Chapter 5 - Bianca
I've counted the guards four times.
Two at the front gate, visible from the window if I press my cheek to the glass and look left. One patrolling the garden perimeter every twelve minutes. Another stationed somewhere below my window—I can't see him, but I hear his footsteps on the gravel, steady as a metronome.
Four guards. Maybe more I can't see. Plus the driver from last night, Mrs. Novak, and whoever else lives in this mausoleum.
I catalog these details because it's the only thing keeping me sane.
The breakfast tray sits untouched on the dresser. Toast, fruit, coffee—exactly what Misha ordered. The smell of it turns my stomach. I haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon, a granola bar inhaled between study sessions, but the thought of food makes me want to vomit.
My father sold me.
The words keep circling my mind like vultures, refusing to land.
My father—distant, yes. Cold, certainly.
More interested in my brothers than in me.
But still my father. The man who paid for my education, who called on my birthday every year even if the conversations were awkward, who I thought, despite everything, would never truly hurt me.
He put me on a stage and let strangers bid on my body.
I press my forehead against the window glass, letting the cold shock me back to the present. The gardens below are beautiful in the morning light—manicured hedges, a fountain burbling somewhere out of sight, flowers I don't know the names of blooming in careful arrangements.
A gilded cage. That's what this is. And I have no idea how to escape it.
Ask about phone access, I told myself an hour ago. Call the police. Call anyone.
Mrs. Novak's face when I asked was perfectly polite and completely immovable. "I'll have to check with Mr. Kashkin," she said, and I understood: I'm not a guest here. I'm property.
Again.
My hands clench at my sides. The black dress is wrinkled beyond saving, and I smell like sweat and fear and the lingering smoke of the auction house. I should shower. Change into whatever clothes they've provided. Make myself presentable.
I can't make myself move.
I never stopped, Misha said. Not for a single day.
The words keep ambushing me, catching me off guard between the fear and the fury. Two years. Two years of silence, of unanswered questions, of lying awake at night wondering what I did wrong. And he was watching the whole time. Tracking my movements, monitoring my life, treating me like a—
Like an asset. Like something to be managed.
Just like my father.
The knock on the door makes me flinch.
I know it's him before I cross the room. I can feel his presence through the wood, heavy and inevitable. My hand trembles as I reach for the handle.
You can do this, I tell myself. You've dissected cadavers. You've watched hearts stop and restart. You can face one man.
I open the door.
He looks as wrecked as I feel—shadows under his eyes, tension in his jaw, his shirt from last night rumpled and untucked. For a moment, the sight of him steals my breath. Two years, and my body still responds to him like a reflex, like muscle memory.
I hate it. I hate him. I hate myself for not hating him enough.
"Bianca," he says.
"Misha." I keep my voice flat. Controlled. I won't give him my pain.
"It's time." His eyes meet mine, and I see something raw in them, something he's not quite managing to hide. "Ask me anything."
I step back to let him in, then change my mind. This room feels too intimate—the bed looming in my peripheral vision, the memory of his jacket draped over me in the car.
"Not here," I say. "Somewhere else."
He nods, unsurprised. "Follow me."
He takes me to a study on the ground floor. Dark wood paneling, leather chairs, shelves lined with books that look like they've actually been read. A massive desk dominates one corner, but he doesn't sit behind it. Instead, he gestures to two armchairs by the window, positioned to face each other.
Equal footing. Or the appearance of it, at least.
I sit. The leather is cold through my thin dress, and I suppress a shiver. Misha takes the chair across from me, close enough that our knees almost touch.
"Where do you want me to start?" he asks.
The question is almost laughable. Where do I want him to start? At the beginning of time? At the moment he first lied to me? At the part where my father decided I was worth less than his debts?
"Who are you?" I say. "Really. Not the investor. Not the man who brought me coffee and danced with me in my kitchen. Who are you?"
He doesn't flinch. "My name is Misha Kashkin. I'm the younger brother of Dmitri Kashkin, who runs the Kashkin Bratva. We operate out of San Francisco. Have for two generations."
Bratva. Russian mafia. The word settles into my chest like a stone.
"What do you do for them? For your brother?"
