Chapter Thirty Two
Catalina
A rough hand slaps me awake, and the gasp that flies from my lungs hurts. I think my ribs are bruised. Maybe broken. It’s difficult to tell the difference when they ache so badly.
I don’t know how long I’ve been allowed to sleep, but I know it wasn’t long enough.
A few hours, if I was lucky. It’s the first time I’ve been permitted to sleep in…
I don’t really know how long. Days, maybe.
It’s impossible to tell. The light is always on in this tiny room.
There are no windows. The air is so stale and stagnant that all I can smell is my blood, my sweat.
I can’t feel my legs. I fell asleep kneeling, because my hands are bound tightly to a steel pole and it’s impossible to stretch out. There’s kneeling when it’s permitted, and there’s standing when it’s demanded. And nothing else.
In contrast to the sharp slap that jolted me out of sleep, the hand that strokes my face is gentle. Papa’s voice is softer still. Almost tender. “What do you need, Catalina?”
“Water,” I rasp. I know they’ll give it to me eventually. Enough to keep me alive, and little else. A thin trickle drizzled across my dry lips, which tastes like fading hope.
“Why should I give you water?” Papa asks, not for the first time.
This is a kind of torture, too, and it’s so much crueler than what they’ve already inflicted with their fists.
With their boots. With the slice of box cutters in indifferent, idle lines, carving cuts into my skin an inch at a time.
My body is a canvas they deface in parts, in pieces.
“You did not do what I asked of you, Catalina. You disobey your own papa. You show no respect.”
“Please.” It’s all I can manage. Speaking even this much hurts my bruised throat.
I’ve already endured hard hands around my neck countless times, pinching off my air supply until my vision goes dark.
Until my muscles jerk and spasm. Until each gasping breath I struggle to take is a torture in and of itself.
“You had one instruction, Catalina,” Papa says. “Only one thing was asked of you. And you don’t do this for us. For your famiglia.”
This is the reason they took me. To learn if I did what they asked me to the day I ran, a demand Papa reiterated that day I stole Nicky’s phone from Alexei’s desk drawer and called him.
He had no interest in my safety. He only wanted to know if I had succeeded in destroying the evidence of Nicky’s crimes, the evidence which Alexei stole and continues to dangle over their heads to keep my family in line.
I guess my time ran out. Or maybe theirs has.
Days ago, when I was stronger—when I still had spirit left to break—I told Papa the truth.
That by the time Alexei trusted me enough to let me wander freely, I had already learned how little he thought of me.
That he killed any fondness I once had for him, that I learned only too well that my filial affection was entirely misplaced.
That even if I had so much as half an idea of what, exactly, that evidence was or where to find it, I would never have done it for them.
That earned me a brutal kick in the ribs from Papa’s brother Matteo. The one I think might have broken them.
I know, now, that it would have been better to lie.
To let them think I had done what they wanted just to placate them.
I was so certain, then, that Alexei would find me.
I thought it would be only a matter of hours.
I thought I could hold out until then. Now I know better.
Wherever I am—wherever they’ve taken me—I’m beyond Alexei’s reach.
I’m going to die here. At the hands of my family, because they have no further use for me.
And it’s going to be soon. I don’t have the energy to scream anymore when they hit me.
It’s not satisfying for them to kick someone who doesn’t even have the capacity to cry any longer.
I don’t flinch when they cut me because I’m already in too much pain for more to register. My suffering has ceased to amuse.
Initially, they spoke to one another in Italian because they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying. Now they don’t care. They speak in English because it doesn’t matter if I know. I won’t live long enough for it to make a difference.
Papa’s brother Lorenzo twists the cap off a bottle of water. As he holds the bottle to my lips to allow me a few sips, he says, “I had hoped, Catalina, you would prove smarter than your brother.”
Papa makes a rough noise in his throat. This is his punishment, I guess. He has to endure his brothers’ disappointment in him. To hear his precious son disparaged and say nothing. Because in the end, it’s his fault. For not controlling Nicky better; for being stupid and greedy.
Like a sacrificial lamb, I bear the burden of Papa’s sins. The responsibility for them passes from his shoulders to mine.
