11
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
The relief I felt as I set my backpack down in the master bedroom of Roth’s Manhattan tower home came in a thick, hot, choking wave of tears. I dropped the bag to the floor, staring around at the familiar room. Wide bed, white duvet tucked in neatly at the edges. The wall opposite the bed slid open to reveal a floor-to-ceiling television that could double as a computer display. A set of double doors leading to a walk-in closet larger than most middle-class single-family homes. The door beside that leading to the bathroom, another expansive universe of dark marble and spotless glass and polished metal, modern lines and sleek curves and soft lighting. The wall facing outside was entirely glass, the whole wall designed to slide open to make the huge corner balcony and bedroom into one mammoth indoor-outdoor space. The balcony where Roth had told me the truth regarding my father’s murder. The balcony where everything I’d ever known had changed.
I turned away from the balcony. Roth stood in the doorway, unmoving, staring blankly over my shoulder at the skyline. “We’re home, Valentine.”
He nodded. “Indeed we are.”
He’d been nearly catatonic the entire way here. Countless hours on the boat, from Alexandria to Istanbul. A terrifying twin-engine prop-plane ride from Istanbul to Paris. From there a tiny jet, barely bigger than the prop plane, four comfortable seats, no flight attendant. Just Harris, Roth, myself, and the pilot, who spoke no English and was given a fat envelope full of Euros to fly us out of a private airfield in the countryside outside Paris. No names were exchanged, no questions asked, no flight pattern filed. Hours of yet more flying low over the Atlantic. No one spoke. Harris had a laptop on which he typed nonstop the entire ride. Roth stared out the window, blinking slowly every few seconds, taking deep sighing breaths, index finger tapping at his lips. No one slept.
Now I stood in the center of the bedroom, facing Roth, searching for something to say. For something to do. Kiss him? Tell him I love him? Drop to my knees and suck him off? Leave? Go stay with my friend Layla? Find a hotel? Stay in one of the guest rooms?
No. None of that would work. I’d told him I loved him. I’d tried to kiss him. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, partway to Istanbul. Middle of the night, moonshine gleaming through the porthole, bathing us both in silver light. Both of us were awake, unable to sleep. I rolled over, tucked my head against Roth’s chest. He hadn’t wrapped his arm around me. Hadn’t even responded or registered that he knew I was there. I leaned up, kissed his jaw. Nothing. Kissed his cheek. Nothing. Kissed his lips. They were dry, cracked, chapped. No response, just a blank stare at the ceiling. I was worried and afraid. Was this the drugs still? Or was it psychological trauma? I didn’t know, and didn’t know what to do about it.
Now, standing in the center of the room, I felt everything well up inside me. All the emotions I’d buried deep, over and over, began to boil over. The fear I’d denied myself. The panic I’d not allowed myself to feel. The pain at what Roth had endured. The sick-to-my-stomach unease at the way Roth had fucked me on that boat. The look in his eyes. The feral hunger, the brutal power. The way he’d taken me, nearly forced me. And then the way I’d stuffed down my own deep fear of him, my rage at Gina. The way I’d pretended as if him fucking me was okay. Even though I knew—knew—it wasn’t Roth. It wasn’t the man I loved taking me, giving me pleasure. That was a drug, raping me despite my consent. That was some chemical-addled monster riding me, using me. But I’d done it for Valentine. He had been in agony. Crazed. And I’d missed him. Needed him. I’d hoped, naïvely, that my love would be enough. That my feelings for him would bring him back to himself somehow.
I’d been wrong.
And now…?
I was exhausted, physically and mentally. I couldn’t stand up anymore. I tried. I locked my knees and clenched my teeth and sucked in deep breaths, in and out, in and out, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Dizziness washed over me. My breath came in panicked gasps, refusing my efforts to breathe evenly and regularly. My stomach twisted and rose up into my throat, hot and knotted into a rock-hard lump. I’d been as strong as I could be, for as long as I could. Now I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I couldn’t hold back.
