“Of course, Mr. Morozov.”
Taking the laptop back into Ava's room, I seat myself in the recliner, putting in my earbuds. With a deep breath. I open the laptop and push play on the feed. I watch how the soon to be very dead fuck hit the button on Ava's collar and left shortly afterward, smirking. She struggled furiously to find a break in the chain, a way to free herself from the bed until an enormous bodyguard came in, followed by a gray-haired woman with a vicious smile.
Ava endured this torment for almost three days.
I recognize the pattern; starving and terrorizing the trafficking victim, each moment designed to break their spirit.
The gray-haired woman gets angrier throughout the days, crueler, as Ava fights everything they do to her. By that last night, the woman seems to lose patience and leaves, her bodyguard staying behind. He goes after Ava immediately, trying to tear off her sweater and back-handing her when she shoves him away. She must be half his size, but she's fighting back with a ferocity that tells me she knows her life - or her sanity, at least - is on the line.
At one point, I have to put it on the feed on pause and get up, walking the hallway for a minute, taking deep breaths to compose myself before I put my fist through the drywall. Oneof my mother's backup doctors and a nurse are standing by the nurse’s station, watching me.
Clearing my throat, “Would one of you bring me a cup of coffee?” I say formally. “Black, if you would.”
The doctor looks more sympathetic than terrified as her gaze darts between me and Ava's door. I'm sure she's read her file and has some idea of what happened. “I'll have someone bring it in along with a sandwich,” she says gently. “You probably haven't eaten in a while. It will help.”
“Thank you,” I force myself to sound composed and not like someone who wants to take a sledgehammer and tear apart half the building.
Ava's face glows in the bluish light of her monitors as I return, her now clean silver-blonde hair spread across her pillow. Her mouth twists, her fingers gripping her blanket as she moans.
Gently putting my hand on her cheek, I lean close, murmuring, “You're safe. No one will hurt you again, I swear it. You're safe here, try to sleep, Malen'kaya Soroka.” Her head turns into the warmth of my hand and another soft sigh escapes her lips before she goes back into full sleep. I wait for a minute; my tall frame bent over her uncomfortably until the doctor brings in my coffee.
She runs a quick check on the monitors and makes a few notes. “Miss Blue is doing much better,” she whispers. “She came in extremely dehydrated and clearly hadn't eaten for a couple of days, but the fluids have helped her enormously. Even the burns around her neck seem to be healing well. Dr. Morozova reached out to a medical researcher in Switzerland, who had been developing burn gels. He had a supplier here that was able to deliver them shortly after Miss Blue was admitted.”
“That's good to hear,” I say. “Thank you…” I check her tag. “Dr. Marcus.” Her hand reaches up to lightly pat my arm, and thinks the better of it.
Maybe I am as forbidding as my father.
She turns to leave quietly, shutting the door behind her.
Bolstered by the coffee and the sandwich. I press play again, for the final minutes of the feed. Ava’s suffering - and mine - is rewarded as I watch her end the son of a bitch. He has her by the neck, choking her on her knees. His pants are down and he’s so intent on getting his dick stuffed into her unwilling mouth that he doesn't see her hand come up. She's holding a shard of glass, a bit of torn cloth wrapped around it and she slices it quickly across his thigh. Like Mother said, two quick, precise cuts as his eyes bulge, his fist dropping from her neck as he stumbles back, blood spurting from his femoral artery like a geyser.
I smile as he crumples against the floor. My only regret is that I couldn’t finish him myself. Staggering her way into the kitchen, Ava comes back clutching a rubber cleaning glove. Tearing off a bit of it with her teeth, she stuffs it between the two silver connectors at the top of the front door and the wall panel turns from red to green. Ava rips open the door, jolting as her collar is activated, and she races out into the hallway as the last audio on the feed is her scream for help.
I know what happens then.
Embedded into my memory, her little body racing down the hall to me, torn and battered as a bird with a broken wing, still determined to fly free.
***
Malen'kaya soroka - Russian for Little Magpie
Pakhan - the head of a Russian bratva
Sovietnik - Second in command in the power structure of a bratva.
Chapter Ten
In which Ava cannot get over Dmitri's perfectly symmetrical eyebrows.
Ava…
Like the last few times I regained consciousness, I sit up with a shriek, grabbing at the tube inserted into my hand.
“Hush,Malen'kaya soroka.You’re safe.” A warm hand holds my flailing one. “Don’t rip out the IV. You’ve already done that once.”
Focusing, I suck in a slow breath. “Dmitri?”
“How are you feeling?” he asks. His tie is gone, the sleeves rolled up on his dress shirt, and there are dark shadows under his eyes.
