“I miss Anya,” she said.
That was another strike against me. I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid crying or replying.
She stopped suddenly, tugging on my hand. I doubled back to look down at her, wincing at the delay to hurry off to nowhere in particular. She was already getting so big that I couldn’t easily carry her. I was too short. She was too tall. I needed her cooperation to walk with me.
“I wanna go home.”
I sighed. “Maisie, we just need to have a little break from being with Sergei.”
That felt like a lie too. Now knowing that he was responsible for the death of her father, I wasn’t sure if I could ever see ourselves back in his home anymore. Nothing felt certain. I had no idea of where to take my daughter and keep her as safe as she was there.
Maybe I could look up Rosa. She might let us stay at her place.
Maisie wouldn’t budge. She tugged on my hand and pouted at me. “Mommy, I don’t want to be out here.”
“Baby girl, we just need to?—”
Her eyes opened wide with fear. She shrank back, as if fearing me. “Mommy, let’s go!”
It was too late. Her alarm was too abrupt.
I turned to see what had spooked her just as a man ran up from behind me. His arms were out, reaching for me. Despite the big step back that I took, his fingers found purchase and curled around the fabric of my sleeve.
“No!” I screamed it, experiencing such a drastic hit of déjà vu that I cried out as loud as I could. Grabbing Maisie close, I hugged her and blocked her with my body as the man yanked me backward.
“No! Someone, help!”
My cries didn’t matter. No one heard. If they did, they didn’t come rushing to assist me. This time, Sergei didn’t magically show up like he had the last time this specific incident happened.
Fighting and wrestling to shake off the man’s grip, I refused to loosen my arms on my daughter. We couldn’t be separated. They couldn’t pry her away. It was up to me, and no one else, to keep her close and protect her from these street thugs.
Maisie screamed and cried, panicking and clinging to me. The man resisted my futile attempts to break away. I kicked, I elbowed, I even bit one man’s hand. It did us no good, though. Because once the first man grabbed us, others showed up. They all spoke in that slurred Russian accent, reminding me too clearly of when Sergei fought off the men the other time.
They had to be the same. These street thugs had to belong to the same group that had targeted me before.
Once it was clear that I couldn’t fight them back, I focused on holding Maisie close. Of keeping her in my arms, then on my lap as they forced us into a van.
Maisie buried her face against me, pushing into my embrace as if she could shield herself from the horror of our being snatched off the street like this.
They shoved us into the cargo space and sped off, without a question, not speaking a single demand.
Nothing. They took us like it was their job, and no matter how many times I yelled at them to let us go, to ask what they wanted, and also to threaten them that they’d never get away with this, they either ignored me or laughed me off.
“Or what, huh, bitch?” one taunted. He turned to smirk at me through the window that separated the cargo area and the cab space. “Let you go or elsewhat?”
“Or else!” I yelled back, letting all my protective instincts rise up and keep me mad. So long as Maisie was here and captured with me, I’d be a fierce mama bear to defend her.
“Or else your boyfriend’s gonna come and kill us?” he replied, laughing at me. “Is that it? If we try to take you and your brat, Sergei Orlov’s gonna come after us?”
I clamped my lips shut, unable to go there.
Sergei had. He had gone after these men before to keep me and Maisie safe.
But I’d left. I’d wanted distance from him, something I warred with now. I had been safe there, but at what cost of my integrity and conscience could I have stayed there when I knew he was Fitz’s killer?
“Maybe that’s his goal,” the driver said, laughing with the other. “Maybe he killed her husband because he wanted her all for himself.”
I held my breath, furious all over again. Covering Maisie’s ears was all I could try to do to shield her from this violence. The first time the men spoke up and cursed, I’d put my hands over her ears to shelter her. I prayed she didn’t hear that part about her father. About the protector she was attached to.
