Page 130 of Cruel Demands

It is so solemn that it sounds like the truth, and I suddenly feel ill.

Every time I enter Mikhail’s house, it’s less welcoming than I last remembered it. Marble floors. Dark wood. Paintings of severe men who look as though they disapproved of joy while alive and have continued the habit in death.

Mikhail leads me upstairs.

The room he gives me is bigger than my entire apartment. There’s a fireplace, a sitting area, a private bathroom, and a bed large enough to sleep a small family. My suitcase looks ridiculous beside it.

“This is temporary,” I remind him.

“Yes.”

“You keep agreeing too quickly.”

“What would you prefer?”

“For you to mean it.”

His expression closes. “I have work to finish,” he says. “A guard will remain outside.”

“I don’t need a guard inside the house.”

“You are not familiar with the house.”

“Is it dangerous too?”

“Only in certain rooms.”

I can’t tell whether he’s joking. He leaves before I can ask.

I unpack one sweater, decide I resent the furniture, and go searching for the kitchen. I find two staircases, a locked study, an empty dining room, and what may be a ballroom before admitting that I have no idea where I am. I refuse to ask the guard. I will not give Mikhail the satisfaction.

At the end of another corridor, I find a partly open door and hear the soft turning of a page. I push it wider. Mikhail’s mother sits near the fireplace with a book in her lap.

She looks up, and I grip the handle of the suitcase I am inexplicably still dragging behind me. “I’m not snooping.” Her eyebrows rise. “I’m just not very good with dreary mansions.”

She laughs. It’s warm and delighted and completely out of place in this house. “Come in,” she says. “I have been waiting to have a real conversation with the woman who makes my son unreasonable.”

I glance back at the endless corridor. “I think he was unreasonable before me.”

Nikita’s smile widens. “Yes,” she says. “I am going to like you.”

33

MIKHAIL

The day after I bring Taylor home, my mother is waiting for me in my study.

This is not unusual. My mother has never believed doors apply to her, particularly doors inside a house she considers hers despite reminding me regularly that she hates nearly everything I have done with it. What is unusual is that she is seated in my chair. She is looking out the window with her hands in her lap, a mug of tea in front of her that has long since gone cold.

When I open the door, she wastes no time with pleasantries. She simply says, “You brought the girl back, I see.”

Sighing, I close the door behind me. “Good evening, Mother.”

“Good evening. Is she a prisoner? I see she has no marks on her wrists this time. I need to know whether or not to adjust my tone when I speak to her.” She straightens her back when she uses her biting sarcasm, looking me straight in my eyes, her mouth a thin straight line, her lip liner crumbling and dark. She blinks slowly and angrily.

“Are you sure that the doctors are correct about your cataracts? You have excellent vision, I notice.”

Her eyes narrow. “Do not be irritating on purpose. You have never been charming enough to get away with it.”