“Get the car out of the garage. I need to pick up a few things,” I said without looking at him.
Radovan moved without a word.
I wandered back to my room to collect my purse and shoes. I didn’t opt for the safe comfortable ones. I picked up the black shiny ones with the three-inch heel — those and my wedding shoes were the only high heels I owned, which said something about the life I had been living before all of this.
I checked my purse for pads and tampons before making my way outside.
Radovan was already in the car. Spartak stood beside the rear passenger door, rubbing his hands together against the cold, his breath coming out in small clouds.
“Good morning, Mrs Dragunov,” he grinned, and opened the door.
I smiled and got in. The door slammed shut.
“I’d like Spartak to drive,” I said, looking out of the window.
Silence.
Then the front passenger door opened.
“You drive,” Radovan snapped.
“Sure.”
His grumbling could be heard all around the car. He only closed his fat snitching mouth when he dropped himself into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with more force than was strictly necessary.
“I’d like a three-foot radius today,” I said, once they were both settled.“And for shopping in female sections—the pharmacy, lingerie shops—you are to remain beside the doors. Is that understood?”
Spartak stared at me in the rearview mirror with his mouth open.
“Da,” he said, once he had recovered.
Radovan was silent.
Spartak began to pull away.
“Stop.”
The brakes went on.
“We’re not going anywhere until he agrees. Or I get a replacementbyki.”
Nobody moved.
I waited.
“Da,” Radovan spat out, as though the word had been extracted against his will.
I relaxed back into my seat.
Spartak pulled away.
The silence was deafening. I didn’t care.
It was time to make a dent in those cards he gave me.
Chapter 21
Vadim
