“But wouldn’t it be nice if it weren’t? And you’re right—I do mean like you, Vitali. Because a young boy should have a place to go. I wish you had a place to go.”
“Then I wouldn’t have met you,” he said flatly. “What do you want to do? I’ll find the funds, within reason, but I can’t guarantee what happens once it’s in motion. Things have a way of serving someone else’s purpose eventually.”
“I’ll think on it,” I said.
I had no answers, maybe no one did, but knowing he would make it happen meant everything.
“Thank you, Vitali.”
* * *
The next day, I received the call.
Vitali was already gone. It was early enough in the day that nothing good could possibly be happening on the other end of the line, but I’d grown used to ‘nothing good’and picked up anyway.
It was Boris, not someone I was accustomed to having around. He never called me before, but the guys watching Mama’s apartment always switched off and he could have been on duty. My stomach immediately dropped when I heard his voice.
“You’d better come here,” he said. There was no background noise. “I can pick you up in thirty.”
“I’ll take a taxi.” I was already wrapping the scarf around my neck with one foot in a shoe.
“I’m going to insist I pick you up.”
I didn’t fight. I did call Vitali immediately upon hanging up, but he didn’t answer. Not even on the second ring.
Boris arrived earlier than he said, but wouldn’t give me any information when I began questioning him about Mama and Maxim. Eventually, he told me to ‘shut the fuck up,’ and it was no longer a friendly car ride. Misha spoke to me that way, and he was theonlyone I’d tolerate it from.
It didn’t take long to figure out we weren’t going to Mama’s.
Forty minutes in, I began looking for stoplights where I could open the door and make a run for it, but he noticed and casually locked the doors.
“Are you going to kill me?” I asked.
“No,” he huffed. “Calm down. Sergei wants to see you, that’s all.”
“Where is Vitali?”
“Working. He doesn’t need to be there. It won’t take long.”
That turned out to be a lie, but I knew that right away. No one who has ever been kidnapped would describe it as‘not taking long.’
We pulled up to the same offices where I’d originally met Sergei, but there were more cars up front and far more people in the hallways. Some I recognized, but most of them were unsmiling strangers who paid me no mind.
Sergei was back behind the desk with an air-thickening cigar hanging at the corner of his mouth.
“How are you, Katya?” he asked. I would not be offered juicethis time.
“Fine, thank you,” I said, sitting down at Boris’s insistent glare.
“Sorry to hear about your blond friend,” Sergei said, “but I said I’d find her—didn’t I?”
“Vitali found her…” I muttered.
He chuckled and took his glasses off. “Is that so? I don’t think so. But I did give him a call when I did. Should I have called you, Katya? Well my apologies. Our businesswasour own, wasn’t it? That’s why I wanted you to stop by. I have something you can do to repay me.”
What could I say? The last time I saw Sergei wasn’t a pleasant one, and whatever he was going to suggest would hopefully get me out of his office. Could put me in a much worse place, but arguing with him would accomplish nothing either.
“Alright.”
