I laugh, a harsh, grating sound. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know more than you think."
"You know what I told you. You know the facts. But you don't know—" My voice breaks, and I have to stop and try to breathe. "You don't know what it's like to be so broken that you can't even trust yourself anymore. You don't know what it's like to be so afraid all the time that you can't remember what it feels like to be safe."
"You're right," he says, and his voice is softer now. "I don't know what that's like. But I know what it's like to lose someone to that world. I know what it's like to be too late."
Something in his tone makes me stop and look at him. There's pain in his eyes, raw and old and deeper than I’ve ever seen it before.
"What do you mean?" I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
He's quiet for a long moment, and I think he's not going to answer. Then he takes a breath, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion.
"I had a sister," he says. "Anya. She was a little younger than me. When I was twelve and she was ten, we were still living in Russia. My father was—" He pauses, his jaw tightening. "He was a drunk. A gambler. He owed money to the wrong people."
I feel my stomach drop at the sadness in his words, the hopelessness that already tells me this story doesn’t have a good ending.
"They took her," he continues, his voice flat now, emotionless as if he's feeling too much rather than nothing at all. "Aspayment. Collateral against the debts, maybe. I don't know. I was twelve. I didn't understand. All I knew was that one day she was there, and the next day she was gone."
"Kazimir—"
“When my father still didn’t pay, they came to our house and killed him, in front of me and my mother. Broke his legs and shot him in front of us. Then they dumped Anya on the carpet in our living room.” He stops, and the silence stretches out, heavy and terrible.
"She was ten years old," he says finally. "Ten years old, and she'd been—" His voice breaks, and he has to stop, has to breathe. "They'd destroyed her. Completely destroyed her. She couldn't speak. She couldn't look at anyone. She just sat in the corner and stared at nothing."
Tears are streaming down my face now, and I don't even try to stop them.
"We tried to get her help," he continues. "Therapy, medication, everything we could afford. My mother sold everything we had. It wasn’t easy to find someone who would see her. But it wasn't enough, anyway. Three months after we got her back, she—" He stops again, and when he speaks, his voice is barely audible. "She hanged herself in her bedroom. I was the one who found her."
"Oh God," I whisper. "Kazimir, I'm so?—"
"I was thirteen years old," he says in a harsh whisper, "and I couldn't save her. I couldn't protect her. I couldn't do anything but watch her suffer and then watch her die."
He looks at me then, and his eyes are bright. I realize with a start that it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a man on the verge of tears.
"So when I saw you in that cell" he says, "when I saw what they were doing to you, what they were going to keep doing to you—I couldn't walk away. I couldn't be too late again. I couldn'tlet another girl be destroyed by monsters. And I—" He sounds as if he chokes for a moment on emotion. “It’s my fault you ended up there. I should have left that warehouse with you. Made sure you were safe, no matter what Ilya said. I should have prioritized you over him, because even then, I?—”
His voice cracks, and I see tears spill down his cheeks. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe. Everything makes sense now—his intensity, his desperation, his need to save me. It was never really about me at all. It was about her. About the sister he couldn't save.
"I'm not your sister," I say softly.
"I know that." His voice is taut and hard. "This isn't about replacing her or redeeming myself for not being able to save her or any of that psychological bullshit. This is about you. About the fact that you deserve better than what they did to you. About the fact that I want you—not because you remind me of her, but because you're strong and brave and beautiful and I can't imagine my life without you in it anymore. Because I’m trying to redeem myself for not saving you. For leaving you to the wolves when I should have known you wouldn’t be safe."
He reaches for me, his hand cupping my face, his thumb brushing away my tears. "I know you don't trust me," he murmurs. "I know you think this is all some game, some manipulation. But I swear to you, Svetlana, I swear on my sister's grave—I want you. I want this baby. I want to build a life with you. A real life. A safe life."
I swallow hard, looking at him in the darkness. “My father was the one who sold me,” I whisper. “When I failed to get Ilya to marry me. After I left the warehouse alone, I went home. He saw the state I was in and asked what the hell happened. I told him everything. I told him, finally, that Ilya broke off the engagement. He was furious. He told me to go to my room, and locked me in. I was in there for two days before he put me on aplane, and I ended up in Moscow. I didn’t know until then that he’d sold me to Iosef. Iosef was the one who filled it all in—who told me that I was a lost cause, a failed investment, and my father was just getting what he could out of me. A daughter who wasn’t even a virgin any longer, so he had to find a buyer who had certain… tastes in order to get the price he wanted.”
I'm crying harder now, my whole body shaking with sobs I can't control. He pulls me close, and this time I don't fight it. I let him hold me, let him stroke my hair, let him murmur soft words in Russian that I don't understand but that sound like he’s comforting me—maybe comforting us both.
“Fuck him,” Kazimir growls. “Fuck all of them. One day I’ll make them pay, Svetlana. You didn’t deserve any of that. And you’ll never endure anything like that again, so long as I’m alive.”
I pull back slightly, looking at his face. I can’t see anything but sincerity there. Nothing but an absolute belief that everything he’s saying is the utter truth.
And then, before I can think better of it, I tilt my face up and kiss him.
It's not like the other kisses we've shared—hungry and desperate and full of anger. This is soft and tentative, vulnerable. His lips are gentle against mine, and his hand cradles my face, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone. It’s like no other kiss I’ve ever had before.
For a moment, everything else falls away. There's no Iosef or Ilya or my father, no danger, no fear. There's just this—his mouth on mine, his arms around me, the feeling that maybe I could let myself believe in this. That maybe I could let myself believe in him.
