Page 40 of Bratva Sacrifice

I collect Nicola’s phone from the top of my desk and tuck it away back in the drawer. The lock is ruined; she practically carved it out with her file.

I push my chair away from the desk and sink to my knees. Her blond hair is mussed, as if she has been pulling at it. In the cavity beneath my desk, her back is braced against one wall. Her knees are bent; her arms folded over them. Her head is buried in her arms, face obscured.

“Katya,” I say. Softly, in deference to her wounds.

Another sniffle. “Go away,” she says, and her voice is again raw. Hoarse, but without heat. Maybe she cannot manage it in this moment; maybe now she knows I am not the liar she called me.

“Is my office, koshechka. You don’t send me from it.” I thump my chest with my fist. “Come here now.”

Still she does not listen. Her shoulders tighten; her fingers curl into the thick material of her sweater. The one that says University of Illinois across the chest. She says, through an abbreviated sob, “Just leave me alone.”

More than an hour, now, she has been alone with her grief.

No—almost six years she has been alone. Who comforted her when her mother died? Who dried her tears? She is only now realizing how alone she has been. She is only now realizing that her hopes of being embraced by the rest of her family are beyond futile. And she cries now for the death of that dream.

Fuck this. I reach beneath the desk, grab a fistful of her sweater, and drag her out. Her sobs break on a wail of shock. She flails; her grief transmuted briefly into fury. But she is a small woman; it is not difficult to quell her struggles. It is less difficult still to pull her over my knees and press her face against my shoulder. She breathes in hard, wheezing pants. Her tears wet my collar. Her shoulders tremble.

I wrap one hand over the nape of her neck. “You don’t cry for them, koshechka,” I order. “You don’t do this foolish thing. They don’t give a fuck about you. So fuck them, yes?” Despite herself, her limbs soften. Her pitiful struggles ease. “And next time, when I tell you that something is not for your eyes, you listen.” I impress this order upon her with a little shake, and she sucks in a harsh breath that sounds like it burns her lungs.

Her voice is small, resentful. Still thick with these foolish tears she cries. “Why do you even care?”

“I do give a fuck about you.” Maybe I am the only one who does. Now, I think, she knows this. “For your own good, I tell you I do not want you to see these things they say.” Now her soft heart is breaking. And she turns her face into my shoulder because she has no one else to hold her.

Her shoulders pinch. She breathes, “Papa called my mom a whore.”

I know this already. I know everything he said; everything he told his worthless son to save face. That Katya’s mama tempted him. That she fucked him for his money, got pregnant on purpose to get child support from a rich man. He paints himself to be the virtuous man deceived by a conniving woman; helpless in the face of her wiles. Tells his son he begged Katya’s mama to get an abortion, offered her thousands of dollars to get rid of the problem.

And when it was too late for that, he buried her beneath an avalanche of legal documents, threatening to take from her the child he never wanted unless she kept secret his paternity so his wife would not find out how weak he had been.

Giulio sees Katya only as a liability for most of her childhood. A secret that becomes more difficult to keep as she grows, so he sends her away to boarding school, where she loses years of time with her mother who has so little of it left. It is only when he realizes that she has grown up pretty—like her mother—that she becomes an asset instead. Not a legacy, like his worthless son. But a possession to be sold or traded for more power, more prestige.

She is a tool to be used. She has never been anything more to him.

Katya sobs, “He said—he said—”

Fuck. My hand palms the back of her head, and the brokenhearted sounds she makes are smothered against my throat. “Okay, koshechka,” I tell her. “Only this once, you cry. But then you are done, and you do not think of this again.”

I feel her nod, feel her shoulders tremble. And for a few minutes she cries. She curls up, drawing her knees to her chest like she must make herself small. As if by doing this, she can compress the weight of her grief, form it into a tiny ball that will somehow hurt her less.

And then, when she has at last cried all the tears she has, she sucks in huge breath and swabs at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. She is quiet, now. Still, like she has expended all of her energy and there isn’t enough left even to push herself away from me. She whispers, “Sorry.”

A rough sound leaves my throat. “You do not apologize for this,” I say. “You do not apologize for someone else’s mistake, someone else’s foolishness.”

And this time, she obeys without protest when I send her off to bed.

Chapter Twenty

Catalina

For a few hours, I lay in bed in a strange sort of twilight state. Not like I’ve been drugged—but like I’m a dishrag that’s been wrung out and left to dry. Except I don’t dry; not really. I bury myself beneath a mound of blankets and just…drift.

Most of the time I’m alone, left to my own devices to be miserable and weepy. The staff stays clear. Alexei doesn’t. Twice he comes in while I’m curled in a ball and sniffling. Once he tears the nest of covers off of me and drags me upright by my shoulder to shove a warm glass into my hand.

“Drink,” he says, and there’s a rough, vaguely annoyed tenor to his voice, as if he can’t believe I’m still moping.

My voice is hoarse still. “What is it?” I ask, as I draw the spoon through the mixture. It has a thick, viscous appearance. Smells sweet, with a faint tang of liquor.

“Gogol-mogol,” he says. “Is good for sore throat when warm. Sometimes is eaten cold, for dessert.”