Page 49 of The Bratva’s Captive Flame

When the door opens, he looks up from where he lounges on his cot, reading a magazine. "Mija." He sits up and turns his legs off the cot, setting the magazine aside. "You look well. This place agrees with you…" He sounds like he wants to encourage me, but as I move toward him, he says, "You are talking to that man a little too much."

"Papa—" His words feel like daggers. I want him to see that Demin isn't as evil as he thinks. Today's visit is supposed to help him see the light, and we're already off to a bad start.

"Sit. Sit with me." He draws me down onto the small couch they've given him and keeps my hand in both of his. "I have been thinking and I know how we can get out of here…"

"Listen to me," I say, turning toward him. I need him to know that escape is not possible, but yielding won't be a death sentence. He has to see.

"No, Mija. We have to⁠—"

"Papa!" I snap, and I know it sounds harsh but he has to listen to me. "Demin made an offer and I need you to hear me."

His head drops and he nods, but I can tell he's biting back anger.

"I need you to keep working for him, Papa. If you do that, he will pay you and give us a real life. Papers to stay in Berlin. You can retire here…"

When he looks up at me again, I don’t see the joy or hope in his eyes that I hope for. I see discouragement and pain. I see fear and the evidence of extended torture still stealing his ability to believe.

"Oh, Mija."

"It's true, Papa, he meant it. I heard him say every word of it."

"And you believed him?" he says gently, shaking his head. "He is a monster, Mija. You cannot believe anything he says to you. Do you understand that he has me caged right now, yet you want to believe in this fairy tale?"

"He's not what you think he is. If you knew him⁠—"

"I know exactly what he is," he bites, cutting me off. "I have spent my whole life among men like him. They promise you the world while the door is locked, because a hopeful prisoner is an easier prisoner to manipulate than a desperate one. The visa never comes. The house is never built. There is always one more batch, one more reason, one more year, until you are too old and too used up to leave, and by then, you have stopped wanting to." His eyes well up with tears. "He has done a worse thing to you than he ever did to me. He has made you grateful for being his slave."

His words feel like a slap to my face. I would never just let him use me. I know Demin now, well enough to know he doesn’t say something unless me means it. I believe he'll do what he said.

"That's not fair," I say, now angry enough to raise my voice to him. "I'm trying to keep us alive. And you won't even—you won't even consider that maybe, this once, the door really does open."

"Because I love you too much to watch you hope for it," he says as a tear runs down his cheek. "Listen to your old Papa." He takes both my hands again and sighs hard. "Men will charm you, Mija. And he will do things to you—to your body" —his eyes meet mine as heat floods my cheeks in embarrassment— "and you will want him, but I promise you, he is still a monster."

"You haven't even spent enough time with him to know, Papa. You don't⁠—"

"I don't need to meet a wolf to know what it does to sheep." He shakes his head. "I have met a hundred versions of this man, in Madrid and in the towns before Madrid, my whole life. The face changes and the accent changes, but the promise is always the same one… empty and shallow."

"Then tell me what you want me to do, then," I hiss, standing and pulling away from him. "Refuse the only offer he's giving me? Throw it back at him and watch what happens to you afterward? You keep begging me to find the door, and every single time I find one, you reject it."

"I want you to stop looking like you looked just now when you said his name." His eyes are steel now, cold and unmoving as they pierce my heart. "You don't even know you do it, but I see the way it has changed you."

I can't even answer him. He's stubborn and angry and wounded. And if he wants to stay in this war, trapped as a slave to his own ideals, then there's nothing I can do. I want freedom, and I want to take him with me, but I can't force him. So when the knock comes at the door, I'm almost grateful for it.

"Time, Miss," Bart says from the hall.

I kiss my father's forehead and promise to come back tomorrow. He holds my face in his scarred, gnarled hands and looks at me like he's trying to memorize my face. Then I leave before either of us can argue any more.

Bart walks me back through the house, toward a set of doors I've never seen open. I know I'm supposed to eat dinner with Demin tonight, but the dining room is the other way. I'm not sure what Bart is even doing.

"Where are we going?" I ask, wiping my eyes.

"Boss wants you for dinner." Bart's a man of few words. He flicks a glance at me but doesn't bother slowing his pace. "Proper one tonight."

I follow along until he opens the doors onto a formal dining room. There is a long table decked with place settings and the service is all golden and polished. Candles burn down the middle of the table, with a bottle chilling in a bucket. Demin stands at the far end in a dark shirt with the collar open, waiting.

"You've been crying," he says. And instantly, his face contorts into an expression of pain.

"My father and I disagreed, and it went badly." I stop a few feet inside the room. "What's all this?"