My knees gave out, and I collapsed to the floor on my hands and knees, choking on my sobs. They were quiet at first, little squeaking rasps in my throat, but then my voice caught, a sob lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. My arms trembled, unable to support me any longer. I felt carpet against my forehead, chest burning, lungs aching with my inability to breathe. I fell once more, this time to my side, and I curled up. Something broke inside me then, and the silent heaving shattered, and a sob became a wail. I covered my face with my hands, tucked my forehead against my knees, heels to my buttocks, and wept.
Moments turned to minutes, and I couldn’t quiet myself, and didn’t try.
I felt the ground topple and tumble beneath me, felt hands beneath my neck and hip, rolling and lifting, and then I was airborne, and the familiar scent of Roth filled my nostrils, the achingly sweet sensation of his chest at my cheek, and we were on the bed and he had me cradled in his arms, clutched close.
“Kyrie…Kyrie….” His voice was a raspy, grating murmur, thick with emotion and pitched low, barely audible. “I’m here, love. I’m here.”
I twisted against his chest, looked up at him. His eyes were wet. Roth. My Valentine, the powerful, indomitable Valentine Roth…was crying. For me? For himself? For us? He didn’t wipe the tears away as they trickled down his cheeks. One tear…two. Three. Four. Unchecked. His eyes were red, unblinking, staring out over my head. His chest rose and fell as if he was fighting a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
I touched my palm to his cheek. “Valentine?”
“I fucked it all up. I gave in. I tried to fight it. I knew it was you. I knew what the drug was doing to me was wrong, but I couldn’t fight it. And I knew you’d do anything for me. Anything. And you did. You—you took everything I could do to you. I hurt you. I—violated you. Us. I did that to us.”
“It wasn’t you, Valentine—”
“I couldn’t stop.”
I sat up straighter, stared into his eyes. Looked deep into myself. “Valentine, listen. Please listen. What happened on the boat? Nothing happened that we haven’t done before, right? Did I ask you to stop?”
“No, not after—”
“Exactly. It wasn’t entirely you, and I get that. But I love you. I love you so much. I don’t hate you. I don’t feel violated by you.”
“I know.” He had to pause to breathe, to swallow, to blink. “And I love you. But…what happens now? With us?”
He was supposed to tell me that. “I don’t know.”
“I feel like…like something is broken between us.”
“No.” My voice was so small, I wasn’t sure Roth heard me. I said it louder. “No, Roth. You can’t think that way. You can’t let her win. You love me. I love you. That’s all that matters.”
“Is love enough?”
“It has to be,” I said. “It has to be. She can’t win, Roth. She can’t. We can’t let her.” I sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I didn’t risk death and see men killed and cross the world to find you, only to lose you like this. Only to lose us to her fucked-up games.”
“Every time I close my eyes, I’m there in that room. I haven’t really slept since then. Not really. Every time I do, I dream of her. Of being water-boarded. Of being raped. Of feeling her on me, feeling her skin. I see her hair, and her fake breasts. I feel her fingernails on my skin. I probably have scars from her nails digging into my chest. I feel it all over again, all of it. I can’t sleep. I can’t even try.”
“God, Valentine. How could she? Why?” I let the tears slide freely down my cheeks.
He shrugged, faking an insouciance I in no way believed. “Because she could. She wanted me. She felt she owned me.” He rubbed at his chest. “She’s a fucking animal.”
I couldn’t help it. I touched my lips to his chest. Tenderly, with butterfly gentility, I kissed his skin, the scars where her fingers had left marks on him. I leaned over him, not straddling him, just lying beside him and kissing his chest. All over, inch by inch. I smoothed my palms over his skin, tracing the ridges of his ribs, the furrows of his muscular abdomen, kissed his neck. He was tensed all over, unmoving, not breathing.
“Kyrie….”
