"I will exchange the money for his head instead." He said it the way someone might discuss the weather, simple and without particular feeling. "Whether you eat or not is entirely your choice."
He set the food on the table beside her and left without looking back.
Aine stared at the tray for a long moment. Then she picked up the spoon.
For her father she ate every bite. She took every medication. She did it without anyone watching and without making it mean anything beyond what it was.
The days that followed moved differently.
The doctors came and went with quiet regularity and her body, stubborn and determined in the same way the rest of her was, began its slow work of healing. The bruises faded. The deeper wounds closed. The bandages came off one by one until only the one across her forehead remained, still wrapped, still tender to the touch.
Ravi was absent through most of it. Grand mafia meetings had pulled him away from the house for days at a stretch, and in his absence the rooms breathed a little differently, the air a fraction less weighted, the corridors a fraction more navigable.
She had just finished showering when she saw it.
The towel still wrapped around her, she crossed to the window of her room and looked down into the lower floor and went completely still. A telephone. Sitting on the table below with no one nearby, no movement in either direction, the house holding the particular quiet of a place briefly emptied of its usual watchfulness.
She did not think about it for long.
She moved down the stairs quickly and quietly, reached the phone and dialled. Her finger pressed each number of the police line with steady hands.
Nothing went through.
She tried again.
Silence on the line.
"Did you not know?" The voice came from behind her, low and unhurried and deeply familiar, settling over her like cold water. "They run the moment my name is mentioned. Every single one of them."
Her heart seized in her chest.
She turned slowly toward the sound.
He was standing there, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching her with the expression of someone who had been watching for longer than she realised. In one hand, held loosely between two fingers, was the cord.
He had already cut it.
She made it to the bed before her legs gave out completely.
The towel fell away and she did not bother with it. She pulled her knees to her chest and let herself cry in a way she had not allowed since the very first night, open and ugly and without anyone to perform composure for. The fear came with the tears, shapeless and enormous, the fear of a future that had just been decided for her in a folder on a floor, the fear of her father's face, of Jokull's voice through a phone she would never hold again, of a life that was supposed to be hers being signed away in a document she had not touched.
She looked at the marriage papers where they had fallen on the floor.
She screamed.
The sound tore out of her and filled the room and went nowhere.
"I hate you," she said into the empty air when the scream was done. "I hate you, Ravi."
Then she pulled the blanket over herself and lay in the silence she had made.
The Next Day
Tesni saw the cars from a distance and felt the smile arrive before she could stop it. Black cars. Ravi's men. Exactly one week to the day.
She straightened and walked toward them, her heart already running ahead of her feet.
"Where is she?" she asked the moment Hayland stepped out.
He did not answer immediately. "Bring the documents," he said to the man beside him.
The folder was placed in his hands and he held it out to her. "Please take this."
She took it.
She opened it.
The smile dropped off her face so completely it was like it had never been there.
She stared at the papers for a long moment and then threw them. They scattered across the ground between them and she looked at Hayland with something that went far beyond anger.
"What the hell is this."
Mendoza appeared behind her. "What is the problem?"
"Read it yourself, Dad."
He took the papers from the ground. His eyes moved across the page and before he had reached the bottom his hand had found Hayland's collar.
"I want my daughter back." His voice was low and absolute. "Now."
"I am sorry, sir." Hayland removed the hand from his collar with a patience that suggested he had expected this. "She agreed to the marriage. The documents are signed and legally binding. There is nothing further to be done."
He turned, got back in the car and the convoy pulled away without another word.
Tesni watched them go.
"They forced her," she said. "She would never have agreed. They forced her hand."
Mendoza put his hand on her shoulder.
She stepped away from it.
"This is your fault." She turned and looked at her father and the words came out of her stripped of everything except the truth underneath them. "All of it. Everything that has happened to her. It is your fault." Her voice cracked but did not break. "I do not want to see you. I do not want to speak to you. I hate you for this, Dad."
"Tesni." His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "Tesni. My dear."
She had already turned away.
"Tesni."
She kept walking.
Across the city Hayland let himself back into the house and found Ravi in the usual place, composed and unhurried, the world apparently sitting exactly where he had left it.
"What was the matter?" Ravi asked without looking up.
"They took the news as expected." Hayland paused. "There is something else. Your mother called while you were occupied." He kept his voice even. "Your father has passed away."
Ravi was quiet for a moment.
"Finally," he said.
Hayland absorbed that without comment. "You have been invited to the funeral. Will you attend?"