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WHEN I WOKE THE NEXT morning, the tears were still wet on my cheeks.
I couldn’t even remember what I had been dreaming about, but I was sure that I already knew. I had gone to sleep thinking about Andreas, and I hadn’t been able to get him out of my mind since. It felt like I was stuck with this constant roundabout of him, the way he made me feel, how much I missed him, and how much I wished I could see him again.
I peeled myself off the pillow and looked around. In the light of day, this place didn’t look much better. There was a small, grimy window overlooking the bed, and some watery morning sunlight was easing through the glass. That must have been what woken me. Not that I had managed to get a whole lot in the way of sleep as it was.
I had been tossing and turning all night long, trying to convince myself that I just needed to pass out and rest – but that had been impossible when my ears were pricked to every sound outside my door, sure that it was Nikita trying to sneak into my room and do who knows what. The way he had been acting with me, it was obvious that he thought I owed him something, and I just had to pray it would be a while before he called in the debt.
I knew he was expecting something from me, and I wasn’t naïve enough to act like I didn’t know what it was. But maybe I could put off giving it to him, at least for a little while longer. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he had me right where he wanted me, not when I was so far from home and having to fight just to keep myself together in the face of everything that was happening.
I unlatched the door and headed downstairs, the smell of something deliciously savory on the air. I was starving. I hadn’t noticed until I’d caught scent of the food that was cooking, but hell, I could have eaten a full three-course meal and still been hungry.
But that thought fell right out of my head as soon as I got to the kitchen and saw my father propped up at the dining table. I rushed over to him and threw my arms around him, pulling him close.
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re awake,” I murmured to him, squeezing him tight.
“You might put me back to sleep if you keep crushing me this hard,” he replied playfully, but he hugged me back. He was the reason I had done all of this in the first place, and I was sure he was well-aware of that – he knew that this was for him, that all of this had been for him. I just wanted him to be safe, to be happy, to be healthy, and if this was what it took to ensure that, then I would have done it a million times over.
“How are you feeling?” I fussed over him, pulling back and looking him up and down. He didn’t seem too bad, but it was impossible to tell from the outside in.
“I’m all right,” he replied, though I could tell from the dark rings under his eyes that it wasn’t entirely true. I hoped he was going to be okay. He just needed time to rest, I was sure of it, and once he was back on his feet, we could take a look at this situation anew and work out where we were going to go from here.
“How are you?” he asked, and I took a seat next to him at the slightly-rickety table. A woman was hanging over the stove, cooking up whatever it was that had caught my nose as I came down the stairs. She smiled over at me, and I wondered if she knew who she was working for – that she was making food for the cohorts of a man who had one of the worst reputations in the entire United States of America.
“I’m okay,” I lied quickly. No need to tell him I had woken up with tears on my face. He didn’t need to worry about me. I knew we were both holding stuff back from each other, for the sake of taking care of each other, but I wished he would be honest. But that would require me to come out with everything that I was feeling, too, and there was no way I was going to burden him with that.
“I’m glad,” he replied. I wondered if he could tell that I was lying through my teeth – I didn’t doubt it. But we were lying to each other, and I supposed that was saving either of us from being called out right now. Maybe that was the way it had to be. For now, we couldn’t tell the truth, because the truth was far too frightening, far too unsettling.
Nikita wasn’t around, thank goodness, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to deal with him leering over my shoulder this evening. The last thing I wanted was to handle his constant presence, especially his strange attempts at flirting with me. I just wanted him to leave me alone, but he didn’t seem to be able to get it through his thick skull that I had no interest in him.
I supposed he wasn’t used to women not being interested in him. He got what he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and I doubted I was going to be an exception to that rule. The mere thought of it sent a shiver down my spine. I wasn’t going to let him get anywhere close to me, though I was sure he would do his very best to pressure me into giving him whatever he wanted. I hated the thought of what he had over me, hated the thought of giving him anything more than what I already had, but I knew he wasn’t going to be quick to drop it.
“What’s for breakfast?” I asked Dad, trying to keep those thoughts out of my mind. The last thing I needed was to linger too long on anything that would upset me. I’d already done plenty of that already.
“Marta is making sausages,” he replied, nodding to the woman at the counter. “With sour cream and fresh bread. You remember, we used to have that on a Sunday morning with your mother all the time?”
