My pen stilled on the notepad. "Online?"
"Da. We talk... three months? Maybe four. He knew about my mother sick, about my no job. He offered work. Secretary, hesaid. Good pay. Help with visa." She laughed, bitter and sharp. "I was stupid."
"You weren't stupid. You were targeted."
"He knew things. Personal things. Things I only tell my diary app." Her fingers worried at the bandages again. "How he knew?"
I didn't answer because I couldn't. Not without admitting I'd once asked Gabriel the same question about how he'd found me, chosen me, known exactly which wounds to salt with promises.
"Can you describe him? The man from the dating site?"
She did. Medium height, brown hair, accent that could have been anywhere from Eastern Europe. Forgettable face, memorable charm. Could have been any of a dozen traffickers. Could have been none of them. These men were interchangeable in their methods—find the vulnerable, offer salvation, spring the trap once trust was established.
"Thank you, Katya. You've been very helpful."
"The blood woman." She said it suddenly, eyes finding mine. "That was you. Who cut the chains."
I nodded, unsure what she wanted. An apology? An explanation?
"Spasibo," she whispered.Thank you.
The next interview was worse. Mina from Syria, barely eighteen, recruited through a refugee aid organization. Someone had offered her family passage to Germany, safe transit, help with asylum paperwork. The same phrases echoed: "He seemed legitimate." "He knew about our situation." "He offered exactly what we needed."
By the time I reached Alina, the Romanian girl from my transport van, patterns were screaming in my head. Seventeen women, eleven different recruitment methods, but all with the same careful grooming. The same patient manipulation. Thesame intimate knowledge of their vulnerabilities that should have been impossible for strangers to possess.
"He knew about my ex," Alina whispered. "About the bruises. Said he could protect me. Get me modeling work in America, far from Dragos."
"How did he know about your ex?"
"I... I wrote about it. Online journal. Private posts." Her eyes welled. "He quoted things. Exact words. Said he understood my pain."
My hand cramped around the pen. Gabriel had quoted things that I had said or done to. Little phrases that proved he'd been listening, watching, caring about the small hurts I'd thought I was whispering into the void.
"Did he seem to know things about your routine? Your schedule?"
"Everything. When I worked, what route I walked home, which café I stopped at on Thursdays." She shuddered. "I thought it was romantic. That he paid attention."
The interview room felt too small, air too thin. I finished with Alina, gathered my notes with hands that wanted to shake, and escaped to the hallway. Nathan was waiting, coffee in hand, reading my unraveling in the set of my shoulders.
"How many more?" I asked.
"Four. But we can finish tomorrow if—"
"No. I need to hear them all."
The next four confirmed what I already knew but couldn't yet articulate. Each woman targeted with surgical precision. Each vulnerability exploited with perfect timing. Each recruitment following patterns I recognized like looking in a warped mirror.
The last interview broke me.
Her name was Elena, and she was twenty-three, my age when Gabriel found me. Russian literature student, wrote poetryon a small blog, worked in a bookstore to pay for her mother's medication. She'd been approached by an older man who quoted Pushkin, who understood her writing, who offered her a position cataloging his personal library in America.
"He said I reminded him of someone," she whispered. "Someone special he'd lost. Said I had the same... how do you say... quality?"
"Quality?"
"Like light through water, he said. Delicate but persistent." She met my eyes. "Strange thing to say, yes? But it made me feel seen."
I stood abruptly, chair scraping. "Excuse me. I need—bathroom."
