking the passage.

We drove through.

As soon as we cleared the blockade, Luka accelerated so abruptly that the force pushed me back into my seat. He drove as though he were running from something far worse than the police, through red lights, through empty intersections, at a speed that took my breath away every time he turned. I barely felt the drive itself—it all blurred into a series of lights flashing past the window, the sound of the engine, and my own racing heart pounding in my ears louder than anything else.

I didn’t know where we were or how long we had been driving, but I was aware of one thing. Today, for the first time in my life, I had traveled through three states in a single day. And I hadn’t even felt it happen. I hadn’t felt the darkness that had fallen long ago either, because it had been dark in my head since this morning.

Finally, he turned into the underground garage of a hotel whose name I didn’t even have time to read. He got out of the car before me, walked around it, and opened my door, almost impatiently, and I followed him through the garage toward the elevator, wrapped in a kind of numb silence that felt worse to me than any shouting could have.

When we entered the elevator, he pressed the button for the penthouse without hesitation, as though that floor, that number, had been familiar to him for a long time—as though it belonged to him.

“What did you do to Eliot?” I asked, my voice finally finding enough strength to speak since we had left the office. He didn’t answer.

“Do you know where my phone is?” Nothing.

“Call my mother. Call my father. I just want to hear that they’re okay, just—”

He continued staring straight at the elevator doors as though he couldn’t hear me at all, as though my words passed straight through him without leaving the slightest trace.

The elevator doors opened, and instead of a hallway, the penthouse opened directly before us—vast, silent, illuminated by the city lights streaming through floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

He pulled a key card from his pocket, swiped it through the reader beside the elevator buttons, locking it, then slipped the card back into his jacket.

He turned toward me.

He rolled up his shirt sleeves, one and then the other, slowly, as though it mattered to him that I see every movement. He tossed his keys onto the table beside him, the sound of metal striking marble echoing through the room louder than it should have.

“Now,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes, “we’re going to deal with things one by one. Let's start with you saying his name one more time.”