“Didn’t think so. So… this is personal?”
He gives a single nod. “It’s personal.”
“He killed someone you love.”
“Nyet.”
“No?” I’m surprised. I thought for sure that would be it. Why else would someone have a personal vendetta against a man?
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“You don’t want to know.” Adrian gets up.
My body reacts to his loss with panic. “Wait. Come back.”
He stops and turns but doesn’t sit down again. “What is it?”
“You want to hurt my dad? I’m in.”
He goes still, his face an inscrutable mask. “That’s good,” he says after a beat, but I get the feeling he doesn’t believe me. Of course, he doesn’t. It could easily be a ploy. I mean, maybe it is a ploy on my part. I just want to get out of these horrible zip ties. I want to have a hot shower and change my clothes. But I’m not exactly loyal to my dad. I hate him in that angry, unloved teenager way. The one where part of me still desperately wants his love and approval, and the rest of me hates him because I know I’ll never get it.
I stare at Adrian’s strong muscled back when he walks away, taking the empty plate to the kitchen. He washes it and puts it in the drying rack.
“Is Adrian your real name?” I call to his back.
“Da. Adrian Turgenev,” he tells me, like it’s important. It also implies that he’s not afraid of anyone finding out his identity–not my father. Not the authorities.
So, either he thinks it won’t matter, or he doesn’t care. Maybe because he doesn’t plan on letting me live.
“Are you going to kill me?” I blurt.
“No.” He’s doing grumpy bear again. “I told you. I–”
“–won’t hurt me if I do what I’m told.”
“Precisely this.” He nods.
This time I believe him. Things are coming into focus. Some of my worst fears have been allayed. He’s not a psychopath who plans to torture me and keep me in a cage as his personal slave. God! Why does that thought sort of turn me on? Maybe Delaney’s right. There is something sick in me that requires healing. He’s not going to sell me at a slave auction. He doesn’t plan to kill me for his revenge on my father.
Adrian’s phone rings, and he pulls it out of his pocket. “Nadia.” He turns his back to me, speaking in Russian. His voice is soft. Coaxing.
I go cold.
For some reason, this unpleasant shock rivals waking up with a gag in my mouth.
Adrian has a woman.
Adrian
“How are you?” I ask my younger sister in our mother tongue. I try to talk to her every day or two. The whole time I’ve been gone, I’ve battled guilt over leaving her there alone. She’s come a long way in the year since she’s been free, but she still has bouts of debilitating paranoia and depression brought on by her PTSD. She suffers from agoraphobia–fear of leaving the house. She’s getting counseling, but I’m still so afraid she’ll relapse.
“I’m fine.” She gives a groggy laugh. “I just woke up. It’s six a. m. here. You texted me to call when I woke up.”
“Right, sorry. Have you left the building since we last talked?”
“No, but I’m going out tonight.”
Right. It’s Thursday, which means Story’s band is playing.
Nadia’s not entirely alone in America. We live in the Kremlin. Not the real Kremlin, but the lakeshore Chicago high rise owned by Ravil, my bratva pakhan. The neighbors call the building the Kremlin because only Russians live there. Unless you count Ravil’s lawyer wife–the one who got me off on the arson charges after I burned down Poval’s sofa factory which was really a sex trafficking front.
Oleg’s American girlfriend, Story, also lives there.
I grit my teeth. I should be thrilled any time Nadia’s willing to leave the apartment. It took me months and months just to get her out of the building. But I fear she’s more than a little fixated on Story’s younger brother, Flynn who plays in the band. And Flynn is a fucking player.
He’s the last guy my sister needs to throw herself at. Although, that might be the saving grace. Flynn is too busy with all the fangirls throwing their panties on stage at him to pay any attention to my socially phobic, extremely damaged sister.
“Is Sasha going?” I don’t want her there if there’s not another woman.
“Yes. Sasha and Maxim, Oleg, and Maykl.”
“Good. If you need to leave early, you tell Maykl, and he’ll take you back.” Maykl promised me he’d look after Nadia while I was gone. He’s the bratva brother I knew from Russia. Newer to our cell, like me. Honorable. I trust him with her. Also, I told him I’d cut off his balls if he touched her, so there’s that.
“I…I think I will stay.”
Fuck. I fear she’s really obsessed with Flynn. Should I say something? I should. I need to warn her that he’s a heartbreaker.
No, I can’t bring myself to. It’s the first interest she’s shown in anything since Poval kidnapped her from home almost two years ago. And if this gets her out of the building, it has to be a win. I just fear a heartbreak would be the end of her.
Literally.
She was suicidal for a long time.
“You’re going to work today?”
“Of course,” she chides me. “You think I can’t make it to work because you’re gone?”
“I’m just making sure.”
Ravil, in all his benevolence, magically found work for my sister when I finally found her and brought her back with me. Just like he took me in and showed me the ropes when I arrived in Chicago, following the trail that led me to the sofa factory, he found a place for Nadia.