“Yes.”
He smiles. “Good.”
The city disappears behind us. I force myself not to look back. Back to where my family is, where my home is, where everything good in my life is.
Ahead of me is only pain.
I have to be ready for it.
*
I don’t even realize I’ve fallen asleep until the car comes to a stop and I jerk awake. My jaw drops as soon as I look out of the window to see where we are.
It’s the Wikipedia definition of “mansion”—or at least, it should be, if it isn’t already. A stone fountain big enough to swim laps in sits in the middle of the circular paved courtyard. The columns of the house are fluted with carved ivy and gargoyles leering out of the granite. It looks like you’d need a team of horses just to open one of the huge front doors.
The burly man who carried me to the car opens my door. He offers me his hand, but I jerk away from him and shake my head fiercely.
“If you don’t cooperate, he will use force,” Aleks tells me in a bored voice.
I refuse his hand anyway and get out of the jeep on my own. But my legs are still waking up from the long ride, so I lose my footing and pitch forward. The only reason I don’t hit the spotted cobblestones below is because the big guy catches me.
“If she decides to be rude again, let her fall,” Aleks says offhandedly. Then he strides away towards the studded doors.
Such a charmer.
Once I’m on solid ground again, I follow him inside with the big guy at my back. The doors lead into an entryway that branches off in three directions. A huge wall of glass sits straight ahead and showcases a square of tidy grass with a magnificent willow tree in the center. One of the windowpanes has been pushed open to reveal a doorway.
Behind the tree, I see another wall of glass and what appears to be a living room. The mansion was clearly designed with nature in mind, green spaces integrating seamlessly with the rest of the house, each flowing into the next like it has always been that way, like the whole thing grew up from the earth on its own.
“Take her up,” Aleks orders his goon. He doesn’t even bother to glance at me.
It’s hard not to take his cold rejection personally. The big guy comes towards me, but I back away from him and speak to Aleks.
“How long are you going to keep me here?”
Reluctantly, he turns to me. It’s shocking that the same gaze that made me feel special and seen this morning can now make me feel so utterly, pathetically insignificant.
“As long as it takes.”
“You realize this is abduction, right? You can’t just keep me here.”
“You’ll find that the Bratva works under different rules,” he says.
“What about laws?” I demand. “The ones that govern this country?”
He smirks. “Those laws don’t apply to me.”
“Says who?”
He moves forward at lightning speed. I stumble back against an ornate oval table in the center of the foyer.
“I say,” he hisses. “As far as you’re concerned, my word is law. Forget everything else.” He glances over his shoulder at the gorilla man. “Never mind. I’ll take her myself.”
With that, Aleks grabs my arm hard and drags me forward. We move up a floating staircase to the second floor. Then he veers down a hallway and pulls me through a nondescript doorway.
The whole way here, I expected him to drop me in a rat-infested dungeon under the house. But the room is… nice. Lovely, actually.
A king-sized bed sits in the center, covered in an off-white duvet that looks light as a cloud. The bed frame is simple but stately, with cascading vines and flowers etched into the wooden posts. Natural light pours through the windows and the French doors that open onto a small balcony. A wrought iron table and two matching chairs bask outside in the sunshine.
I look for something intimidating or insidious about the space, but I find nothing. I could almost imagine I’m a guest in this house, rather than what I really am.
A prisoner.
Or rather, I could almost imagine that—if it weren’t for the surly Russian asshole blocking the way out of here.
I shake my head as the panic starts to swell again despite my best efforts to tamp it down. “I… I can’t just disappear,” I stutter. “I have rent to pay. I have a job to get back to.”
“You’re a freelance cartoonist,” he reminds me with unnecessary cruelty. “No one will be looking for you.”
Our conversation earlier flashes in my mind. I told him too much about my life, convinced he actually cared. But of course he didn’t. It was a reconnaissance mission. He was getting to know his target so he could use it all against me later. Embarrassment heats my cheeks.
I push my hand deep into my pockets, looking for my phone, but I can’t find it. Did I drop it somewhere in the midst of all the chaos?
“Looking for this?” Aleks has my phone pinched between his fingers. He waves it at me casually.
“You stole my phone?” I balk.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get it back.”
“What assurance do I have of that?”
“None at all.”
He turns to leave, but I jump forward desperately. “Wait…！”
He shoots me an impatient glare, though he stops at the threshold and waits for me to continue.
But all that comes out is the same limp protest I’ve been repeating ad nauseum. “I… I can’t stay here…”
“And yet that’s exactly what you’ll do,” he growls. “For as long as it takes. Your brother should have known better than to fuck with the Bratva.”
“Just tell me they’re going to be okay,” I whisper desperately. “Tell me my family is going to be okay.”
He narrows his eyes. The blue seems to be gone now, eaten up by the vicious black of his pupils. “As long as I’m in your life, none of you will be okay.”
9
ALEKS
“He shit himself.”
I chuckle at Demyan, my right-hand man. “I knew it. Under all the bravado, that Albanian fuck is just a scared little boy. What was the outcome?”
“As expected. He returned all the money he siphoned off on the side,” Demyan tells me with obvious satisfaction.
I lean back in my seat and nod. “Did you take interest?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” he retorts. “Of course I did. Twelve percent.”
I raise my eyebrows. “We usually only take ten.”
“He was dressed like a fucking pimp,” Demyan explains. “Lime green zoot suit, paid for with our money. It pissed me off, so I took an extra two percent.”
“Does he know that?”
“I made sure he did.”
I smirk. “Is that all you did, sobrat?”
Demyan sits down in the chair opposite me. We’re in the garden, looking out over the Boston ivy and bougainvillea that frame the western expanse of the lawn.
“I also made him remove the suit.”
“And then?”
“… And then I set it on fire.”
The laugh bursts from my lips. “Well, all things considered, he got off easily. How long did you give him to pay off the interest?”
“Two weeks.”
I frown. “He has to pay back one point four million in two weeks? He’s going to run for the hills, Demyan.”