“Never mind. Stupid question.” She shook her head. “With all those bruises, she was clearly beaten and suffering for a long time.”
I cleared my throat, knowing it would be futile to keep anything from her. Because our gaits couldn’t match, I released my arm from around her. She’d have Ivan to lean on soon enough. The second he saw my texts, he’d come.
“Well, the X-rays showed previously broken bones.”
She nodded.
That was also how we’d been able to determine her identity. The doctor who’d come on the house call for Sadie had suggested running a check with dental records. With no identity on Kalina and with her face so bruised, we guessed that we’d need to wait for her to wake up and tell us who she was.
Which sure as hell didn’t happen.
She had only woken up today, two days after I’d found her. And the state of utter panic that shone from her scared eyes told me that she wouldn’t be open to speaking at all.
“She was terrified, Alexsei.” Raisa furrowed her brow. “Like a scared animal. She looked at me like she expected me to hurt her or something.”
“Maybe with time, she’ll open up and tell us more.”
She scoffed. “My husband can get it right out of his head that he can interrogate her.”
Ivan did say that he wanted to question her. That was his job. He negotiated. He arranged deals. He also got prisoners to fess up.
Kalina wasn’t a prisoner.
She was… a refugee.
A victim I’d managed to save from freezing to death at just the last minute.
The doctor confirmed that she wouldn’t have lasted longer. It was a miracle that she hadn’t gotten frostbite from whatever led her to end up on that bench. Simon was tracking through surveillance footage for what could’ve led to her getting to that bench.
Dehydrated. Malnourished. Beaten.
And so damn scared.
Raisa noticed how her cousin had viewed her as a threat, but I witnessed the pure shock that led to her defense mechanism of shutting down.
She’d clearly experienced trauma.
But what?
“I don’t think I can be mad at you for not telling me at first,” Raisa admitted. She stopped at the end of the hallway. Ivan was here, just now entering through the front and hurrying toward us.
“I didn’t want you to be shocked,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to keep you from her. But when I brought her here, I didn’t even know if itwasher.”
She nodded sadly as Ivan joined us.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” He peered at Raisa, then glanced at me.
“Let’s go in the lounge and talk before the boys are home,” I said. Luka had gone with Emil to pick them up today.
Together, Raisa and I told Ivan about the chaotic moment Kalina had woken up. The room was under surveillance, too, so he could watch it all. The others could too. Gabriella found us and joined us mid-conversation, so we caught her up too.
About how terrified Kalina was.
How she fought to break free.
None of us knew what to do about her, but from the gauntness of her face and the weakness of her body, it was clear that she needed to rest. To recharge. That IV was to help bring her further from the brink of starvation and to hydrate her.
Luka and Emil joined us with the boys. One look at us had Gabriella and Sadie suggesting they keep Misha, Lev, and Andre busy in the kitchen. Allan could supervise the baby monitors while the girls napped.
