Mrs. Henderson. The foster mother who sold her.
I file that away. Add it to the list of people who will pay.
We eat together. She tells me about her life—the group homes, the foster families who never kept her, the Hendersons who pretended to care. I listen. Ask questions. Learn the shape of her wounds.
"She said they were going to help me find a job," Lily says, staring at her soup. "She wouldn't even look at me when she said it."
"I'll find them," I say. "The Hendersons."
Her head snaps up. "What?"
"They sold you. They'll pay for that."
"Leonid, you don't have to—"
"I want to." I hold her gaze. "No one hurts what's mine."
The words hang between us. Heavy. Possessive. True.
She should be afraid. Instead, she looks at me with something that might be wonder.
"You mean that," she says softly.
"I always mean what I say."
The days develop a rhythm.
I leave for work. She stays. When I come back, there's food—each attempt more ambitious than the last. Pasta with garlic and butter. Roasted chicken that's slightly overdone but made with such obvious effort that I eat every bite. Scrambled eggs in the morning because she noticed I don't eat breakfast and decided that was unacceptable.
She's nesting. Making space for herself in my life, one meal at a time.
I should stop it. Should maintain distance, keep the walls intact, remember that attachments are weakness.
Instead, I find myself looking forward to coming home. To the smell of food. To the sight of her in my kitchen, wearing my shirts, humming under her breath while she stirs something on the stove.
Dangerous.
The word has become a refrain. A warning I keep ignoring.
One evening, I come home to find her curled up on the couch, completely absorbed in the phone I gave her a few days ago.
She'd never had one before. The Hendersons wouldn't allow it—too expensive, they said, though they had no problem spending money on their own habits. The traffickers certainly didn't give her one. When I handed it to her, she'd stared at it like I'd given her a foreign object.
"Two rules," I'd told her. "Don't post your location. Keep your accounts private. No photos that show the building or the view. That's it."
She'd nodded, still staring at the phone. "That's... reasonable."
"I'm not trying to control you. But there are people who would use you to get to me. To the Bratva. Your safety depends on discretion."
"I understand."
Now she's on it constantly. Not posting—just looking. Saving things. Building something.
"What are you doing?" I ask, settling into the chair across from her.
She startles, tries to hide the screen. "Nothing."
"Lily."
