Chapter 18
Anya
“Ibelieve that you still owe me a couple of answers, you know,” I mutter between breaths. In the midst of everything else, I almost forgot what we were doing. I almost forgot my desire to learn more about him—it is the only thing that I want right now that isn’t water. The door is locked anyway, and I can’t waste this opportunity. I can’t even open my eyes, so if his arrogant smirk has returned, I don’t have to look at it. “Two, I believe.”
Beside me, Nikolai sighs heavily. “Da, that is correct… as I also have two questions remaining.”
He sounds as if talking is the last thing on his mind right now. I could sleep. My body is warm and heavy, and in any other situation, I would fall asleep in the warm protective cage of his arms. Even more so if it means he will no longer be interested in showing me how to use the rest of the items in this room. I don”t believe anything I can learn will help me escape, but the door is still locked.
I trace an invisible circle in the sheet under my outstretched arm, and my chin tucks into the arm wrapped around my chest. “Do you miss your father?” It”s completely unexpected. I know that. I just need some insight into his personality, into how his mind and heart work. Nikolai remains silent for a long time. Perhaps I stepped over an invisible line. “I mean, I’m your prisoner here anyway, right? It can’t hurt to tell me when I’m probably not going to get out of here… at least not alive.”
Nikolai inhales sharply, considering my softly voiced addition to my question. I can feel him press his lips together. Maybe I expect for him to argue with me, or tell me that I’m going to live here with him until he’s done with me. Perhaps I said it because I wanted to know if there was any version of this situation that I’m in where I get to live out the rest of my natural lifespan. Captive or not captive. He doesn’t comment on it. I should have known he wouldn’t.
“Yes. I do miss him,” he finally says.
That’s it, I guess. He technically answered the question. He doesn’t have to tell me anything else… but I wanted him to. I thought that this would be the sort of topic that might prompt him to speak a little bit more openly about his family life but I’m also not willing to waste my very last question with a follow-up question.
“We were close. I suppose that is the best way to put it. My father was very strict, in this line of work you must be. He taught me how to be a man. Sometimes I thought that he was a bit too hard on my mother… sometimes this would make me fight him, but then she would fight both of us. She did not like it when I interfered. She would always say that she could handle her own…” Nikolai smiles into the side of my face. “She could, too. I think that the way she spoke to my father…” he chuckles. “She is the only person who could speak to him like this and keep their tongue.”
Despite the burning questions that I now have blistering my tongue, I don”t want to interrupt.
“He had a reputation, of course. All men like this do. We must be strong, impenetrable. Weakness leads to problems. Many feared my father because of his terrible temper—much like the reputation I also have. I cannot even deny that my blood does not boil out of control sometimes.” Nikolai shrugs as if it doesn’t matter. “It makes me very effective in correcting those stupid enough to lie to me.”
I think back to the plane, and wonder if that was him on his best behavior. If that is the version of him that is restrained, I cannot imagine what he might be like otherwise. I don’t want to know what he has in mind for my father.
“And you? Will you miss your father?” Nikolai’s hold on me softens, I know that this is a test. He wants to know what I will do now that he’s practically confirmed that he’s going to kill him.
To be completely honest, I”m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t want him to die. However, that was question number four, so I had to respond. I summon as much levity as I can, and peel myself from Nikolai’s arms. He doesn”t stop me as I sit up, bring my knees up to my chest, and cross my feet at the ankles. I loosely wrap my arms around my legs and lace my fingers together.
“I don’t want my father to die. I don’t know what he did to you… and I’m not going to ask yet. I know based on my past experiences with the man, he probably deserves whatever is coming to him. I…” I inhale deeply, trying to remain composed. “My father is not exactly the warm and fuzzy sort of man. I can’t say that he’s a ‘Dad’ to me…” I use air quotes around the word Dad, and put my hands back where they were before. “He is not the sort of man to show up to my events or pick me up from school. I remember the cars that he would send for me and because of the life that he lived… I was forced to spend so much time indoors that I rebelled a lot in college, I wanted to get his attention. So when that didn’t work, I got an impressive degree in archeology because I thought that maybe that would catch his attention but, of course, it didn’t. He sent me a fruit basket at my graduation.” I laugh humorlessly and stare blankly into the bedding. “He only started checking in on me regularly after my mom died. Now her… I miss her every day.”
Nikolai gives me the time to speak openly, or he just doesn’t want to waste his last question either, but I continue either way.
“She died a few years ago in a car crash. I try not to think about it… but I think it was the one and only time that I really felt that my father might actually be in love with my mother. He tore the whole city apart looking for somebody to blame for her death. For a long time, he thought that it was his fault, that he had somehow caused the whole thing. He thought that somebody must have double-crossed him… and he was particularly unpleasant to be around as his daughter at that time. Security was tripled, he started taking everything out on me. He even tried to blame me once… I think that her death broke something inside of him. He hasn’t ever been the same since. Sure, he walks the same, speaks mostly the same… but he’s different. He’s gone from an absent father to something somehow colder.
It took me so many years to convince him that it wouldn’t threaten his masculinity to seek help. I practically forced him to start seeing a therapist when I went off to college. They put him on meds to help with the grief… and for a long time I thought that it was helping. I’m sure that he stopped going once I actually moved away.” I bite my bottom lip, chewing on the plump, kiss-swollen skin for a moment before I shake my head. “But he’s my father… he’s the only family that I have left.”
“Your mother sounds like quite the woman.”
