Page 87
“Good. Good.” A brief pause. “Ruslan and Demyan are close by?”
“Yes, Zevran,” I laugh softly, glancing over at the next table where my two towering guardians are stoically sipping sparkling water. “Everyone in this restaurant has probably assumed they’re my royal security detail by now. They tend to stand out.”
“They’re not supposed to blend in. They’re there to keep you safe.” He pauses again, and I can feel his longing to stay on the phone, but he doesn’t want to interrupt my afternoon. “All right. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you. I love you, Zevran.”
“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu,” he murmurs smoothly, the Russian words laced with devotion. I love you too.
I hang up, a warm glow settling deep in my chest, and walk back to the table, sliding into my seat. “Sorry about that. Zevran was just checking in. Shall we order another glass of wine?”
“Definitely!” Mila replies.
We order another round, and for a quiet moment, I clasp the stem of my glass in both hands, hesitating. I’m almost afraid to ask the question burning in my mind. Not because I don’t want to know, but because the afternoon has been so light and beautiful, and I don’t want to be the one to let the darkness back into the room.
I look around at their faces. “Can I ask… What happened to each of you?”
A silence settles over the table, a sacred, shared stillness.
Mila takes a slow sip of wine, gathering her courage, and goes first.
She was taken from a shopping center parking garage, in broad daylight, on her way home from a yoga class. She was held for five days in a dark basement. Zevran came crashing through a window on the sixth—the exact day she’d completely given up hope that anyone was coming. She tells it matter-of-factly, the way people tell a story they’ve processed in therapy, but I notice her hands stay pressed flat against the white tablecloth the entire time, grounding herself in the present.
Anya was snatched from outside her own apartment building, her keys already in her hand, the front door right in front of her. She was home, and then in a blink, she wasn’t. It took Zevran a full week to track her down and slaughter her captors.
When Anya finishes speaking, she looks out the window for a moment, watching the city traffic as if reassuring herself that the normal world is still there.
“My entire extended family contributed to Mr. Komarov’s fee,” she says, her eyes glistening. “Aunts, uncles, cousins. Everyone pulled their savings together. When I finally got home, my grandmother held my face in her hands and told me I was worth every single cent.”
Her voice catches slightly on the last word. She blinks rapidly, swallowing hard, and reaches for her water glass to compose herself.
“I feel more loved by my family now than I ever have in my life,” she adds with a smile. “I write their names down in my gratitude journal almost every single morning.”
Katia takes a deep breath, setting her glass down carefully. “You might not know this part, Cora. Mr. Komarov probably hasn’t told you, but what happened to me is what would have happened to all of us if he hadn’t found us when he did.”
She speaks without drama, describing a place so vividly she must have replayed it a thousand times in her mind. A subterranean room. Low lights. Thirty men seated in a loose horseshoe, the air thick with cigars and heavy cologne. A man at the front with a tablet, calling out numbers in three languages. The captive women were brought out one by one. Katia was third.
“They gave us tiny silk dresses to wear,” Katia says, gesturing to her body with a look of disgust. “I stood where they shoved me. I listened to men bidding on my life. I kept telling myself I should fight, scream, or try to run. But there was nowhere to go. And by then, I’d already seen what happened to the girls who drew attention to themselves.”
Her gaze fixes on the silver pepper grinder on our table, and I know she’s seeing something brutal and terrifying in her memory.
“Then Mr. Komarov came through the back doors,” Katia continues. “It was blindingly fast. Within minutes, it was over. He crouched down in front of me, pulled a blanket around my shoulders, and asked me to confirm my name in a very calm, steady voice. Like he was just a private driver coming to take me to the airport.”
She lifts her dark eyes to mine.
“That’s where we were all headed if Zevran hadn’t saved us, Cora. Into that room. Sold to the highest bidder and erased from the world.”
A cold shiver runs down my spine.
The afternoon light streams through Florentino’s tall windows, casting a warm, golden glow across our white tablecloth, and for a long moment, none of us say a word.
Then, gently, Anya looks at me. “What about you, Cora?”
“My experience was similar to yours,” I tell them after taking a deep breath. “I was taken off the street and held in a basement for eleven days. Two women died while I was there. One of them in my arms.” I pause, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I was beaten, and my wrist was broken.” I look down at the neat white cast wrapped around my arm. “In hindsight, I should have been overjoyed when Zevran appeared to rescue us.”
“But?” Katia asks, a knowing glint in her dark eyes.
“But I was afraid of him,” I admit, a rueful smile touching the corner of my mouth. “I didn’t want to go anywhere with a terrifying, tattooed giant. So I gave him an incredible amount of trouble. There were handcuffs involved. And I bit him.”
