She was still pressed against the window. Small. Scared. Defiant. Fighting herself as much as she was fighting me.
"The borscht is good," I said quietly. "You should eat it while it's warm."
Then I left. My hands were shaking as I walked away. I pressed them against my thighs. That had been close. Too close. Another minute in that room and I would have crossed lines I couldn't uncross. Would have pushed her before she was ready. Would have let my need for her override her need for safety.
Control. I needed control.
But control was becoming harder every minute Sophie Volkov was in my compound. Every minute she was close enough to touch but too scared to let me.
I descended the stairs. Went to my office on the second floor. Closed the door. Sat at my desk and stared at financial reports I couldn't focus on.
Seven hours until dinner. Seven hours to figure out how to convince a terrified Little that submission wasn't weakness.
Seven hours to convince myself that I could be patient enough not to break her.
Chapter 6
Sophie
Mycaptorhadmadea fatal error.
He’d left me stationery. Hotel stationery, to be exact. Expensive stuff, from a variety of hotels, embossed with some Russian names I couldn't pronounce and didn't care to. I'd found it in the dresser drawer this afternoon, tucked behind silk scarves I'd never wear and cashmere sweaters I'd never asked for. Three sheets left in the leather portfolio. I'd used them all.
My handwriting covered both sides of each sheet. Small, precise, the way I'd learned to write in the margins of library books when I couldn't afford my own copies. Legal arguments. Case citations. Everything I could remember about labor law, coercion, consent.
I sat cross-legged on the bed, my bad knee screaming at me. Two hours in this position. Maybe three. I'd lost track. The notes were spread around me in careful rows—argument one, argument two, argument three. Each one built on the last. Eachone designed to prove that whatever Nikolai Besharov thought he'd bought, he was wrong.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited involuntary servitude. I'd written that at the top of sheet one, underlined it twice. Below that: debt bondage illegal under federal law per the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. I remembered my father showing me that statute when one of his associates tried to trap a debtor in exactly this kind of arrangement. "Read it, Sophie," he'd said. "Know what protects you. Know what doesn't."
What protected me now was knowledge. Information. The photographic memory that made me valuable also made me dangerous. I could recall every legal article I'd ever read, every case my father had mentioned, every clause he'd explained during his endless employment disputes with people who thought they owned him.
Sheet two covered California labor codes. Section 5000 through 5003, the provisions about human trafficking and forced labor. Penalties for violation. Criminal charges that could be filed. I didn't know if New York had equivalent statutes, but California's were what I remembered, so California's were what I'd use.
Sheet three was contract law. Agreements signed under duress were unenforceable. That was basic. First-year law school material I'd absorbed from the college library during my lunch breaks at the bookstore. Duress meant coercion, threats, immediate danger. Being drugged, hooded, and carried out of a building while people shot at me definitely qualified.
My knee sent another spike of pain up my thigh. I shifted position, straightened my leg, felt the familiar ache settle into something manageable. Three years since the injury and my body still punished me for sitting wrong, standing wrong, breathing wrong.
The borscht bowl sat empty on the dresser. I'd begrudgingly eaten it an hour ago. Couldn't help myself—the smell had been too good, my stomach too empty, and the soup had tasted exactly like something that should mean home and safety. That was the problem with Nikolai Besharov's careful domesticity. It worked. Made me want to trust him even as my brain screamed that trust was suicide.
I picked up sheet one. Read through my opening argument again. The words were solid. Logical. Irrefutable.
They meant nothing if he didn't care about law.
That thought made my hands shake. I set the paper down carefully and breathed.
At 6:45 PM, I forced myself off the bed. My knee buckled slightly. I caught myself on the dresser, waited for the joint to remember how to hold weight, then moved to the bathroom.
The mirror showed someone I barely recognized. When had I become this? Twenty-four years old with shadows under my eyes and a permanent tension in my jaw. Hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that made me look older, harder, more professional.
I practiced my opening statement to my reflection. "The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime. I have committed no crime. Therefore, any arrangement requiring my labor without my freely given consent is unconstitutional and unenforceable."
My voice came out steady. Good. I tried again, adding the second point. "Furthermore, debt bondage is explicitly illegal under federal trafficking law. The debt I allegedly owe was incurred by my father, not by me. Transferring that obligation to me without my consent constitutes trafficking under the legal definition."
Better. I sounded almost confident. Almost like someone who knew what they were doing instead of a former ballet dancer with a ruined knee and $2.3 million in debts she'd never asked for.
When had survival become my only skill?
The question hit hard. I gripped the edge of the sink, stared at my reflection, tried to remember who I'd been before.
