He promised to be there, he promised his face would be the first thing she saw. He promised.
The door opened on the fourth day after the surgery. Arina was still on an IV drip, every word was a struggle, and she was beginning to think there had been some monstrous mix-up, that they would find her any moment, take her from here, back to where she was supposed to be.
Arseny entered first: in an expensive, perfectly tailored suit, clean-shaven, composed and calm, without a shadow of worry on his face. Behind him, an orderly wheeled a wheelchair with Alla Mikhailovna, wrapped in a cashmere blanket. And following them was a woman Arina had never seen before: tall, black-haired, with a model’s figure and in a dress the color of fresh blood that clung to every curve of her body. She held Arseny’s arm with the kind of casualness one holds what is theirs, rightfully and lawfully.
Arseny walked up to the bed and threw a brown envelope onto her chest, without saying a word, without asking how she felt. The thick paper was cold even through the thin fabric of the hospital gown.
— This is for you.
No “sunshine,” “darling,” “how are you feeling,” “I was so worried.” His voice sounded as if he were talking to a waitress who had brought him the wrong order: polite and infinitely indifferent. With disobedient fingers, Arina opened the envelope and pulled out the documents: a divorce petition, filed in court three days ago. On the very day she was lying on the operating table.
— I don’t understand, — she whispered with difficulty, her own voice seeming foreign, thin, childish. — Why? But I… I did everything you asked. Everything.
Alla Mikhailovna gestured for the orderly to stop and turned the wheelchair to face her daughter-in-law completely, not to miss a single emotion.
— You did. At least you were good for something. — Her pale, gaunt face after the procedures twisted into a grimace of contemptuous triumph, which she no longer bothered to hide. She looked at Arina the way one looks at a used napkin before crumpling it and throwing it in the trash. — You didn’t seriously think my son married you for love, did you? An orphan from the gutter with not a penny to her name, no education, no money, not a single relative who would stand up for you, ask where you disappeared to?
The monitor by the bed started beeping anxiously. The numbers on the screen jumped, but Arina didn’t hear. A roar was growing in her ears, drowning out everything else, the entire world.
— You were needed because you had the right blood type and no one who would ask questions. That’s all. And used goods are not kept in a decent house.
The woman in red stepped forward, and on her ring finger flashed a ring with a stone the size of a pinky nail — so huge it seemed fake, unreal.
— My name is Yana, — she said with a smile that made you want to shut your eyes, to hide, to disappear. — Yana Trunikova. Arseny and I have been together since university, since the first year. While I was building my career in Milan, he found a temporary replacement. With the right parameters.
She placed a hand on her stomach — a gesture so simple and so monstrous at the same time, a gesture Arina had imagined so many times, dreaming of her own child.
— This is the future heir of the Rossinsky family. The legitimate heir everyone has been waiting for. We planned this whole marriage farce over a year ago, as soon as Mom got her diagnosis and it became clear a donor was needed.
Arseny nodded, short, business-like, confirming every word of his former and future fiancée. The mask had finally slipped from his face, revealing what had been hiding underneath for two years: the cold calculation of a man accustomed to getting what he wants at any cost, regardless of others’ feelings, others’ pain, others’ lives.
Yana looked at Arina, at her pale, pain-sharpened face, at the drainage tubes sticking out from under the blanket, at her hands still clutching the envelope with the divorce papers. And in that gaze, there was not a drop of pity, not a shadow of sympathy. Only condescending contempt for the naive fool from the orphanage who was so easy to trick, and a thick, viscous pleasure from someone else’s humiliation, from her complete and final victory.
Arina lay motionless, staring at the gray ceiling, and the fragments of her world slowly, agonizingly slowly, pieced themselves together into a new, terrifying picture. Two years of love that never existed. A marriage that was a trap from day one, from the first meeting in the boutique. A sacrifice that meant nothing to them, only made their task easier, saved them the trouble of finding another donor. It was all planned long before she signed the first paper. They found her through her test results, tamed her with beautiful words and promises, used her to the last drop. And now they were throwing her away like a disposable item that had served its only purpose and was no longer good for anything.
Arseny was the first to break the silence that had fallen in the room after his fiancée’s words. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and took out a thin stack of bills, held together by a bank band, which he placed on the bedside table next to a carafe of water.
— One hundred and fifty thousand, — he said in the tone of someone closing a tiresome formality. — It’ll be enough for a room in a communal apartment while you recover. Sign the consent for a divorce without claims, and we’ll part on good terms.
Arina looked at the money, at this pathetic stack of paper thrown at her like a handout, and something inside her shifted, cracked, began to break. She tried to prop herself up on her elbow, and the pain in her side slashed through her, taking her breath away. But she spoke anyway — hoarsely, through tears she could no longer hold back.
— One hundred and fifty thousand for my kidney? For two years of my life with you? I’ll go to the police, I’ll tell them everything!
— Tell them what?
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