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Mila
The back door of the van swings open and light shines in, momentarily blinding me. The sun is up. Has he been driving all night?
“Get out,” Terry says, waving the gun at me. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept for days. Maybe he hasn’t. He’s got the sniffles of a man who’s done too much coke recently.
I shift along the bench until I’m able to hop down to the ground. I look around me. Trees. A lot of trees. I’m still in the forest. Golden yellow, orange, red, all the colors of fall.
The only sound is the rustling wind. Wherever we are, it’s far from help. No point screaming. No one will hear.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask as I set my feet on the dirt.
“You belong to me.”
As if that’s an answer. I try again. “Why’d you have to kill Mrs. Aldova?”
“You don’t get to ask bullshit questions,” he replies, his mouth turning into a sneer. “You’re not in charge, princess. I am, and you’re going to do what you’re told.”
“What the hell, Terry? Where are we?”
“Over there,” he says, waving toward another van, identical to this one. Black, no windows in the back, the kind you tell your kids to stay away from.
I look down at my hands. Mrs. Aldova’s blood. She’s dead. I blink and I see it all like it’s happening right in front of me.
She’s cooking, whistling tunelessly to herself. I’m sitting down, reading. The door swings open and before she can say a word, a bullet hits her in the face. Blood sprays across the room, hitting me as I scramble backwards, away from the shooter.
Is that what is was like when my mom got shot? Not by Alexsei but by my father. Humming to herself one minute, and the next, just a corpse on the floor?
“Wake up,” Terry says, shoving me in the small of my back. “Get moving.”
I dig my heels in. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m not going to do a thing,” he replies. “As long as you get in the van.”
The doors are open. I can see darkness inside, a gaping maw ready to swallow me whole. I know that if I get in there, I’m dead. I’m never seeing daylight again.
That thought consumes me with absolute certainty. My only chance is to resist but how? I’ve got a gun in the small of my back and there’s nowhere to run to without getting shot.
I take a slow step toward the van, looking in the back, my stomach turning. I think I’m going to be sick. I can feel it deep inside me, a gut-churning terror of what’s coming. A certainty that my life is over.
The worst part of it all is knowing that my baby dies with me. Alexsei never gets to meet the child I’m carrying, his child.
I know what he’ll think when he turns up at the cabin. Terry forced me to write that note, dug up the money hidden under the floorboards, then forced me into his van. All while muttering about what a bitch I was.
Do not try to contact me. That’s what I had to write.
He’ll think I killed his housekeeper then escaped with the money. He thinks I’ve betrayed him, run like I kept trying to do back at his place.
Will he come for me? After thinking that? He’ll get the divorce paperwork signed and pick someone else to carry a Bratva heir for him.
“Into the van,” Terry says. “I’m getting tired of asking.”
“Where am I going?”
“For a little ride. Don’t worry, at the end of it you get to have some fun with me. Won’t that be nice?”
I spin around. “What are you talking about?”