“Yes, Valentine. It’s me. It’s me. Look at me. Feel me. It’s me.” I kissed his cheek. The corner of his mouth. His forehead. Beside his nose. His eye, so gently, feeling the lid flutter beneath my lips. Then the other corner of his mouth. “Did she do this, baby? Did she kiss you this way?”
He shook his head. “No,” he whispered, barely audible.
I kissed him, feeling the chapped surface of his mouth against mine. “These are my lips against yours. Do you feel me? Do you know me?” I pulled back, and his eyes were closed, expression taut and pained. “Open your eyes, Valentine Roth, and look at me. See me. Me.”
His eyes flicked open, haunted cerulean the same shade as the Mediterranean fixing on mine. “Kyrie. I see you, darling. I see you. But….”
“What? But what?”
“When you kiss me, when you touch me, it hurts. I feel her. I focus on you, but all I feel is her.” He shot up off the bed, strode shirtless across the room, and touched the panel beside the door to the balcony.
The entire wall of glass slid soundlessly aside into a pocket, letting in the blare and honk and shout and laugh and clamor of Manhattan dozens of stories below. The sun was setting, framed between the endless towers of glass and mirrored steel. Roth stood gripping the railing of the balcony in both hands, a familiar posture. His shoulders slumped, his head hanging.
I stifled a heart-wrenching, gut-wracking sob as the man I loved walked away from me, every line of his body hard and conflicted and taut. I stared at him, watched him, and refused to look away until exhaustion took its toll, pulling me under like a riptide.
* * *
I woke to the sounds of the city, a breeze wafting over me. The bed beside me was empty. Night had fallen long ago. I sat up slowly, stiff and sore. My heart ached. I didn’t even get that moment of forgetting, the split-second illusion that everything was okay. I wanted that moment; I needed it. I glanced at the balcony, saw Roth sitting in one of the chairs, feet up on the railing, still shirtless in a pair of blue jeans, barefoot. I stood up, stretched the kinks out of my back and neck. I was still wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing in Alexandria, despite several days of travel. It didn’t matter, though. Not then. Not in that moment.
I smelled him as I approached him, the Scotch on his breath. He peered up at me as I slid between the back of his chair and the wall, and took the seat beside him. He had the bottle in one hand, a rocks glass in the other, a bucket of melting ice on the table, along with a second glass, empty and clean. I took the empty glass, clinked four cubes of ice into it, and pried the glass from Roth’s hand, poured until it was nearly overflowing.
I took a sip, hissed and winced at the burn, then took another sip, which went down more smoothly. A third sip morphed the burn into a warming glow. We sat drinking Scotch in silence, in the relative darkness of night, Manhattan ever wakeful and busy and endless around us.
The bottle was three-fourths gone, and I suspected he’d been out here drinking most of the night. I didn’t know what time it was, and I didn’t care.
“’M a little sloshed, I’m afraid.” His voice was slurred, a low stumbling growl from beside me. “A lot, actually. Probably couldn’t stand up even if I tried.”
“That’s okay.” I took another long sip. “I might join you.”
He took a drink, ice clinking and clattering. He twisted his head sloppily to gaze at me. “Why are you still here?” He enunciated his words very carefully, precisely, his accent bleeding through more strongly than ever.
“Because I love you. I chose you. Remember? You brought me here. You made me yours. And then you told me your secret. And even knowing that you killed my father, I still chose you. I couldn’t stay away then, and I can’t stay away now. I won’t. Not just can’t, Roth. Won’t. I won’t abandon you, especially not now. How could I claim to love you if I walked away now? You need me, now more than ever.”
“Never needed anyone before. Not anyone. Father kicked me out, disowned me. And damn him, I survived. Nearly didn’t, a few times. Nearly got myself killed more than once. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing when I started running guns for Vitaly. I got into that by accident, you should know.” He glanced at me, blinked blearily. “I never intended to get into that. I started out like I told you, buying fishing boats and real estate, that sort of thing. And then I was out for drinks with a man who was rumored to have several apartment blocks in Moscow for sale. We were in…Kiev? Maybe Kiev. And he—this man, he asked me if I wanted to make a quick and easy ten grand. Well, of course, who doesn’t? And when he said all I’d have to do was take a suitcase from Kiev to Istanbul, I knew it was no good. But I’d just had a sale fall through, a big one. And I owed money. I’d borrowed, so I owed. I needed that ten grand. So I did it.”