Lorenzo jerks the bottle of water away. “We asked so little of you. Only spread your legs for the Russian long enough to make our problem disappear. Probably, if you were good enough, he wouldn’t even have cared.
” A sneer curls his lips. “Whoring is in your blood, after all. You get this from your mamma.”
If I had the strength to spit, I’d spit in his face. And maybe I’d die a little faster.
“If you had done this,” he says, and pulls a faux regretful expression. “Maybe you wouldn’t have to die.”
It’s almost a relief to have it acknowledged. Something to look forward to. They are going to kill me, and I won’t have to wait for it. I won’t have to kneel here and slowly starve and dehydrate to death. I can almost taste it.
I’m only sorry that I won’t see Alexei again.
Through the agony of bruising and soreness that afflicts my throat, I manage to say, in what feels like it must be my final act of defiance, “Alexei will kill you.” It might be weeks.
Months. Years, even. But eventually, Alexei will learn what happened to me.
There’s a moment of stunned silence. And then laughter. Loud, boisterous, mocking.
Matteo crouches beside me. “You think he cares for you?” he asks, his voice full of derision. “He thinks you ran from him.”
It’s a lie. He knows I wouldn’t. He has to know that!
Matteo’s hand strokes my tangled hair. “He curses your name to anyone who listens,” he says in a patronizing croon. “Even after so many days, his anger only grows. You think men like him excuse such things? You made him appear foolish. This is…unpardonable. Beyond forgiveness.”
No. Alexei knows better. He knows me better than that. “You’re lying.” It’s barely a whisper.
Matteo shrugs. “If this is what you think, then you are a greater fool than he is,” he says.
He pats my cheek; a perversion of what might otherwise have been a comforting gesture.
“It would have been better if you had listened,” he says.
“But we still have use for you.” With one hand he fishes in his pocket and withdraws a white handkerchief.
With the other, he pinches my cheeks in his fingers, forcing my mouth to open so he can stuff the handkerchief inside.
The linen sticks to the dry and tacky inside of my mouth. I choke around it, struggling to resist the urge to vomit. It’s only when I force myself to breathe through my nose that the feeling passes.
Papa whips out his phone and dials.
The phone rings—loudly. It’s on speakerphone.
On the third ring, Alexei answers. His voice is terse and grating. “What the fuck do you want, Russo?”
I struggle to make some sort of noise around the gag of the handkerchief. Until Lorenzo seizes my throat in a punishing grip and it’s a fight even to breathe through my nose.
“Today, my Catalina called me,” Papa says, his tone jovial. Placating. “She asked for my help.”
Alexei is silent for a long moment. And then, at last, “She called you.”
“Of course, she called me. I am her papa. Children call their papas when they are in trouble, no?” He issues a little laugh, like this goes without saying. “She told me she ran away, but now she has run out of money. Seven hundred dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, eh?”
It’s so obvious what Papa is doing, peppering in information that lends credibility to his words.
The exact amount of money that Alexei shoved into my hand the day they took me from the bookstore.
I want to beg Alexei not to believe it. To remember how devastated I was when I stole Nicky’s phone.
To realize that I would never call Papa for any reason.
There’s an icy cold inflection in his voice when he says, “Where is she?”
Papa laughs again. “Not to worry,” he says.
“I have her. Children, they don’t understand respect anymore, do they?
They think they make their own rules. That family obligations mean nothing.
But I am a man of my word, so of course I collected her for you.
” Papa pauses for a moment. “But you are not so much a man of yours, are you, Morozov? The last time I gave Catalina to you—”
“You did nothing, Russo,” Alexei bites out. “I took her for myself.”
“Okay, okay, this is true,” Papa agrees amiably. “So this time, I give her to you. And you give me what you promised.”
They’re trading me. Trading me for what I refused to get for them.
“Agreed,” Alexei says shortly, and still his voice is frigid.
Papa’s eyes flick toward me. “She is a little…damaged,” he admits. “When she realized she would have to go back, it was necessary to subdue her.”
“I don’t give a fuck. She has earned this.”
A shiver slides down my spine, and I realize—I can still feel pain. It’s just internal. It’s the tortured beat of my heart as I hear the bitter sound of hatred in the voice of the man I love. The one who no longer gives a fuck about me.
