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My father walks beside me across the lawn. My shoes are getting wet. He never sorted out the drainage so the soil under the grass squelches with each step. He pretends not to notice, pointing out the features he’s installed since I left home the first time.
“See these railings,” he says, waving lazily toward the house. “Surrounds the entire place. Had them painted bright white. Wanted them to look beautiful and they do.”
“Makes it look like a prison,” I reply.
“You’re wrong,” he snaps, spinning around and walking toward the new pond. “This is eight feet deep. Thought about putting sharks in there but apparently it would need to be deeper still. Maybe next year when the money really starts rolling in.”
“Sure, Dad. Why not go full Bond villain and get some revolving fireplaces too.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Perhaps I will.”
I wish he was joking but he never jokes. I glance around me. There’s no point trying to run. Whichever way I look, I can see men with guns. The place is well guarded. I’m trapped here.
“You should have stayed home,” he says, kicking a leaf onto the surface of the pond. “I could have raised you right, made sure you didn’t turn into this.”
He points at me. “All this bluster and pretending to be better than men. That’s what the modern world does, teaches girls like you all the wrong things.”
“Like what?”
“Like how you’re equal to me. You’re not. You’re a woman. The Bible says you let men take charge. We’re built to tell you what to do. You’re built to do what you’re told.”
“Nice. Real nice.”
He walks back toward the house, pointing at the largest spike on the railings. “In the middle ages, they used to put traitors heads on spikes like this, let everyone see what happened to them. Isn’t that funny?”
“Not really.”
“It is funny. I’ll be laughing even more when it’s your husband’s head staring out from that very spike. Every single day he’ll rot a bit more, bits falling off until there’s only his skull left.
“Then I’ll turn it into a goblet and drink from it every morning. He thought he could beat me but I’ve got plans for him, all right. Yes, I have.”
I say nothing. I pray Alexsei ignores the call my father made, the message he left him. Offering my life for his. I don’t want him tocome here, to die for me.
I want him to keep his shields up. Better a bastard and alive than being drawn here by love and then dying. What good would that do?
“Come with me,” my father says, walking up the steps to the open front door. “There’s something upstairs I want to show you.”
I glance behind me. Two men with guns are flanking me. No chance to run, even if I thought I could get away before I was shot down. I’m trapped here.
I feel a sudden fury toward my father. A deep sorrow that he is this way. But also an anger that he thinks I will simply bend to his will. That I will be grateful for him killing Alexsei.
We walk up the stairs and he pushes open a door into a room that’s been converted into a medical center.
Metal table, stirrups at the end. Monitors with green screens, drawers, scalpels on trays, a deep sink at the end where a doctor is scrubbing his hands. “What the fuck is this?” I ask, backing away from the door, bumping into the two armed men outside.
My father pulls me in. “Wait out there,” he tells the men. “You don’t need to see this.” They close the door and then my father locks it.
He turns to face me, pointing at the table. “That is where you will climb on and keep still. I told Alexsei you would not have his child and I intend to keep my word.”
I look across at the doctor who’s now gulping from a whisky bottle, a strange grin on his face, like he’s enjoying this a little too much.
I shake my head, my hands going to my stomach. “You can’t do this.”
“There are pills you can take at this early stage. If you’re willing to take them, he won’t have to do a thing other than make sure they worked.”
“It’s my child, father. Please, don’t do this to me.”
“Enough begging. The pills are there. Take them or we do this the painful way.”