Roth took another long drink, emptying his glass, then set the tumbler down on the table between us.
“I met Gina two weeks later,” he continued. “In Athens. She took me home to her apartment. I remember standing outside the door of her flat in Athens, wondering what I was getting into. I’d seen the craziness in her eyes already. You couldn’t miss it, even then. Two drinks together, and I knew she was dangerous. But I went into her apartment with her anyway. Later, after we’d fucked, she lay beside me and looked at me. I remember what she said. I remember it verbatim. ‘You know, Val, now that you’ve fucked me, you can’t ever leave me. I won’t let you.’”
He blinked and lifted his hand to his mouth as if he’d forgotten that’d put down his now-empty cup.
“Gina, she was fucked up in head, in the things she wanted us to do. In bed, I mean. I’m quite honestly too drunk to be tactful right now, so I’m sorry. She wanted to tie me up. She wanted to blindfold me and do all sorts of nasty shit. Not really true BDSM, just…she demanded total control. Wanted total subservience from me, sexually and otherwise.” He ducked his head, staring at his knees. “I went along with a lot of what she wanted. Most of it. I drew the line at a few things. She got off on pain. Giving, and receiving. I’d let her hurt me, but I wouldn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t let her peg me. She went mental when I said no to that. I gave her control, though. I let her have it. It killed me, deep down. I hated it. Hated her more with every day that passed.
“Every time I did what she wanted, it was because I was afraid of her, afraid of her father. Not of her physically, but of of her unpredictability. Like, if I didn’t do what she wanted, I went to sleep nervous. I could wake up hogtied. I did once, actually. Went to bed after an argument and woke up hogtied. Slipped me a mickey in my drink, but I was already drunk and angry and didn’t feel it. Woke up tied hand and foot, hands to feet behind my back. She left me like that for hours. Because I wouldn’t…god, so filthy to think of now, but she wanted me to felch her. I wouldn’t. Fuck no, I wouldn’t. Bad enough argument, I worried I’d just never wake up. She’d slit my throat in my sleep.” He shot a sidelong glance at me. “Does my need for control make sense now, love?”
I thought of the times he’d given me control sexually, let me do what I wanted to him. Now, hearing this story, it made so much more sense. Made the trust he’d shown me that much more heady. I could only nod, trying to hold back emotion. “Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Makes me love you even more for letting me have control the way you have.”
He nodded. “That was hard. That day in the shower? You remember that? What you did with your finger? I always, always drew the line at that. Letting her do that kind of thing to me. I never would. It was just…my personal line. And she hated it. It made her so, so angry every time. But I let you do that. I gave that to you. Because…I knew you. I understood you. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, wouldn’t embarrass me. Wouldn’t demand something you didn’t think I’d mind giving.”
“Never, baby. I love you. I love you so much.”
“I know.” He watched me empty my glass and pour another. “Catching up quick, aren’t you, love?” In all the time I’d known him, he’d never sounded so English. I’d heard him sound formal, almost stuffy, precise, arch and crisp. I’d heard him sound gruff and harsh and vulgar. But this? This was a side of Valentine that I never knew existed.
“Yeah, getting there,” I said.
Silence sat thick between us. And then he twisted his head to look at me, a strange expression on his face. “I’d kill for you. You know that, right? When they come, I’ll kill them. All of them. As many as they send.”
I swallowed hard. “I know. I wish we could just…sell everything. Take your money and go. Buy a big boat and live out there. Like we were. Just you and me. They’d never find us. I’ll live that life with you.”
