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“So what happens next?” she asks softly, her lips pressed together.
“We leave to go back to Moscow tomorrow,” I tell her, and I can see the flicker of fear in her face. I know she’s remembering the kidnapping and what happened to her in the loft. “We won’t be there long, though. We’ll meet up with the others and then head to a more secure safe house while I work out what to do to deal with Alexei.”
“The others?” Caterina echoes, her expression confused. “Who else?”
“The children, the other members of my household that might be in danger,” I explain. “And Luca, Sofia—and Ana.”
CATERINA
It’s all I can do not to panic on the trip back to Moscow.
We’re piled into the vehicles that Viktor used to find me, the ones taken from the cabin where I was being held. There are men with guns at every window, watching for anyone who might attack on the way. I’m swathed in another oversized outfit of salvaged men’s clothes, my entire body feeling as if it’s rattling with every bump and divot and pothole in the uneven forest roads as we make our way back.
Moscow is the second to last place I’d ever want to go back to, right after the cabin where Andrei and Stepan tortured me. The memory of the white-blond man and the needle sliding into my neck is still all too fresh, something that haunts my dreams almost every night. Just the thought of going back there makes my chest feel tight and my throat close up so that it feels hard to breathe.
I can feel Viktor’s eyes on me as we travel back, watching me as if he’s worried that I might crumble. It’s far from the most comfortable trip I’ve ever been on. Some of the rougher patches make me grip the edge of the seat, my fingers digging into the fabric until I can almost feel my knuckles turn white in an effort not to let on the pain that I’m in.
When we approach the city, I can feel myself starting to tremble. Viktor touches my hand, and it should soothe me, but it doesn’t. Even knowing that I’m going to see Sofia and Ana soon doesn’t do much to quell the fears churning in my stomach, the memory of what happened the last time I was here. It all feels too fresh, too recent, and I wish that we could be anywhere but here.
I know we will be soon, but it doesn’t help at the moment.
We’re driven to a huge hotel, gleaming and white and tall in the middle of the city, and the trucks pull up in the front, the armed men surrounding us as Viktor opens the door and helps me out. My heart is racing as he hurries me up the steps into the lobby, and I realize with a start that there’s no one else there except for the concierge. No guests milling around, no one checking in, no one at the bar. It’s completely empty.
“Is there no one else here?” I whisper, leaning closer to Viktor as he escorts me towards the elevator, his hand urgently at the small of my back.
“I’ve had it emptied while we’re here,” he says stiffly, and I feel a small shock ripple through me, a reminder of my husband’s power. It’s not entirely unfamiliar to me, but I’ve never seen it enacted so closely before. The idea that this huge hotel is ours alone while we’re here seems insane. The emptiness of the elevator and the absolute silence of the hall that we step into when we get off of it only underscores the fact that he’s telling the truth.
Viktor takes me down the hall to a room near the end, opening the door and walking in after me. The room is huge and open and sunny, but he draws the blinds immediately, checking the windows before he does.
“We’re almost at the top,” I blurt out. “Surely no one can get in?”
“You’d be surprised,” he says darkly. “I’m sure you want to shower,” Viktor adds, nodding towards the attached bathroom. “Let me know if you need help.”
It’s said in a way that’s more casual than sexual, just a normal husband offering to help his recovering wife, and I feel that flash of intimacy again, that feeling that there’s something here that could blossom into something more if it had the room to grow.
I just don’t know how it ever could.
“A shower sounds good,” I manage. It soundsbetterthan good, truthfully, it sounds like heaven, and that’s only underscored when I walk into the massive attached bathroom, complete with a huge dual-head shower and a soaking tub.
I wish more than anything that I could fill up that tub and sink down into it, but I’m under strict instructions from the doctor not to soak my healing wounds any more than necessary. I’m not even supposed to take showers that are all that long, but I’m going to be testing the limits of that one. I feel filthy after the trip and after days of being in bed with minimal showers and only the limited soap and water at the cabin.
I’ve never thought of myself as particularly high-maintenance, but I hadn’t realized how used to luxuries large and small, or how much I would miss them until they were entirely gone for a while. The heavy stream of water from the showerhead, pulsing against the sore muscles of my back, the scent of expensive lavender shampoo and soap, the steam that wreathes and builds in the heated room until every breath smells like lavender and comfort—they’re all things that I had no idea I could miss so much until they were gone.
After I’ve washed every inch of myself that I can and shampooed my hair twice, I lean against the wall while the deep conditioner soaks into my hair, closing my eyes and enjoying the heat of the foggy shower after so long in the spring chill of the northern Russian forest. I don’t know where we’re going next, but I hope it’s somewhere with a better heating system than that remote cabin.
Victor had said “a more secure safe house,” but I don’t really know what that means. Another cabin? A house more like his back home? A fucking fortress? I don’t have any idea. Of course, my father had had safe houses like any mob boss, but I’d neverbeento one. Despite the conflict between the mafia and the Bratva while my father had been in power, he’d kept us well-insulated from it. My father had been a cruel man and not the most loving father, but I do give him credit for that. He’d made sure that my mother and I were protected.
Up until he couldn’t anymore, of course, and my mother had died.
I feel a flash of bitterness at that memory, but I push it away. There’s nothing I can do to change it now, just like I can’t change any of the things that happened to me. All I can do is try to move forward, even though I don’t know what that future looks like now.
A vision of Viktor’s face in bed with me yesterday floats in front of my closed eyes, the way he’d looked down at me with that intense desire. It hadn’t made any sense to me, but he hadn’t seemed to be lying. He hadn’t fucked me after he’d seen me naked, hadn’t been completely hard, but it hadn’t seemed to be from revulsion. He’d seemed to just be focused on my pleasure, something else that is somewhat out of character for him.
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that my husband might have a better, kinder side to him than I knew. It makes it harder to understand him and the things he does. And it still doesn’t answer the mystery of his first wife—how she died and whether or not he might have something to do with the kidnapping that I endured.
I know better than to trust him. But it doesn’t stop me from wishing that I could.
It’s not until my fingers start to wrinkle and the water starts to cool that I finally force myself to get out of the shower. I stayed in far longer than I should have, per the doctor’s orders, but I needed it. The bathroom is comfortingly hot and steamy when I step out, and I wrap a towel around myself and another around my hair, realizing that I have no idea what I’m actually going to wear. I don’t want to put the oversized, unwashed clothes back on, but I don’t actually have anything else.