I smiled and nodded. I did. Sometimes, it felt like he was trying his best to forget about my mother, everything that we’d been through with her, so when he brought her up, it came as something of a relief to me. Her memory was still here, maybe even more than ever, as we got closer and closer to her home country.
“Where’s Nikita?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as casual as possible.
“I’m not sure, he said he would be back later today,” my father replied, and he must have noticed the way my face fell when he said that, because he jumped in to make it right.
“I know you’re not sure about him,” he told me, gently. “But you need to at least give him a try, okay? It’s not going to be easy, I understand that, but he’s looking out for us. Heaven only knows how much we need that at the moment.”
I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe that Nikita was the only man who could help us with all of this – or if he was, I was sure it was simply because he had positioned himself in such a way that we didn’t have any choice but to go along with it. I hated having to rely on him, having to rely on anyone other than myself, but hopefully he would lose interest in us sooner rather than later and leave us to our new lives here.
“I know, Dad,” I promised him, and I leaned over to give him another hug. The last thing he needed right now was me making a big deal about everything that was going on. He already knew, probably all too well, just how unhappy I was at having to leave New York behind, and he wasn’t going to put any more pressure on me to accept it than he already had.
We ate with Marta, who bustled around the kitchen, putting more and more food in front of me as she went. It was as though she was worried that I might drop dead on the spot if I didn’t eat what she was feeding me, and honestly, I didn’t blame her. I had caught sight of myself in the mirror last night, and I looked drawn, tired, spent. She probably thought I hadn’t eaten in weeks.
And besides, it wasn’t exactly hard to get the delicious food that she put in front of me down. Every bite reminded me of the meals that my own mother had made me growing up – simple stuff, but delicious, the sharp bite of the sour cream going perfectly with the fatty spice of the sausages. My father and I didn’t speak much as we ate, but we didn’t need to – there was nothing much for us to say. We were here, together, and that was all either of us cared about.
After about an hour or so, there was a creak at the door, and my head snapped up to see who it was – and sure enough, there was Nikita, looking down at the two of us with one of those cold smiles on his face.
“Good to see you eating, Nadia,” he remarked. “I like a woman with a little meat on her bones.”
I instantly felt my stomach turn. I didn’t want to do anything that would make me more attractive to him – no, I wanted to be as repulsive to that man as humanly possible, but he was turning every little thing I did into some reason to creep all over me.
“I’m just hungry,” I muttered, not daring to say more in way of argument. He wanted a woman who was going to bend over backwards and do what she was told, and I knew I needed to play at that, at least for a little while. No matter how wrong it might have felt to me.
“Well, you’ll need your energy for today,” he continued, reaching down to pat my shoulder. I fought the urge to pull away from him at once, wishing he would get his damn hands off of me.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m going to take you out.”
I froze.
“What are you talking about?” I blurted out, before I could stop myself. “I mean – we just got here, I need to rest—”
“Nadia, you should go,” my father told me, and the hard look he was giving me told me everything that I needed to know. He wanted me out of here. He wanted to do anything he could to placate Nikita.
Nikita smiled at my father in thanks.
“Good to see you’re with me, Dmitri,” he remarked. “No point in keeping Nadia all cooped up in here, is there?”
“Exactly,” my father agreed, and he fired a look at me as though to ensure I wasn’t going to argue with him. I pressed my lips together. I didn’t like how this was going, but I didn’t see how I could argue, with both of them apparently intent on working against me here.
I knew I had to play along. Not just for my sake, but for my father’s, too – I needed to make sure that I was able to get him through this, get him out of here in one piece. It might not be easy, but I had to try.
I smiled up at Nikita, hoping that my grin was a little more convincing than his.
“Sure thing,” I told him. “I’d love to go with you. Where are we visiting?”
“Oh, you’ll see when we get there,” Nikita replied, cocking an eyebrow at me and letting his gaze linger on mine for a little too long. Could my father tell what this man had going through his mind? Was there anything he could have done to stop it, even if he did? I wished I could ask him if this was what he really wanted for me, but I knew that wouldn’t be fair. He was just trying to survive this, and the least I could do was play fair, make it easy on both of us.
“Come on, I need to find you a helmet,” Nikita continued.
“A helmet?”
“If you’re going to be riding on my bike, then I want you to be safe,” he told me, and he took my arm and pulled me to my feet. I wasn’t going to get much of a choice with all of this. My future, at least in the immediate, had been decided for me, and the best I could do was go along without a fuss and pray nothing too awful happened while I was out.
