Page 56 of Cruel Demands

Her spine is too straight. Her eyes return to my office every few minutes, though she can’t tell whether I’m watching. She reads the same page three times. I follow her eyes as they scan the words without absorbing them. Twice, Viktoriya speaks to her from the desk directly across from Dima, and Taylor’s head snaps up to answer too quickly, her expression blank. Her mind is still on me.

Dima leans sideways between their desks to point at something on Taylor’s page. His attention is on the document. Hers is nowhere near him.

I know this. I can see it. It doesn’t stop me from disliking the closeness of their chairs or the ease with which he reaches into her space.

Across from him, Viktoriya lifts her eyes from a folder. Dima notices immediately. His attention leaves Taylor so quickly it should embarrass me. He gives Viktoriya a small, private smile, and her mouth softens at one corner before she looks back down.

Taylor notices and hides a smile. I notice too. It should settle something in me. It does not.

I should have Taylor transferred. The thought returns every five minutes with the persistence of a dull blade.

I close my eyes. For a moment, the office is not an office. It is my bedroom in the dark. Taylor half-asleep against me. My hand hovering above her shoulder, close enough to feel warmth, not close enough to claim it.

Too late, I think.

I don’t say that to my mother. Instead, I say, “I will send someone to stay with you.”

“No.”

“Mama.”

“No more men.”

“You need protection.”

“I need a son who does not make protection necessary.” The line goes quiet between us. I have no answer for that either. Finally, she sighs. “Send one. The quiet one. Anton. He likes my cooking, and he sometimes does the dishes afterward.”

Despite myself, I smile at the image of Anton washing the dishes. “He is a security officer, and we have a maid, Mama,” I say, “But okay. Only Anton.”

I look through the glass again. Taylor taps the end of her pen against the desk while Dima explains something. Viktoriya approaches from the other side and reaches across to take the document from him. Their fingers touch. Dima’s eyes lift to her face and remain there longer than necessary.

“And no one gets hurt because of me,” my mother says. I do not answer quickly enough. “Misha.”

“No one gets hurt because of you,” I say. Because of you. It is a promise and not a promise.

She accepts it because she’s tired. Or because she knows it’s the best I can give. “I love you,” she says. I don’t know whether she says the words because they are true or because they are muscle memory, a path she has walked so many times it has burned itself into her brain. She told my father she loved him too, and he was a sick man. Perhaps my mother’s love is evidence of some sickness of its own.

“I love you too,” I tell her.

I hang up and sit with the receiver still in my hand. For a long moment, I do nothing.

Then I call Arkady. “I’m listening,” he says, his voice crisp and immediate.

“Are the six secured?”

“Five. Sergei is bringing in the last now.”

“Separate rooms?”

“Yes.”

“Telephones?”

“Collected.”

“Accounts?”

“Being reviewed.”