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1
SASHA
It’s been a year.
Today?
Well—I don’t know the exact date. It’s not like—burned into my brain. I know some people think it should be, but it isn’t. I just know it was summer. The warehouse where they kept us was climate-controlled, and we had plenty of water—we were valuable, so it’s not like we were mistreated. But it was still hot. All of us were exhausted from the flight over.
And you were afraid?
Of course. We’ve talked about it before.
I just think that today, of all days, it might be good to reevaluate your feelings about what happened. We talked a few months ago about you trying to go on a date, to develop a more normal relationship with men. One that isn’t violent. Your employer—
Has turned his life around. He’s a good man. He’s changed. What happened to me wasn’t his fault.
Well, in a way—
It wasn’t.
Alright. Well, about the date. Have you tried—
I don’t have any interest.
Is this because of the man you told me about? The priest?
Former priest.
Well, yes, but—he hasn’t shown any romantic interest in you, has he? And you don’t believe he will. So maybe it’s time—
Not today. Not when it’s only just been a year.
My conversation with my therapist turns over and over in my head as I leave the tall building in downtown Manhattan, heading out into the warm summer air. I suck in a lungful of it as I leave, even though it’s heavily perfumed with sweaty bodies and alley trash and roasting hot dogs and other street food, because I always prefer that over the clinical, air-conditioned smell of offices.
I know what my therapist would say aboutthat. She’d say that a multi-hour flight on a cargo plane from Russia to New York, stuffed with other terrified, crying women, followed by days kept in a warehouse waiting for my sale to an unknown man, had made me leery of confined spaces. She’d say that my desire to be outside more often than not, despite the fact that I was literally picked up on the street, comes from those days of confinement that led up to the one night that changed my life forever.
Heavy, meaty hands. Unlocking the door, reaching for me. Promising me things. Freedom. I knew he couldn’t give it to me, but it didn’t matter. He was only pretending to bargain with me. He was going to have what he wanted regardless.
Sometimes I think the worst part of it isn’t just that my only experience with a man, myfirst time, was forced, but that it was with someone so completely and utterly stupid. A man who thought, despite the fact that he was nothing, that he could steal from a man like Viktor Andreyev.
I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jeans, picking up my pace as I walk down the street toward my favorite coffee shop. Caterina insists that I take the whole day off on the days that I have my therapy appointments—with one of the most well-recommended in New York, of course, maybe even the entire country, all paid for by Viktor. The man who was once my captor and now my employer.
My therapist likes to talk a lot of shit about Viktor, but she’s more than happy to take his money.
Because of those days off, I’ve formed a little routine around my therapy days. My appointments are usually in the morning, and afterward, I go down to the coffee shop a few blocks away and get a coffee and a pastry. I sit in one of the soft velvet chairs by the window, look out at the people walking by, and reflect.
My life is so much better than it was in so many ways. In Russia, I’d been a foster child who aged out of the system, on the streets begging. I’d spent my nights in a shelter where I’d been lucky not to have lost my virginity by force long before the man with the white-blond hair and piercing blue eyes approached me on the street and asked me if I wanted a chance to change my life. I’d spent my days hungry, afraid, unsure of what my next hours would bring and how I might get out of the situation that life seemed to have forced me into.
I’d been terrified, of course, when black-gloved hands had grabbed me from behind as the blond man talked to me, as I’d been taken to a warehouse, then an airplane hangar, crammed onto a plane. I hadn’t known why I’d been taken or where. Even when the blond man approached me in the hangar, touched my strawberry hair and petite face, and said with a smile,Viktor is going to be so pleased with the price you fetch,I hadn’t fully grasped what fate I was being sent to. I’d only felt that it couldn’t be worse than what was already happening to me.
I’d been wrong, of course. But that parthadn’tbeen Viktor’s fault. And I’ll always be grateful that he let me watch as he put a bullet through the head of the man who’d hurt me.
Because his property was touched. Not because he cared about you,my therapist has said in the past. But I don’t entirely believe that. For all his moral failings, I believe that Viktor was truly angry that anyone would have done something so violent, soviolating, who worked for him.
Now, instead of begging on the streets, I’m sitting in a Victorian-themed coffee shop, drinking a six-dollar latte with a chocolate croissant, in jeans and a ruffled sleeveless chiffon shirt and leather flats that would have bought me food for a year when I was homeless. I have a bank account, a debit card, and acredit card.I have a good job. I havestability. There’s a driver that takes me anywhere I want to go.
I also have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, chronic nightmares, and, often, crushing guilt. So the other thing I do on these days, sitting in my favorite café, is wonder—was it worth it? Am I better off? And am I wrong if I think I am?
