Chapter Twenty Three
Alexei
Katya breathes in short little pants as Anatoli ushers a trembling Piotr out of the room at the point of his gun. The side of her face is smeared with Ivan’s blood. She cannot stop shivering. Her teeth chatter with it, like the night Anatoli drugged her.
As soon as we are alone again, she scrambles off my lap like she wants to get as far away from the gun that remains on the table as possible. Her bare feet slap the marble tile and then she skids in the pool of blood that spreads beneath the chair Ivan once occupied.
She looks down. Sees her blood-covered feet. Sees Ivan’s corpse, his blood and brain matter splattered across the floor.
The smears of blood are vibrant against the pallor of her face. She bends double, retches. More of a mess across the tile that someone else will clean. There is not much she heaves up; I think her dinner must not yet have been delivered to her, and that is for the best.
I sigh as I rise to my feet. She shivers as I rub her back, waiting for her to be done. At last, when nothing is left in her stomach and she is gasping, she lifts her arm to scrub at her mouth. Sees the flecks of blood there and thinks better of it.
Her knees tremble. I catch her before she can fall, sweep her up into my arms.
“You were not meant to see this,” I tell her as I stalk from the room, heading toward the stairs.
“If you had stayed where you were meant to, you would not have.” This, I think, is enough of a punishment.
When first she arrived, I wanted to drag her over my knee and spank her ass raw.
But now—now I think she has already learned a lesson. She will not disobey again.
She closes her eyes and tips her head against my shoulder. Her voice is ghostly. Shaken. “There’s blood all over me.”
“I know, Katya. We will fix this.”
A hiccough. “Did you have to—have to—”
“Yes.”
I hear her swallow. Hear the plea in her voice. “I don’t want to see it.”
“Be a good girl, and you will not.”
She is silent for the rest of the way. It is only when I kick closed the bedroom door behind us that she asks, “What’s the pit?”
“You do not concern yourself with this.” I head for the bathroom and swipe a pile of her toiletries aside so I can set her to sit on the countertop, where her bloody feet won’t touch the tile and leave sticky traces she will see once she is clean.
She is dazed, listless. Still pale, her pupils blown with shock.
I shove a toothbrush into her hand and turn the taps on the sink beside her.
“Brush,” I tell her, and she jerks a little at the command.
It gives her something to do, something to focus her attention on while I turn on the shower and wait for the water to warm. She scrubs at her teeth and tongue like they’ve offended her, until she’s exorcised the taste of bile from her mouth.
“What’s the pit?” she asks again as she sets down her toothbrush and lets me pull off her rolled-up pajama pants.
I shove them deep into the laundry basket, along with her shirt. “I told you—”
“I want to know.” Her voice is small, quiet. Like she is trying very hard to be brave. To learn something she knows already she will not like. I pick her up off the counter, set her down on her feet carefully in the shower, where she sways like she is drunk.
I tear off my jeans and step in after her, nudging her beneath the spray of the water, which runs away pink into the drain.
“This is…” I falter for words, seeking the closest possible.
“Something like dungeon,” I say. “Where I put those who will be punished. Or forgotten.” Like Piotr will be punished, before he receives the benefit of Katya’s mercy.
Like Ivan will be forgotten, once his body and his blood have been removed from the floor.
Another shiver shakes her shoulders. “I haven’t seen it.”
“You will not.” It is down deep in the basement, behind a locked door which will never be opened for her.
There is still much of the house she has yet to see, many rooms that have been kept locked since she arrived.
But this place—this is one she will never see.
“I do not want you to think of this,” I tell her.
“I don’t want you to kill people,” she says sharply, and her color is better now that the rush of water warms her. Her tongue is sharp again. Spicy. In this moment, spicy is good. Her wet hair slides through my fingers like silk.
“This is also something you do not think of,” I tell her, and I squirt her expensive, flowery-smelling shampoo into my palms to run it through her hair.
“You think the bratva functions like your Cosa Nostra? That this power was given to me because of blood or family?” The stiffness of her shoulders relaxes as the shampoo washes free the traces of blood in her hair.
“Nyet. I have this power because I have taken it. Weakness invites rebellion. If I fail to correct the men who work for me, this is weakness. And when I kill one who has trespassed too far, this reminds others what will happen if they do the same, if they make the mistake of thinking you make me weak. I do these things for your protection. So no one else will make the mistake of thinking I will not protect you.”
She closes her eyes, sighing as I tilt her head back to rinse her hair clean. “What will happen to Piotr?”
I pinch her chin in my fingers. “You do not think of this, Katya. You do not blame yourself. Piotr has his life because of you. What else happens to him—this also is not your concern.”
“I only came down because you were yelling,” she says. “I was…worried.”
“I know, Katya.” I pull her out from beneath the spray of water to rake conditioner through her hair. “You listen to me next time.” This is a command, but I think maybe this is a futile one. Katya is always going to listen to herself first.
“Can we still go out tomorrow?”
Probably I should say no. But she asks so hopefully, like she thinks I will refuse because she disobeyed, when I know she already regrets this. I scrub soap over my face, washing it free of the last traces of Ivan’s blood. “Yes, koshechka,” I sigh. “We can go out.”
Her eyes open again as I rinse the conditioner from her hair. She reaches for one of her puffy sponges and squirts liquid soap onto it, rubbing it between her hands until it lathers. “Is there still blood on my face?” she asks.
“Not anymore,” I tell her, but still she scrubs at her face until it is bright pink. “Stop that,” I chide as I snatch the sponge from her fingers.
“I just want to be clean.”
“You do not need to scrape off your skin for this. You will be clean, Katya, I promise you.” Passively she accepts my help in this, and I am thorough, so she knows no traces of blood linger on her skin.
From her face to the soles of her feet, until the water runs clear in the shower.
Until there is no evidence left for her to see.
“You need to eat dinner,” I tell her as I turn off the water and wrap a fluffy towel around her.
She winces. “I don’t think I can.” From the mess of toiletries strewn across the bathroom counter, she pulls free a hairbrush and drags it through her wet hair. In the mirror she stares at her face as if she expects it still to be streaked with blood.
“Eat anyway.” Her food has been delivered already.
I can smell the savory scent of meat as I push open the bathroom door.
The cart is beside the bed. Her lobster and scallops.
Her caviar and blini. Her Beef Wellington.
Even the fucking cheesecake. A whole one, covered in a bright red strawberry sauce.
Katya shivers, her gaze falling away from it. Probably it looks too much like blood. Too much like the mess Ivan’s ruined brain left on my marble floors. She crawls into bed as if she is exhausted. Probably she is. She is coming down from a surge of adrenaline. All the more reason to eat.
I sit at the edge of the bed beside her. The cart is close; the nearest offering is a tin of caviar set atop a bowl of ice. I prepare her blini in the way she likes. “Open.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Alyosha—”
“You need to eat. Open.”
Finally, she fucking listens. She chews. Swallows. “It’s good,” she says begrudgingly.
“Of course, is good. You know anyone who does not like caviar?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a dick,” she says, but she opens her mouth without prompting when I feed her another bite. Slowly she consumes bits and pieces of her extravagant meal, until at last she pushes my hand away and says, “I’m done. Really.”
She would not touch the cheesecake she asked for.
But otherwise—it is enough. For me; for her.
“Okay, Katya,” I tell her, and when I shove the cart away and climb into bed beside her, she snuggles up against my chest and settles in to sleep.
She nestles beneath my arm like it is capable of protecting her against the whole fucking world.
And for the first time, she has nightmares.