That word feels completely foreign to me now.
There's a black SUV idling in the clearing, exhaust puffing white in the frigid air. The last of the armed men opens the back door, and I climb in. Kazimir appears a moment later, sliding into the seat beside me. He doesn't look at me or say anything.
The SUV starts moving, and I watch the safe house disappear behind us.
—
The driveto the airstrip takes four hours. Kazimir spends most of it on the phone, speaking in rapid Russian to people I don't know. Making arrangements, I imagine, covering our tracks. I stare out the window and say nothing, watching the snow blow by as the storm gradually recedes. When we reach the airstrip—a small private field in the middle of nowhere— I can see a sliver of blue sky near where there's a plane waiting.
The old Svetlana might have thought it was a good omen. A harbinger of things getting better from here. And yes, we have made it out, so long as Iosef and his men don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere to drag me back, so long as we have a safe flight home.
Buthomedoesn’t mean the same thing any longer. Boston isn’t the same for me now, either. My father sold me. I don’t know if my apartment is still mine. If my things are still there. If I’ll be safe in the city.
My connections are no longer of use to me; they would just lead my father right to me. I have no idea what I’m going to do or what my life is going to look like… but at least I’ll be free of Iosef, and Pyotr, and Grigory, and the others.
I climb the stairs into the plane, Kazimir behind me, the men following us. The interior is uncomfortable and mostly metal, with seats against the walls and heavy harnesses to buckle us in. It’s no private jet, but as long as it takes me away from here, I don’t care.
I choose a seat near the window and buckle in. Kazimir takes the seat across from me, and for a moment, our eyes meet.
I look away first.
The plane takes off, and I watch Russia fall away beneath us. The forests and snow, the vast emptiness. The country that nearly killed me.
Good fucking riddance.
The flight to Boston is long.
I shift in my seat, trying to find a position that doesn't hurt. Everything aches. The old scars on my calves and feet send sharp jolts of pain up my legs with every small movement. The bruises on my ribs make breathing difficult—shallow breaths, nothing too deep, or the pain becomes unbearable. Everything that I briefly forgot hurt when Kazimir and I were tangled up together is back in full force, all of the things those men did to me mapped out across my skin. And between my legs, the soreness is a constant, throbbing reminder of what happened in that safe house.
Of what I let happen.
Of what I wanted to happen, even though I shouldn't have.
I press my thighs together and immediately regret it. The movement sends a fresh wave of discomfort through my core, and I have to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.
Kazimir is across from me, his eyes closed, but I don't think he's sleeping. His jaw is too tight, his shoulders too tense. He's just avoiding looking at me.
Good.I don't want him looking at me anyway.
I turn back to the window, watching the landscape below. We're still over Russia, the endless expanse of forest and snow stretching out in all directions beneath the clouds. I can imagine that it looks peaceful from up here. Beautiful, even.
But I know what's down there. I know what happens in those forests, in those isolated compounds where no one can hear you scream.
What I remember most isn’t the pain, though there was plenty of that. Not even the violation itself, though that was bad enough. It was the laughter. The way they'd joke with each other while they did it. The way they'd comment on my body, on my reactions, like I was a piece of meat they were evaluating.
"She's tight," one of them had said once, grunting as he forced himself inside me. "Ilya's loss is our gain." The others had laughed. And when he finished—when he came inside me without asking, without caring, like it was his right—he'd pulled out and slapped my thigh.
"Good girl," he'd said, like I was a dog that had performed a trick.
Then the next one would take his turn.
I'd learned to go somewhere else in my mind when I’d fought as much as I could, and I couldn’t any longer. To detach. To let them use my body while I floated somewhere above it, watching from a distance. But I couldn't detach from the feeling of them finishing inside me. That was the part I couldn't escape. The hot, wet sensation. The way they'd groan and thrust deeper, making sure I felt every second of it. The way they'd stay inside me for a moment after, like they were marking their territory.
And then they'd pull out, and I'd feel it dripping down my thighs, and I'd want to die. I'd wanted to die so many times in that cell. But I didn't. I survived.
And then Kazimir came.
And last night, in that safe house, when he was inside me, and I felt him getting close?—