"I'm an enforcer." He says it simply, without pride or shame. "I handle problems. Security. Negotiations that require a certain kind of persuasion."
"Persuasion." The word tastes sour. "Is that what you call threatening to cut off someone's hands?"
"When necessary."
I think of the man at the auction, the way Misha's voice dropped to something barely human. I'll send your hands back to your family in a box. He meant it. I saw it in his eyes.
"Have you killed people?"
He holds my gaze. "Yes."
The confirmation should shock me. It doesn't. Some part of me already knew—has known since he walked out of my apartment two years ago and I felt the shape of the secret he was keeping.
"How many?"
"A lot."
He doesn’t even know how many lives he ended by those hands. Those hands that used to cup my face so gently, that traced patterns on my skin while I fell asleep.
My stomach lurches. I swallow hard and push forward.
"And my family? The Benedettis?"
"Your father runs a criminal organization based in Los Angeles.
Smaller than ours, less established. They've been in decline for years—bad investments, failed alliances, debts piling up.
" He pauses. "They traffic women, Bianca.
That auction last night wasn't the first. It's how your father has been staying afloat. "
The words hit me like a physical blow. I think of Mirella in the holding room, her hollow eyes, her matter-of-fact acceptance of her fate. The Benedettis are broke. They're liquidating assets.
She knew. Everyone knew except me.
"How long?" My voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again. "How long has he been doing this?"
"At least a decade. Probably longer."
A decade. I was eleven years old when my father started selling women. I was learning long division and reading Harry Potter while he was—
I can't finish the thought. Something inside me is cracking, fissures spreading through the foundation of everything I believed about my life.
"Did you know?" I ask. "When we were together. Did you know what my family was?"
"I knew your father was involved in organized crime. I didn't know the details of his operations—not then." Misha's jaw tightens. "I found out later. After I left."
"And you didn't think to warn me?"
"You were safer not knowing. If you'd confronted your father, if you'd tried to leave, if you'd shown any sign that you knew what he was—" He stops, breathes. "He would have considered you a liability. The same way he eventually did anyway."
The same way he eventually did anyway. Because he sold me. His own daughter. Put me on a stage like cattle and waited for the highest bidder.
My eyes burn. I blink rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall.
"Why did you leave?" The question tears out of me, rawer than I intended. "Two years ago. Why did you really leave?"
"Because staying would have gotten you killed."
"That's not an answer. That's a deflection."
"It's the truth." He leans forward, elbows on his knees.
"When I started seeing you, the Benedettis and the Morozovs were negotiating an alliance.
If they'd discovered that Carmine's daughter was involved with a Kashkin, you would have become a target.
A bargaining chip. A weapon to be used against us or against your own family. "
"So you just decided for me. Without asking. Without explaining."
"Yes."
"Because you thought you knew better."
"Because I knew if I told you the truth, you'd want to fight. To stay. And I couldn't protect you and be with you at the same time." His voice roughens. "So I chose to protect you."
The tears are threatening again. I dig my fingernails into my palms, using the pain to anchor myself.
"You broke my heart." The words come out small, childish. I hate how they sound. "I thought there was something wrong with me. I spent months wondering what I did, what I could have done differently—"
"There was nothing wrong with you." His voice is fierce, almost angry. "There has never been anything wrong with you. I was the poison, Bianca. I was the danger. Cutting you out of my life was the only way I knew to keep you safe."
"And watching me for two years? Was that keeping me safe too?"
He flinches. Good.
"I couldn't let go completely," he admits. "I told myself it was security. Making sure you weren't being targeted, weren't being watched by anyone else. But that wasn't—" He stops, struggles. "I needed to know you were okay. That you were living your life. Becoming the doctor you wanted to be."
"While you lurked in the shadows like a stalker."
"Yes." No defense. No justification. Just that single word, heavy with admission.
I stand abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. My legs carry me to the window, where I stare out at the gardens without seeing them.
My father is a monster. The man I dated is a killer. My whole life has been built on lies—mine and everyone else's.
"The auction," I say, not turning around. "You said there was an arrangement. With the Morozovs."
"Yes."
"Tell me."