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Darya puts her empty teacup in the sink and says, “I’ll let myself out.” She walks over to Jennifer and gives her a big hug. “It was so great to finally meet you. I’ll make plans with Kiril to come over for dinner.” Jennifer hugs Darya tightly back and I wonder how they managed to get so close so quickly.
Then Jennifer and I are alone in the kitchen, and I step towards her. She backs up against the kitchen countertop. I press my body against hers and place my hands on either side of her on the counter, locking her in place.
“Little rabbit, we have a few things we need to talk about,” I growl in anger.
I have given her the benefit of the doubt for so long that it absolutely shattered me to find out what I found out today. I did not want to believe it. I still don’t want to. But I have to accept the truth. And now I have to hear it from her lips.
“O—okay,” she stammers, and more than ever I can see she is hiding something from me.
I don’t move away. I keep her locked against my body, pinned beneath me. It is doing things to my body that may be distracting, but I don’t care.
“I was informed of some very disturbing news this afternoon,” I tell her. “It turns out that we have a traitor living beneath this very roof, in my home.”
She refuses to look into my eyes and her body is so tense against mine.
“Little rabbit?” I hiss, fighting against the anger.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Kiril.”
“I will put up with many things, but I will not put up with being lied to.”
“Kiril, please, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Anger surges deeper. I press harder against her, ignoring the way my body is responding to having her this close to me.
“Jennifer. If I hear another lie uttered through those beautiful lips of yours, you are going to find out just how well I have been treating you. The luxuries you have here, the ones you do not appreciate, will all be gone.” My voice is deadly thick with threat.
She winces and tries to push me away. “I can’t breathe, please. I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I can see she is going to cry and even though it is tearing me apart I grab her face in my hand and yank her eyes up to meet mine. I stare directly into them. She quivers in my hand, her entire body shaking against me. “Little rabbit, this is your last chance. Don’t make me do this.”
Suddenly, tears are streaming down her face and heavy, heart-breaking sobs are falling from her lips. “I had no choice!” she shouts at me.
“Fuck!” I yell. I knew it was true, but I so badly wanted it not to be. Now that she has admitted it, I cannot even hold onto hope anymore.
I step away from her, turning my back and pacing up and down the kitchen.
When I turn to her again, she looks broken.
“What do you mean you had no choice? I ask. “You better tell me everything.”
Her legs buckle beneath her and she sinks to the kitchen floor, curling her knees against her chest. I grab her waist, lifting her onto the countertop.
I hate to see her like this. I hate to know that she has betrayed me.
“Jennifer, tell me everything.” I lean onto the counter over where she is sitting.
She uses her sleeve to wipe her tears away and takes a moment to catch her breath. “I never wanted to do it,” she says. “Those men. They are evil. I was so scared. I—I tried to run away.”
I close my eyes for a moment, pushing away the pain of knowing that she tried to leave me.
“I tried to run away, but they found me. I thought I was going to die, but they gave me a choice. It wasn’t really a choice at all, though. They told me that I could choose not to go back to you and they would take me for what they had originally intended me for, but if I chose that then they would also take my friend, Lauren. They would take her, and she would go through everything that I went through and worse. If I didn’t want that to happen, then they said I had to come back here and try to find out things. Anything. They wanted me to find out what you were up to. They wanted me to tell them things.”
“What things did you tell them?” My voice is low.
“Nothing. I don’t know what they want from me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to find out.”
“How many times have you spoken to them again? How do you communicate with them?”