I nod. “She was. She was beautiful, she was even voted Miss Universe a couple of years before I was born. My father was obsessed with her—she was impossibly sweet, but quiet. I don’t think that I ever heard her so much as disagree with him. Looking back, I don’t know if that was just how she was, or if there was something wrong there. I never thought to ask and now it’s too late. Yet, when I was growing up, I just thought that she was soft, like a doll or something.”
“Nothing like my mother,” Nikolai laughs. “She made you earn her affection. She would push and challenge you to be your very best. Typical Slavic Ma, I suppose. If you want something, you take it. I do not think that my parents courted—he wanted her, and so he took her. She used to say that if he hadn’t forced her to marry him that she might have stabbed him in his sleep. I think she meant it but I also think that she would have it no other way. He married her and put a baby in her straight away.” Nikolai chuckles as if this is the way that it had to be. “She claimed to hate him until the day she died. Though, it was the same way that she said she wished I was never born.”
I can tell by the tone of his voice that he is deeply amused by the way that his parents interacted. I can’t say that I would feel the same way if my mother said that she wished she had never birthed me, but I wonder what I would think if I had gotten to hear Nikolai’s mother speak. I wonder if she would have liked me. His father would probably say that I’m not cut out for this life, and I don’t even know if I can argue that point anymore.
“As you say, though, perhaps that is not the normal way… but it was our way, and it was good.” Nikolai rolls his dark, striking eyes up to mine and holds it there, a silent question in them. Does he want my opinion on that setup? The irony is not lost on me—the way that he’s kidnapped me, the abduction and the sex... but he speaks again before I can get too lost in thought. He places one arm under his head, his torso elongating as he points to a tattoo on his pelvis, just underneath the deep ‘V’ of muscle. It looks like a crude poke and stick tally mark tattoo. “Here,” he taps the spot with his middle finger. “One for every year that she has been gone.”
I reach forward and trace the muscle with my fingers. I have to get closer to him to see the tribal tattoo that runs from his thigh to his torso, though the symbols are unfamiliar to me. He”s in better physical shape than anyone I”ve ever seen... but now that I”m free to look at him like this, I can see how badly his body is damaged. Scars rangingin size from circular bottle gouges to burns andbite marks. Distinctive teeth marks, a pucker of skin on his chest that looks like somebody took a piece out of him. Intentionally or not. He has bruises on his torso that are older than the scuffle marks from our physical struggle earlier. He’s been in a fight with somebody, or multiple somebodies that aren’t me… and very recently. Nikolai has the body of somebody who fights his way out of every possible situation and is only too happy to do so.
Part of me wants to ask him how he got these scars, what the tattoos mean… but then a part of me thinks that it might be better if I just never know.
“I grew up so sheltered, that it is strange to see all of these scars on you, all of the things that you must have had to do in order to earn your place here, to inherit this whole empire and be able to run it. I just had my mother and the security guards. My father did his best to keep all his business dealings away from both of us, my mother never thought that I saw it, but she would cry some nights when he wouldn’t come home.
Growing up, I had a secret theory that he had another family somewhere and he just chose to spend his extra time with them. Then, of course, I grew up and wished that it was the family as opposed to what he actually does.” I shrug. “You have so many scars it looks like you’ve spent most of your life fighting to become who you are.”
Nikolai shrugs like that is the least of what he could do. “Of course?”
“You look like you never once considered another way of life, something else that you might have wanted to do instead.”
Nikolai only considers the possibility for half a moment. “No, why would I? This is a good life. This might not be common, but that is because not everybody could do this. A man like me is built to fight, and this is the best life that I could have for myself. I was born to do this, and these?” He runs a hand up his stomach, the scarred skin moving with the motion, “This is nothing, hasn’t killed me yet,” he smirks. “It’s just skin, anyway.”
Just skin, like it doesn’t even matter. I suppose there is a sort of solace to be found there, a peace in knowing that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maybe someday I will be able to ask him how he got a few of those scars, or why his knuckles are always bruised and swollen.
One question left.
I could ask him if he’s planning on letting me live.
Will he be able to answer honestly? It would be foolish for him to agree or say that he will let me go if I behave because I have no idea what his plans are for my father. Whatever happens, there is an end in coming.
I don’t even know how I feel about that either.
This is both the most exciting and worst thing to ever happen to me at the exact same time. If my father’s men were to somehow find my location here in Russia and come storming the gates right this very second… how would I feel? Would I be happy to see Nikolai get his comeuppance for the way that he’s handled me? Kidnapped me? Would I be sorry to see him harmed? Does any of this matter? I have no power in this situation anyway.
“I never thought that we would have anything in common with one another,” I admitted. “Though, I think that perhaps our childhoods are only normal because we lived them,” I flash him a small smile, but my lips pull tight. “You still have one more question,” I remind him.
“Do you think that your father is looking for you?” Nikolai asks, all humor gone from his face. I’m sure that this is another test because he likely already knows the answer.
“No,” I answer him honestly. “I don’t think that he’s even noticed that I’m gone.”
“Does this make you sad?”
It is an extra question, but I decide that I don’t mind, and answer it anyway. “Not anymore. I think at one point, it would have hurt even more. Over the years I find that while I’m still looking forward to the times that he checks in on me, I wonder if he does it because he actually enjoys catching up with me or if he’s just checking on yet another one of his assets. Unlike you, I was not trained to take over the family business. I honestly don’t have any information that will help you get your revenge on him. I can’t even tell you if there is somebody that you could have kidnapped instead that would help you more.”
I speak plainly, putting it all out in the air between us. I could ask him if my father has contacted him, but knowing will only hurt my feelings.
“You, too, have one more question.”
I nod and wrap my arms around myself once more. “I think I will save it, if you don’t mind.”
“Then you better make sure that it will be a good one.”