Relief washes over me like heat. “Thank you, old friend.”
The walk to my car is brief and cold. Night has fallen in the past hour. The drive back holds less dread, because I know Mina and our boys will be cared for. What happens to me is inconsequential. I will face Vitaly and do what I must.
No matter how much I hate it.
23
MINA
I sleep in pieces.A doze, a jolt, the fan ticks, the house settles, and my body braces for something that does not come. The sheet is hot, then cold. I reach for a baby out of reflex and grab air. My chest hurts from the reach.
I count the way Roman taught me. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. It works until it doesn’t. My mind fills with thoughts I don’t want. A wall breaking. Pillows shaped like bodies.
Fourteen dead.
I must fall under for a minute because I wake from a dream of halls without doors, and Vitaly standing at the end of them. Leering. Waiting for me.
The night-light throws a soft bar across the carpet. I stare at it until the bar blurs. My phone buzzes to life, and I grab it without a thought. Must be Roman or Mom. I check the text.
Come to the window, Scarface.
Everything in me freezes. The name crawls under my skin and sits there. I look at the number again like a different answer could appear. It does not.
There’s only one person who has ever called me that, and he wants me dead.
Vitaly means the side casement window that looks toward the service lane and the far fence. He would know the layout. He grew up in this house. He would know exactly where I sleep—his father’s bedroom. I hadn’t considered that until now, but knowing that he knows where I sleep sinks something vital inside of me and drowns it in black water panic.
I stand and cross the rug, then push the shade up an inch. It’s night out, but the lawn glows under security lights. The inner fence makes a clean black line and the trees beyond it hold their own dark. But all I can see clearly is them.
Vitaly has my mother by the arm.
Her hands are tied behind her. A cloth covers her mouth. Her hair is pinned badly. There is a dark mark on her cheek. A bruise or dirt, I can’t tell from here. Her chest moves in short, hard jerks. She looks up at the window, a plea in her eyes. She shakes her head.
She means for me to not cooperate.
As if I have a choice after seeing this.
Vitaly lifts a phone and points it toward the window. My phone vibrates in my hand. I answer because there is no world where I do not.
“You will not speak. You will listen.”
I try to swallow words that want to spill. My throat does not work.
“You will go with my father to that club tonight,” he sneers. “You will be his whore there. Do the things he wants. Make him feel good and safe. He will put the walls up around his throne for privacy, because he won’t want to share you with the perverts. Then you will find a knife tucked in his throne. You will plunge it into his chest soheknows what it is like to be stabbed in the heart by you too.”
My hand goes flat to the glass. The other keeps the phone at my ear because dropping it would feel like throwing her away. “Please.” It scrapes out of me. “Don’t hurt her. Take me. Not her.”
“This is not a negotiation, Mina.”
“She is not a part of this. You’re angry at me. Be angry at me.”
“You’re still not listening,” he says, softer and worse. “You will be sweet with him. You will make him trust you. He is stupid. He wants to believe a pretty girl like you could love a piece of shit like him. He will press the button and raise the walls around his pretend throne. The knife is under the left arm. Do you hear me?”
I hear myself breathe in a small, ugly way. “I can’t do that.” It comes out small. I hate the sound of it. “I can’t kill him.”
“Then they all die, Mina. It won’t be fast. You know how I like to take my time.”
“Please,” I say again. I hate that I am begging him. I hate that it still feels like a move he trained into me.
