Page 18 of Emerald

I hesitate for a moment, confused by what is happening, but they said they would take me to Anna, and I’ll do anything they say if it means we are reunited. I follow them both down a long corridor. We take a left and then a right, and we arrive at another glass room. I can see Anna is in the box, she is curled up into a ball, crying. My hand reaches out and touches the glass as tears fall down my cheeks seeing my best friend lying there broken. The door to the room opens, and I don’t wait for the robotic people to tell me to enter, I rush toward my friend.

“Anna, it’s me. I’m here. You’re safe,” I say to her in Russian.

Anna screams when she sees me, then wraps her arms around me tightly. Her entire body is shaking with fear as I try to soothe her.

“I promise, I’ll get you out of here. Wherever we are.”

“That is going to be doubtful, Miss Vasiliev, you are currently in a CIA secure location,” the robot man explains as he and the woman come into the room and take a seat in front of us. They place a manila folder with our names on it on the table.

CIA?

Anna looks up at me, and I can read it on her face, we are so fucked.

That’s the night Anna and I met our handlers, Agent Adam Jankovic, who was assigned to Anna, and Agent Laura Pan, who was now mine. They explained to us who my father, Maxim, and Sergei really were. I knew they ran in the wrong circles, but I didn’t realize to what extent. Seeing photos of Maxim and Sergei killing people and voice recordings of my father ordering hits was a lot to take in. I knew they were mixed up with the Bratva, but never to that level. The agents explained to Anna and me that we either joined them on their new program infiltrating the Bratva or we would stay dead, and this glass box would be our home permanently. Not much of a choice now, is it?

My stomach sinks at the thought that my family thinks I’m dead. Maxim will be blaming himself because he warned me to be careful about going to The Hamptons, and I brushed off his concern. I’m also worried about my mother. Not long after commemorating the anniversary of one daughter’s death, she is now having to commemorate another. And Sergei, he has no one else left in the world except Anna. How is this fair? It’s cruel.

“No. I won’t do it,” Anna screams at the agents.

“Anna!” I hiss, grabbing her arm as she cries hysterically.

“He has no one, Elena. They can’t do this to him.” Anna cries.

I pull her into my arms and hug her tightly. “They will send him to jail, Anna, for the rest of his life. He will have enemies there, ones that have no problem ending him. They will kill him in there,” I tell my friend in Russian. How does she not understand we have no choice?

“He will die if he thinks I’m dead.” She wails at me.

There is a chance that could happen, that Sergei’s heartache will be so much that he decides to end it all. But I have faith that Maxim will keep his will to live going. That he won’t let him slipinto the darkness, that he will save him enough that he will get to see Anna again.

“If we do this. There’s a chance we can go home. This will be a small blip in the grand scheme of things,” I try to persuade her.

“We will never be ballerinas. Our dreams are over,” she tells me.

“You were never going to be ballerinas,” Agent Jankovic states bluntly.

We both still and turn to where he is sitting.

“You are both talented, but we were the ones that got you into Juilliard,” he explains.

Everything stills in me.

The life I had never existed, it was all a game to get us to this point. There’s no escaping.

“You played the long game. We don’t have a choice, do we?” I ask him.

“You do, technically …” he says, shrugging his shoulders.

“What happens if we aren’t cut out for whatever it is you want us to do?” I ask him.

“Guess you’re going to have to give it your best shot and hope it works,”he states seriously.

After that first meeting, Anna and I were allowed to stay with each other as we did weeks and weeks of psychological exams. They tried to break us, and a couple of times they did. That’s when I let the old Elena go and started to embrace whoever the hell they wanted me to be. There was no escaping. They had their hands wrapped around my throat and were slowly squeezing the life out of me.

There was no other choice.

I sacrificed myself for my family and never looked back.

“I’m so sorry,I did this to you,” Maxim says, his voice wavering with emotion as he stands up and walks over to where I’m sitting, pulls me up out of my seat, and hugs me so tightly. “If I hadn’t been me, this would never have happened to you.”

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