On the rare occasions I’m able to go back to sleep, Alik’s voice is what calms the noise in my head. Pulls the weight off my chest so I don’t feel like I’m suffocating any more. Somehow my subconscious has turned him into a source of comfort, a safe space. Which, right now, makes me even more eager to pull the trigger, because howdarehe haul me out of that hellhole only to lock me in another prison.
I tap the gun’s muzzle against his forehead. “Time to let me go.”
His expression narrows. “Is that what all this is? Another escape attempt? You weren’t satisfied with trying to crack my skull open, you decided to hurt yourself too?”
“I-I don’t need to tell you what happened. It’s none of your business.”
“My carpet is wearing your blood. That makes it my business.”
I bite my lip, struggling to ignore the pain in my hands and leg that’s getting worse the more we talk about it.
“What were you doing on the balcony, Marya?” Alik presses. “Bleeding and barely dressed. You could’ve frozen.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Alik spits something out in Russian, his expression angrier now than when I put the gun to his head. “Bullshit. Of course it matters.”
“Why?” My voice is shaking. I’m running on next to no sleep, have possibly hurt myself more than I realized, and am holding a violent man hostage with his own gun. It’s becoming obvious I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but that doesn’t stop me from asking, “Why does what happens to me matter to anyone, let alone you?”
For one second, I think he’s going to give a real answer. The idea that he cares about what happens to me does something funny to my stomach. For the past three years, no one has given me a second thought. From the day after I graduated high school, the Pagano clan cut me off from everything I’d loved about my life. My friends. My soccer team. My plans to go to college. My future.
I’ve been isolated for three years, considered nothing but property for so long I don’t remember what it’s like to have anyone care about me. But with Alik still so close that his body heat is making my blood simmer, I am suddenly, achingly desperate to matter to someone.
For just one person on this planet to give a shit about what happens to me.
The feeling is fierce and all-consuming, overwhelming my nervous system. Electricity flashes up my arms and the gun wobbles in my grip.
Without warning, Alik plucks it from my hand, engaging the safety and setting it on the coffee table. I lurch for the weapon, panicked at losing the only bit of leverage I have, but I’m too slow. Alik stops me, manacling both of my hands in one of his, locking them in my lap.
He takes what little space there is on the edge of the sofa, crowding me into the corner. I’m trapped again and I hate it—hate everything—and I can’t stop the tears that spring to my eyes. “Just let me go.”
Alik sighs. “I will not.”
“Why?” My voice breaks and I hate that too. “I’ll disappear.Vanish into thin air. No one will know you took me. No one will know you betrayed my family. There is no scenario in this world in which I would ever go near them again, but even if I did, even if I told anyone what’s happened, no one would believe me. I’m nothing, nobody. Not to them, not to you. I’m not worth keeping here, Alik. Let me go. Please, just let me go.”
I feel Alik’s attention on my face, the weight almost unbearable. I swear he’s visually dissecting me, picking me apart bit by bit until he can see down to the bone.
I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I keep my chin tucked, my hands clenched in fists beneath his, waiting for his verdict. He delivers it so quietly I have to lean forward to hear him. Devious fucker.
“There are many parts of your argument that we will discuss in the future, but for now, I’m willing to make a deal with you, Marya.”
“No, no. Fuck a deal. I just want to leave.”
“I understand what you want, just like you need to understand that you’re not going to get it. Not right now.”
Highhanded prick. I yank my hands out of his grip. He lets me go. Obviously. I’m not delusional enough to think I’m stronger than him. But the fact that he’s trying to placate me makes me even angrier. Earns him a solid shove in the chest. “Stop talking to me like a fucking child.”
“Then stop acting like one,” he grinds back, bracing his arms against the high back of the sofa, one on either side of my shoulders. He’s so close I can see where the old part of the scar on his cheek ends and the new one begins.
Don’t you dare touch it, Sera. Don’t. You. Dare.
“I thought I made myself clear before,” he says, “but apparently, I need to repeat myself. Like I am talking to a child. There is still a price on your body, Marya. If your family isn’t the one to cash in, someone else will. You are also a Pagano, which makes you valuable to me.” The edges of his words turn razorsharp. “If I can’t get the answers I need from your uncle—who is alive, by the way—I might have to interrogate you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re mine until I’m done with you.”
It’s his voice. It has to be. That’s the only way my reaction to his statement makes sense. It’s a Pavlovian response to what used to be my one source of comfort. A voice now tinged with possessiveness.