Painted Scars (Perfectly Imperfect #1)

Chapter 18

I sit down at the dining table, place the manila folder on the surface in front of me and just look at it. Twenty minutes pass before I gather the courage to open the folder and take out the papers. I grab a pen from the cup, place its point at the begging of the dotted line in the bottom left corner and start signing my name. My vision blurs and tears pour from my eyes, falling onto the paper below and smearing the ink. Shit.

I crumple the ruined document, take another copy from the folder and start over. Somewhere on the third page, my hand starts shaking, but I keep signing. At the fifth one, I break down and start sobbing. I can’t even see the damn paper anymore, so I get up and leave the kitchen to calm down. It takes me more than two hours to sign all three copies of the divorce papers. Then, I seal them into a big envelope, write Roman’s address, and call the courier.

“This just arrived.” Varya hands me a big white envelope. “It’s from Nina.”

I tear the side of the envelope, take out a folder with a set of papers inside, and place it on my desk without opening it.

“This better not be what I think it is,” I sneer through clenched teeth, open the folder and stare at the first document.

“Roman? What’s going on?” Varya asks and rounds the table to stand next to me.

“She wants a divorce.” I grab the desk and launch the damn thing toward the center of the room where it lands upside down, sending the laptop and papers flying. “She is not getting the fucking divorce!” I yell.

The papers come back two days later. Standing at the door, I tear the envelope, take the papers out and stare at the line in the right corner where Roman’s name is printed. Above it, on the dotted line where his signature should be, a big “No” is written in red ink. I turn the page. The same big red “No” on this one. And on the next. And the next.

“Damn you, Roman.”

I grab my phone and call my lawyer. “I need more copies of the divorce papers.”

I send the papers again the same day. They come back a day later, but instead of his signature, every bottom right corner is burned off.

Next time I receive the envelope back, there are no papers inside. Instead, there is a bunch of white ashes.

I want to scream and laugh at the same time, but I end up crying again. By the next morning, I decide that enough is enough, grab my phone and call him. He answers on the first ring.

“Nina. You received my answer, I take it.”

Just hearing his voice makes me want to weep, but I steel myself and try my best to sound normal. “I need you to sign the divorce papers.”

“No.”

“Roman, please.”

“I am not giving you a fucking divorce!” he yells into the phone. “You left me, and that was your choice. This is mine.”

“Do you want to know what I want Roman? Do you even care?”

He sighs. “What is it that you want, Nina?”

“I want at least a remotely normal life, Roman. I want someone who won’t decide to play God and serve his own justice, killing off people he doesn’t like. I don’t want to witness that. Brian was a bastard, but I didn’t want him killed because of me. I never wanted that on my conscience. I asked you and begged you to leave it be. And you gutted him like a pig. I still have nightmares about that night Roman.”

I take a deep breath before I continue.

“I can’t live in your world, Roman, where I am scared shitless every time you go to arrange some deal or whatever. I thought I could, but I can’t. Do you have any idea what it did to me, to sit at the window the whole night while you were out on business? I imagined you in a ditch somewhere, and waited for them bring you back either shot or dead! But most of all, I can’t live with the possibility that someday you’ll decide to gut someone else just because he looked at me in a funny way, or whatever. I can’t! It’s tearing me apart from the inside out. What you did to Brian, it’s eating me up. This guilt, knowing that someone is dead because of me. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I keep seeing his body covered in blood, pieces of his fingers on the floor. God, Roman... I can’t unsee all that blood on your hands.”

I’m sobbing so hard at the end that I’m not sure if he understood even half of what I said.

“Do you understand, Roman?”

There is only silence on the other side of the line, and I start to wonder if he cut the connection when I finally hear his voice.

“Yes. I understand,” he says, and the line goes dead.

A day later, another envelope arrives. I open it and go through the papers. He signed. I look at his signature, and it hurts so bloody much that, at first, I don’t even see the note penned at the top of the page.

“If you ever need me, you know my number. If you don’t want to have anything to do with me, call Maxim or Dimitri. I instructed them that in case you ever call, they are to do what you ask, and not share it with me. Please, give a call to Varya from time to time. She misses you. Take care, malysh.”

I clutch the note to my chest as my heart breaks into a million little pieces.