“She is still my daughter, Morozov,” Papa says, and he manages to inflect his voice with just the right amount of fatherly concern.
“She is not your concern,” Alexei says. “When I kill her, Russo, this will also not concern you. I want her in one hour.” And the call disconnects abruptly.
When. My eyes squeeze shut against the tears I can’t cry. There’s a horrible dry sting, but I haven’t been hydrated enough even to cry in days.
They’re not going to kill me. They’re going to let Alexei do it for them.
My shoulders shake with the sobs that collect in my chest. Matteo yanks the handkerchief out of my mouth so hard I feel like it tears a chunk of my inner cheek out with it.
“You see?” he says, and the patronizing tone of his voice tells me they made me listen to Alexei only to be cruel.
“It will not matter what you say. The Russian has too much pride to listen. So we will have his evidence, and he will have you. Probably it will take only a few days for you to die, and when you do, you will be good for something at last.” Another pat to my cheek, as if in faint praise.
“Your death will be the spark that ignites a war. The rest of the Russo famiglia will have no choice but to come together to make him answer for it—and we will be restored to our rightful place.”
Alexei is going to die, too. He doesn’t know, doesn’t even suspect this treachery. His hatred of me is so great that it clouds his judgment.
Papa hikes his thumb toward the corner of the room to indicate the security camera anchored to the wall.
A light is blinking. Recording. “That Russian stronzo killed my Nicky, my precious boy.” His voice is thick with an emotion he can spare only for his beloved son.
“So I will show him the truth before he dies. And he can go to hell knowing he sent you there first.”
∞∞∞
My legs won’t support me when I’m finally untied from the steel pole and forced upright.
I’ve been kneeling too long. Instead I’m carried roughly from the room, up a series of stairs, and out into bright afternoon sunlight.
I was somewhere in the basement of Papa’s house, I think.
Or maybe one of his brothers’. Deep in the basement, where no one could hear me screaming.
They toss into the back of a waiting car. Not even into a seat. Onto the floorboards, like garbage.
They don’t bother to drug me. Maybe they don’t care enough even to offer me the temporary relief unconsciousness might bring.
Maybe I’m too close to death to bother worrying about.
The drive is long. I don’t bother trying to scream or cry or flail. I have so little energy left in me. I need to save every bit of it, to bide my time until the right moment.
I promised myself I was going to trust Alexei.
I just need to give him the opportunity to trust me.
Right now, I’m alive. I’m conscious. I’m still breathing.
So I let myself rest as much as I’m able through the jarring bumps in the road that rattle my bones.
And I hold that thought in my mind. One moment.
I just need one moment. Just one, and he’ll believe me. He’ll trust me. He has to.
Eventually the car slows to a stop. I hear the beep of an intercom. I hear my father say, “It’s Russo.”
There’s the shrill of metal as the gate opens, and the car lurches into motion again as it rolls up the long drive toward the house. Finally. Finally, I’m home.
Rough hands drag me out of the backseat, pulling me half-upright by my arms. My legs drag up the steps, and my knees scrape the rough concrete. I can’t even keep my head up. I am saving every last bit of strength I can summon.
I pitch forward as soon as I’m released, falling into a sprawl on the concrete. My arms aren’t strong enough to push myself up, so I settle for turning my head.
And despair wraps itself around my heart and squeezes. It’s not Alexei standing there on the steps waiting for me.
It’s Piotr. He doesn’t even try to mask his disdain for me. It’s etched into the hollows of his cheeks, twisted into the curl of his lips. He grabs a manila envelope that was tucked beneath his arm and extends it to Lorenzo. And then he pulls his phone out of his pocket and makes a call.
On speakerphone, Alexei answers in sharp, brusque Russian.
As Piotr responds in kind, I draw in a deep breath, summon every bit of my strength, and beg, “Alyosha, please.” It’s all I can manage. I have nothing left in me.
For a long moment there’s only silence. And then at last, Alexei’s voice crackles over the speakerphone. Harder and colder than I’ve ever heard it. In English, for my benefit.
“Put her in the pit,” he says, and the line goes dead.
My father chuckles as he and his brothers turn to leave, abandoning me to my fate. The Russo in name only, useful only to die.
And I close my eyes and give up. I just hope it’s quick.