Zoella hovered over me, then she approached slowly, as if she wasn’t sure whether to help me or finish what she’d started.
“Zo—” I tried to speak again, to say her name, but my tongue was too damn heavy to even utter a full word anymore.
Everything inside me was fighting whatever poison was inside me, fighting to stay awake, to understand why she did what she’d done. Nothing made sense, not to me, not right now.
But the darkness was closing in faster and faster until the only thing I could make out was the tears sliding down her face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry.”
I don’t know how I found the strength, but I tried to move again.
My hand scrabbled against the ground. The other reached out for hers instinctively, blindly, as if my body would not grasp what my mind already knew—that she betrayed me.
I clasped her wrist, my fingers curling around her slim hand as I tried to pull her closer. “This isn’t going to end well,kotyonok,” I warned, voice rough from somewhere raw and deep in my chest. “You shouldn’t have done this.”
It wasn’t a threat.
If something happened to me, my family would go to the end of the world to find her, and what they would do to her was unimaginable.
Even in this state, with the betrayal, she was all I could worry about.
She pulled her arm free from my grasp hard and fast, panicked in her breathing. “I don’t care what they do to me,” she huffed, already backing away from me. “All I need is time.”
I tried to stand, tried to reach out for her again, but my body buckled beneath me, sending me tumbling to the floor like a knockout punch.
I had no freaking idea what she meant by she needed time or what she was willing to throw her life away for.
My body had finally, completely given up on me. I couldn’t move or speak anymore. I just watched as she picked up a small black bag from behind the dresser and started throwing things inside it.
She’d prepared well for tonight, and I couldn’t help but wonder when she had started.
My head tilted hopelessly to the side, darkness seeping in around the edges of my vision, darkening the world piece by piece.
The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me whole was her, Zoella, standing in the doorway, one hand on the door handle as she hurried to leave.
But she turned around to look at me, her blue eyes meeting mine with hesitation. “Don’t try to find me.”
With that, she turned, pushed the door open, and vanished down the hallway.
The door slammed shut behind her, and the very last feeling I had before the blackness closed over me wasn’t pain.
It was the sting of betrayal, and the weight of helplessness she left me in.
Chapter 17 – Zoella
The air outside hit me like ice.
I stumbled out into the darkness, heels dragging on the stone path, my heart pounding so loudly that it drowned out the sound of the crickets, the creak of the trees, and the distant hum of the estate lights.
Each breath was too rough, too fast, as if my lungs couldn’t decide whether to scream or shut off completely.
The silk robe I’d thrown on clung to my skin, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking—not from the cold, but from the heat of what I’d done.
Matvey was still on the floor. The sound of his voice, slurred and betrayed, echoed in my head.
“This won’t end well,kotyonok.”
I blinked over and over again and stroked my legs more forcefully, racing down the side of the estate where the security cameras had blind spots. I’d mapped them out, committed them to memory, just in case I ever decided I needed to leave.
