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“Nothing will happen to her.” I tell her firmly, just enough to be believed. “You have my word—”
Katerina scoffs, but I press on. “—for whatever you currently think that’s worth. She picked out her own stuffed puppy and named it Pancake. She’s fine, Doctor. And she’ll stay fine, because you and I are going to come to an arrangement.”
Silence. Her free hand has found the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening.
“So tell me,” she says in that same flat voice. “What do you want? Money? Territory? Because you should be talking to my cousins, not to me. I’m not part of that world. I don’t have anything of value.”
I shake my head. She believes it, too, which is astounding. She genuinely cannot imagine what she has.
“I’m not interested in your cousins’ money. I have my own.” I lean back, watching her pace into frame and out of it, the phone pressed so hard to her ear it must hurt. “What I want, Dr. Sokolov, can’t be wired or signed over. What I want is time. Yours.”
There’s a very long pause as Katerina stops pacing. “Time,” she says slowly.
“Thirty days,” I tell her and the words come out of me easily. “You come to me voluntarily. You stay as my guest—your own rooms, my word that no harm comes to you—and you spend thirty days learning who I am. Not what your cousins will tell you I am, once they’ve dug up my name. Not what tonight has already made you decide I am. Who I am. You eat dinner with me. You talk to me. You look at me. That’s the price.”
On the monitor she’s gone completely still, and I watch confusion move across her face as her lips part in surprise. A smile curves my mouth. This isn’t the ransom she’s braced for.
“At the end of those thirty days,” I continue, “Seraphina goes home to her parents without a scratch on her. The child’s safety was never the variable—you are. And when it’s over, if you look me in the eye and tell me I’m exactly the monster you decided I was tonight…” The next words bother me more than I expected. “Then I’ll vanish from your life, and your family will never hear my name again. You have my word.”
The silence this time is even longer. The water glass hangs forgotten in her hand.
“That’s—” She stops and clears her throat before she starts again. “You want me to—what, to know you? That’s the ransom?” Her laugh comes out with no humor in it. “You breach a fortified estate and steal a two year old. You terrorize an entire family—and your demand is that I get to know you?” She slaps her palm down on the island and I can hear it through the phone. She’s angry now and I can see it by how her spine is ramrod straight. “Do you hear yourself? Whoever you are, whatever you think a month is going to prove—I already know everything I need to. Tonight told me everything."
“Tonight told you what I’m capable of,” I correct. “Not why.”
Her laugh is harsh. “There is no why that survives what you did tonight.”
“Thirty days, Doctor,” I tell her. “We’ll see.”
“And if I say no? If I tell you to go to hell and my family hunts you down instead?”
“Then you’d be gambling a two year old’s ride home on your cousins finding in days what they couldn’t prevent in seconds.” I say it gently, nearly regretfully. “We both know you won’t, Doctor. Not because of me. Because of who you are.”
“You don’t know the first thing about who I am,” she snaps, her voice trembling a little.
I know everything about who you are, I could tell her. Everything except the one thing I’m buying with thirty days.
Her breath comes down the line, ragged, and when she speaks again the contempt could strip paint. It’s glorious. “Why me? Out of everyone—why me?”
The truth presses against my teeth, two years of it, eleven hundred days of it.
Because you saved me and forgot about me. Because I have been patient longer than I’ve ever been patient for anything, and you are the only thing in this world I could not simply buy or take.
“You’ll have thirty days to ask me that in person,” I say instead.
“At least tell me where—”
“A private estate, upstate. Far from the city. It’s completely secure. More secure than the brownstone your cousin built around you, and yes, I know exactly what he built.” Her gasp sounds down the line but I continue on. “You’ll have your own rooms. You’ll be treated well.” I check the clock. “You come alone, Doctor. That part is not negotiable. Your cousin’s detail—the gray Suburban at the corner, the walker doing irregular loops, and the man in the alley—they stay behind. If anyone follows the car, if there’s a tracker in your bag or a transmitter in your jewelry, if Nikolai Sokolov so much as tests my patience, the deal is off, and your family can spend the next decade searching for that little girl on their own.”
Katerina brings a fist to her mouth. “How do I know she’s even alive? I want proof of—”
“You’ll have proof of life within the hour. A car will be on your street in exactly sixty minutes. The driver’s name is Paul. Pack a bag, Dr. Sokolov. Pack for a month.”
“Wait—wait, you can’t just—if I’m going to even consider this, I need—”
I hang up.
It’s a small cruelty, cutting her off mid-sentence, and I permit myself to enjoy it for exactly one breath.
