Andrei and Ilya walk in, and when Nina’s parents see them, I worry for a second they might actually shit themselves. Good. I want them to have a small taste of the fear their daughter felt.
“Watch them while we pack,” I say before grabbing the boxes and packing tape that they’re holding and following Nina to her room. Even as pissed as I am, I can’t help but smile when I look around the room we’re standing in. There are a few framed photos of her from when she was younger and a bookcase that’s crammed full of books. A small, flat-screen TV sits on her dresser, and on her bed there’s a stuffed pink dog that looks like it’s seen better days. She follows my gaze and blushes.
“I’ve had it since I was little. I know it’s silly, but I can’t seem to part with it.”
“It’s not silly. I used to sleep with a stuffed bear,” I admit, leaving out the small detail that I’d slept with the damn thing until I was ten and only stopped because I lost it one summer when we’d gone to the lake for the day. Volodya was eight and Valeri was three, and we’d shared a bed. I can still remember crying myself to sleep and hoping like hell my baby brothers wouldn’t hear me. I’ve always wanted to be strong for them, and crying over a lost teddy bear isn’t a badge of courage.
I start making boxes and hand her one. “Pack up anything and everything you want.” I make a few more boxes and point to her overflowing bookshelves. “You want all of these, right?”
“Is that okay? I don’t have to if it’s a pain in the ass.”
“It’s not a pain in the ass. I want you to have your things.”
She starts working on one side of the room, and I take the other, boxing books and anything else she points out. It doesn’t take long before we’ve packed everything she wants.
“Do you want any furniture?”
Looking around, she points to a small wooden cabinet with delicate flowers painted along the doors. “I’d like to keep that. It was my grandma’s.”
I grab it, expecting it to be lighter than it is, but it’s an old piece of furniture and built to last. Setting it down by the boxes, we take one last look around, making sure she has everything she wants before heading back downstairs. Andrei and Ilya are watching something on Ilya’s phone, laughing and ignoring Nina’s parents. Her mom has gone back to her righteous indignation look, but her dad still looks like he might shit himself.
“Say goodbye to your parents, Nina, and then wait for me in the car.”
She hesitates, so I cup her face and kiss her forehead. “I never break my word,zolotse. Please trust me.”
“I do trust you,” she says, and then squares her shoulders before turning to face her parents. “I can’t believe you left me there. I kept telling myself that you didn’t know what kind of place that was, that you never would’ve brought me there had you known, but that’s not true, is it? You knew exactly what would happen to me, and you still left me there.”
She angrily wipes away a tear when her dad says, “Honey, I swear we didn’t know. That woman swore it was just a harmless job in the lounge. She called me to tell me you’d left, and now those men that I owe money to are going to come after me, Nina.”
He’s so fucking pathetic I can barely stand to look at him. He takes a step forward like he’s going to reach for her, but I shoot my hand out to stop him. Tapping his chest hard enough to get my point across, I say, “That’s as close as you’re going to fucking get to her.”
Turning his attention back to Nina because he knows there’s no sympathy to be had from me, he begs, “Can’t you call her and try to work something out? Maybe there’s another job they’d agree to let you do there that didn’t involve, you know.” His voice trails off at the end, too big of a fucking pussy to say the words.
I’ve had all I can take. “Are you seriously suggesting that your daughter go back to the place where she was repeatedly raped just to save your pathetic ass?”
“I’m just trying to find a solution,” he says, starting to get pissed.
“Why don’t you go whore yourself out then?” His face pales at my words. I give a harsh laugh and shake my head. “Not so appealing when it’s your ass on the line, is it?”
“It’s okay,” Nina says, grabbing my hand and giving me a small smile, encouraging me to calm down. For her, I do. I take a deep breath and wrap my arm around her, letting her presence calm me in a way that nothing else ever has. Usually when I get angry, someone ends up very bloody and in several pieces, but Nina helps me to rein that part of myself in. There will be blood before I leave this house, but it’ll be when I’m back in control of myself.
When Nina’s sure I’m okay, she turns back to her dad. “Stop lying to me. I know you both knew what would be expected of me.” She gives her dad a pointed look, and I’m so goddamn proud of her for standing up for herself. “Ask me how I know that, Dad.”
When his face goes even paler, she turns to her mom. “How about you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her mom huffs, but she’s looking everywhere but at her daughter.
“Well, allow me to enlighten you. You knew, Dad, because you’re a fucking customer of Ruby’s.”
“Richard,” her mom gasps in what I’m assuming she thinks is coming across as authentic outrage, but it’s as fake as everything else about her. “How could you?”
Richard at least is done pretending. He turns to glare at his wife. “Stop the innocent act, Jessica. You knew. We both knew.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “I’m sorry,” he says to Nina, but I’m not buying it. No one changes that quickly. He’s still just trying to save his own ass.
Luckily, Nina isn’t buying it either. She looks at him with pity and shakes her head softly. “I’m sorry too, Dad. You guys were never great parents, but I assumed we’d continue to have some sort of relationship throughout my life, but all that’s over now. I’m leaving, and I never want to see either one of you ever again. You’re not a part of my new life, and you never will be.”
“Your new life?” her mom spits out with a laugh. She waves a hand at me. “With your tattooed thug of a husband?”
Nina looks up at me and gives me a big smile. Her dark eyes are lit up with genuine warmth and seeing it has me cupping her face and pulling her closer. “I like my tattooed husband,” she says, making me laugh. “And he’s not a thug. He rescued me from that awful place that you, my own fucking parents, put me in.”
