And there it is. No more pretense, no more carefully constructed lies. Just the brutal truth about what I planned and what actually happened.
“So, this was all revenge,” she asks, her voice cracking.
“It started as revenge,” I concede with a nod, “but somewhere along the way, it became something else.”
“Bullshit.”
“The woman I’ve been living with for the past month isn’t Agent Alexandra Volkova. She’s Katya, and she’s real, and what we have together is real.”
“What we have together is based on lies and psychological manipulation.”
“Maybe it started that way. But what I feel for you now has nothing to do with revenge or manipulation. What you feel for me?—”
“Is the result of trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome,” she snaps. “I was vulnerable and confused, and you took advantage of that to create emotional dependence.”
The clinical way she describes our relationship feels like knives behind my sternum. She’s reducing everything we’ve shared to psychological terminology, like our connection was just another aspect of my manipulation.
“You think what happened between us was just trauma bonding?”
“I think you’re very good at making people believe what you want them to believe.”
“That’s a convenient way to dismiss what you felt. What you still feel.”
“I don’t feel anything for you except hate,” she seethes.
“Don’t dictate my feelings.”
I’m trying to sound confident, like I know that she’s trying to delude herself, but the truth is, Ineedit to be a lie.
I need what we felt to be real.
“Don’t.” That one word comes out as a sob that shatters my heart into pieces.
“Don’t what? Don’t remind you that you chose to stay with me even when you started questioning the story? Don’t point out that you initiated intimacy with me yesterday, knowing something was wrong with our situation?”
“I was confused and manipulated?—”
“You were falling in love with me despite your training telling you not to trust the situation. And that terrifies you more than anything I did to you.”
“You kidnapped me. You kept me prisoner. You created a false identity and made me dependent on you for everything in my life.”
“And you fell for it. More than that, you fell for me.”
“Because I didn’t know better!” she screams. “You took advantage of my vulnerability and isolation.”
Katya shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge thoughts she doesn’t want to have. “This is what you want, isn’t it? To make me doubt my perceptions and feelings.”
“I want you to acknowledge that what happened between us was real. That it mattered. That it changed both of us.”
“It doesn’t matter if it was real. It doesn’t matter if it changed us. It was built on deception, and that poisons everything else.”
“The way you looked at me last night when we made love didn’t feel poisoned. It felt like the most honest thing either of us has experienced.”
“Stop,” she barks out.
“The way you said my name when you came apart in my arms?—”
“Stop talking.” She’s pleading now, covering her ears, and shrinking away from me.