He shook his head. “I wish we could, too. But Kyrie, I’ve—I’ve put this off long enough. Hidden from them long enough. Avoided. Pretended I didn’t know they were watching and waiting. I have to end this.” His gaze cleared, the haze of alcohol burning away under the intensity of his expression. “Let me hide you. Send you with Harris somewhere they’ll never find you. Let me handle this. Handle her. I’ll take care of things, and then we can—”
“No.” I stood up. “No, Valentine. Not happening. I’m not leaving your side. I don’t have anywhere to go. I have no one and nothing but you. I’m staying.”
“What about Cal? And Layla?”
I shrugged miserably. “I love them. Of course I do. But my brother? Cal has his own life. He doesn’t know anything about any of this, and it’s better that way. He’s a college kid. He plays beer pong and hazes new frat pledges and studies for midterms. And Layla? I don’t want her involved. I go anywhere near her, all of this could spill over and put her in danger. She’s my best friend. Closer than a sister. And I just can’t put her at risk.”
Roth nodded. Stood up, put his hands on my shoulders for balance. “Okay, then.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “Okay? All that, and all you have to say now is ‘okay’?”
He frowned down at me. “What do you want me to say, Kyrie?”
“I don’t know.” I turned away, watched the red taillights and white headlights streaming in opposite directions far beneath me. My voice was small and broken. “Anything. Tell me you love me. Tell me it’ll be okay.”
His silence was long and fraught. “I can’t tell you it’ll be okay. I won’t lie to you.”
I turned in place and put my back to the railing. I waited, watched him. His eyes were lucid and searching me. He was still drunk, but in the dark, depressed, hopeless stage. “That’s it, then?”
“I’m drunk, Kyrie. I haven’t slept in days. Haven’t showered in longer. I’m a mess. I’m fucked up. I don’t know what I’m feeling or how to deal with it. I’m scared to sleep. I’m scared to touch you. To let you touch me. I’m…useless right now.”
I let out a long, tremulous breath. Summoned my courage. My determination. “Come on.” I took his hand, led him inside.
He followed me, let me pull him into the bathroom. He stood still, eyes narrow and hooded, watching me as I gingerly unbuttoned his pants. “What are you doing, Kyrie?”
“You’re taking a shower, and I’m going to help you. I need one, too. Let’s take this slow, okay? One moment, one hour, one day at a time.”
I lowered the zipper, tugged the denim down. I knelt, helped him step out, let him steady himself with a hand on my shoulder. He stood before me in a pair of gray Calvin Klein boxer briefs, muscular, toned, and beautiful. I turned on the water, set it to the hottest it would go, and let it steam up the bathroom. I stood in front of him, still in my jeans and T-shirt. I wanted him to reach for me, to help me out of my shirt, out of my pants. But he didn’t. He just stood there, and my heart broke a little. I peeled my shirt off slowly, never taking my eyes from his. I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, stepping out of them. I waited in my bra and underwear, watching as his chest filled and lowered with deep breaths, his eyes moving over my body.
Not looking away from his conflicted blue gaze, I reached up behind my back and freed the hooks of my bra. Shrugging out of it, I let the undergarment fall to the marble. Tugged the waistband of my panties down with my thumbs, let the underwear fall to the floor, and stepped free. And then I was naked in front of him, and his hands were twitching at his sides, his brows lowered, muscles heavy, fists clenched, chest heaving.
I waited.
He took a step toward me, and my heart lifted, my pulse beating just a little harder. “Kyrie….”
“Roth. I’m here. I’m yours. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” he growled.
“Then touch me. Prove it.”
“I have to prove myself to you?”
I shut down the hurt. “No. That’s not what I meant. You won’t hurt me. I won’t hurt you. I’m not her. You’re not there anymore. You’re with me. You’re safe.” I stepped toward him. Put my hands on his waist, smoothed them up his back, trying to block out the pain in my heart at the way he flinched at my touch. “It’s me, Valentine. You can trust me, you know that. I love you. I just…I need you to love me back.”
He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m trying, Kyrie. I’m fucking trying, okay?”