Page 33 of Merciless Daddy

“Lights. Bright, or low.”

Nothing. Then, after a moment—the smallest movement—she looked at the switch panel and away from it.

“Low,” I said, and reached up without getting off the floor and brought them down until the room was just the lake and one lamp. “Better?”

Half a nod.

“Door. That one goes to the hall, and the hall goes to the service stair, and the service stair has a keypad, and the code is four-nine-one-one, and if you want it now I’ll say it again as many times as you like.” Her eyes came up and locked on mine. “Four. Nine. One. One. You can leave whenever you decide to. There are men downstairs and their job is to stop things coming in. Do you want the door open or closed?”

She looked at the door. Then, hoarse: “Open.”

I got up, opened it, and sat back down on the floor in the same place.

“Water, or tea.”

“. . .Tea.”

“Sofa, or floor.”

Her mouth opened. She hadn’t expected that one to be on the menu. Nobody had ever put it on a menu for her in her life; that was written all over her.

“Floor,” she said.

“Good.”

I reached over the arm of the sofa and took the grey blanket off the back of it. I held it out at arm’s length and left it hanging in the air between us.

She looked at it for a long moment. Then she crossed the four feet, took it out of my hand, and went down onto the carpet with her back against the wall and the blanket pulled up around her shoulders over the top of my coat, both hands fisted in the wool at her collarbone.

Olimpo waited until she’d settled. Then he came and lowered his enormous drooling head onto her knee, unasked.

“He weighs a great deal,” she said.

“Ninety-one pounds.”

“What’s his name?”

“Olimpo.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Tonio named him. He is also absurd.”

Her breath hitched, hitched again, and went short.

“Yelena.” I kept my voice low and slow, the voice for frightened men on docks and, once, a girl in a warehouse office I did not save. “Breathe out. Not in—out. All of it. Empty your chest. Then wait, and it’ll come back on its own.”

She tried. She got half of it.

“Again. Out. Longer than you want to.”

Out. Better.

“Once more. Out, and hold at the bottom, and count with me. One. Two. Three.”

She did it. Her shoulders came down off her ears by an inch, and the blue went out of her mouth, and the fist in Olimpo’s ear loosened.

“That’s it,” I said. “Good girl.”