“Sit,” she says. “I don’t understand why you’re still working. You shouldn’t be on your feet so much. Besides, you are no longer a maid here.”
“I know, but I can’t just sit and do nothing. I’m bored out of my mind,” I tell her.
She eyes me, giving a nod to the chair in the corner. I sigh and finish folding a towel, then sit.
“How far along are you?” she asks quietly.
“Eight weeks. And how did you even know?”
Liza offers a weak smile. “News travels fast among the staff. Can’t say I don’t blame you for not telling me.”
“I’m still processing it myself,” I admit. “Only two people besides the doctor know, and one of them found out by accident.”
“After the way I treated you, I don’t deserve to be on the sharing end of any good news you have. Speaking of which, thisisgood news, right?”
“Yes. It’s very good news.”
She nods, pleased to hear it.
“Good. It should be. Sissy was the same way—a surprise, unplanned. But she’s been the joy of my life, even with the way things are now.” An expression of longing forms on her features, but it holds for only a moment. She clears her throat. “Anyway, the first trimester is always the hardest. Your body’s adjusting to so many changes. You need rest, not to be folding and dusting.”
“I’m getting plenty of rest. Besides, like I said, I’m bored.”
“I get it. But it doesn’t look like you’re getting plenty of rest. From where I’m sitting, you look like a woman carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.”
The observation is uncomfortably accurate.
“It’s just… I’ve been thinking about Sylvie.”
“Your friend from the auction?”
“Yes. I asked Amanda to look into what happened to her, if she’s alive, if she’s still with Kolya.”
“Thea—”
“I know that it’s dangerous. And I know that Gabriel wouldn’t approve. But I can’t just pretend that she doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t leave her behind, especially since she’s only in this mess because of me.”
Liza sets down the linens she’s in the middle of folding and looks at me directly. “You didn’t leave her behind. You were taken. Big difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.” Her voice is firm. “Both of you were caught up in forces you didn’t understand. You were drugged, terrified, and barely conscious. Gabriel saved you. And what happened to Sylvie, that’s on Kolya. Not you.”
I don’t know what to say. I stare off into space, remembering the way Sylvie’s face looked as I was dragged off, her cries following me.
Liza moves closer, her expression softening. “Listen to me, Thea. I know guilt. I’ve carried it for seven years—guilt about abandoning you, about failing you, about being too much of a coward to stay and fight. But guilt doesn’t save you; it destroys you.”
The words should comfort me, but they don’t. I’m carrying too much tension, too much worry.
“What if Gabriel can’t end this?” I ask quietly. “What if Kolya wins?”
Liza goes very still. When she doesn’t respond, I keep talking. “Amanda said something earlier about women who fall into Kolya’s world, about how they sometimes don’t ever come back. And that got me thinking about how powerful someone has to be to be able to make someone disappear like that, how much control they would have to have.”
“Thea—”
“Hasn’t Gabriel been fighting Kolya for twenty years? Maybe longer?” The words come tumbling out, all of the things I’ve been fearful of, all the anxiety. “Twenty years! If he could’ve taken Kolya down, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”
She’s quiet for a long moment.