Chapter 5 #3
We ate in silence after that, him serving me small portions each time I asked properly, me responding with the required gratitude.
Each exchange felt like a small surrender, a tiny piece of my autonomy traded for food.
But my body didn't care about autonomy. It cared about protein and carbohydrates and flavor.
By the time we finished, I'd said please and thank you more times than I had in the past year.
Each repetition had gotten easier, the words losing their weight through repetition.
That scared me more than the initial resistance.
How quickly I'd adapted, how easily he'd trained me with nothing more than patience and food I desperately needed.
"See?" he said, clearing the plates with the same efficiency he'd set them out. "That wasn't so hard."
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing.
"Bear needs his medication," I said, needing to focus on something else.
"Yes," he agreed. "Would you like to give it to him?"
The question hung between us, and I knew what he was waiting for. Knew the price of getting to care for the puppy I'd saved.
"Please," I said. "May I give Bear his medication?"
"Of course," he said, and pulled out the medical supplies. "Let me show you how."
The food had given me strength, cleared my head, reminded me I was a person who could think and plan instead of just react.
Dmitry was washing dishes like some kind of domestic psychopath, his back to me, hands in soapy water.
Normal. Acting like this was his regular Sunday afternoon instead of day two of holding me prisoner.
Dmitry hadn’t told me what was going on—if he was going to keep me here forever, or if he’d decided to hand me over to the Morozovs. I didn’t intend to wait to find out.
Bear was sleeping off his medication, tiny body twitching with puppy dreams. He was safe for now, warm and healing, which meant I could focus on the thing that mattered most: getting us both out of here.
The door called to me. Three deadbolts—I could see them from here, heavy-duty but not impossible. I'd picked harder locks with bobby pins and desperation. These would need actual tools, but maybe if I could just get close enough to study the mechanisms, figure out what I was working with.
I moved casually at first, stretching like the meal had made me sleepy. Dmitry didn't turn around, just kept washing dishes with methodical precision. I drifted toward the living room, then angled toward the door, each step calculated to seem aimless.
The locks were even better up close. Medeco cylinders, pick-resistant but not pick-proof. The kind of locks that told you the owner knew about security but wasn't completely paranoid. I could work with this. My fingers traced the first lock, feeling for the basic structure, memorizing the shape.
The second lock was different—electronic, probably. Which meant there might be an override, a backup key somewhere. I pressed closer, trying to see the mechanism, my fingers working at the cylinder to test how much give it had.
"Going somewhere?"
His hand appeared above my head, palm flat against the door, and I hadn't even heard him move. No footsteps, no warning, just suddenly there like he'd materialized from shadow. His body caged me without touching, heat radiating from him in a way that made my skin prickle.
"Anywhere but here," I said, still working at the lock because what did I have to lose?
"That's not how this works." His voice came from directly behind me, close enough that I felt his breath stir my hair. "Step back from the door."
"Make me."
"I could." His free hand came up to rest on the door near my other shoulder, completely boxing me in. "But I'd rather not. So here's your choice: corner time for attempted escape, or I break one of your fingers to make lock picking impossible. You decide."
I actually laughed. Couldn't help it. The absurdity of it—corner time, like I was five years old and had drawn on the walls with crayon.
"What are you, my kindergarten teacher?"
"You prefer the broken finger?" His tone stayed conversational, like he was offering tea preferences. "Pointer finger would be most effective. You'd still be able to function but lock picking would be off the table for at least six weeks."
The casual specificity of it chilled me. He'd thought about this, calculated exactly which injury would incapacitate without completely destroying. This wasn't a threat made in anger—it was a business decision he was letting me participate in.
"Corner time," I said, hating how small my voice sounded.
"Good choice." He stepped back, giving me space to move. "Living room, far corner by the window. Nose to the wall."
"You're seriously going to make me stand in a corner."
"Yes. Unless you'd prefer the finger. Offer's still available."
I walked to the corner he'd indicated, each step feeling like surrender.
The walls met at a perfect ninety-degree angle, cream paint so clean I could see my reflection in the slight sheen.
There was nothing here—no furniture to lean on, no window to look out despite being near one, just two walls meeting in an empty space.
"Nose to the wall," he repeated. "Don't move, don't turn around, don't speak. Five minutes."
"This is fucking ridiculous."
"Movement or speaking adds time. That's six minutes now."
I pressed my face to the wall, close enough that my breath bounced back warm against my skin.
Behind me, I heard him return to the kitchen.
Water running again. The soft clink of dishes being put away.
Then footsteps to another part of the apartment, the distinctive sound of a laptop opening, fingers on keys.
He was working. Doing business while I stood with my nose to a wall like a punished child.
The humiliation of it burned hotter than any slap would have. At least violence would have let me be an adult, an enemy, someone worth the effort of physical confrontation. This—this was dismissal. I was a child throwing a tantrum, managed with the same bored efficiency as his spreadsheets.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
"That's movement," he called out, not even looking up from whatever he was doing. "Seven minutes now."
Seven minutes. It was nothing. I'd hidden in dumpsters for hours, had endured things that would make standing in a corner look like vacation. This shouldn't have bothered me.
But it did.
The position made me hyperaware of everything.
The sound of my own breathing. The slight texture of the paint under my nose.
The way my legs started to ache from standing perfectly still.
The humiliation crawled over my skin like living things, making me want to claw at myself just to feel something else.
Four minutes in, my eyes started burning. Not from pain—there was no pain. That was the problem. This was just . . . consequence. Simple, logical, absolutely maddening consequence.
A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek to drip off my chin.
Then another. Then I was crying silently, shoulders shaking, trying so hard not to move because I couldn't bear the thought of him adding more time.
Crying because I was standing in a corner like a naughty child. Crying because it was working.
"Almost done," he said at the six-minute mark, and there was something in his voice that might have been gentleness. Or pity. I couldn't tell which was worse.
When he finally said "Done" at seven minutes exactly, I couldn't move. Couldn't turn around and face him with tears streaming down my face, with the knowledge that his kindergarten punishment had broken me more effectively than any beating could have.
"Eva." His voice was closer now, maybe a few feet behind me. "You may leave the corner."
I turned slowly, keeping my eyes down, not wanting him to see the tears. But he probably already knew.
"Rule one," he said simply. "You don't leave without my permission. Not because I own you, but because there are five hundred thousand dollars on your head, And the people who want to collect that will do things that make corner time look like a vacation."
I wanted to argue, wanted to scream that I'd rather take my chances with the Morozovs than stand in another corner. But the truth was uglier—I wasn't sure anymore.
"I need to give Bear his medicine," I said instead, voice rough from crying.
He nodded, stepped aside. No comment on the tears, no mockery, no satisfaction. Just acknowledgment that I'd served my time and could now return to caring for the puppy.
I went to Bear, who lifted his head sleepily, tail attempting a weak wag. The medical supplies were laid out precisely—syringes, pills, the Russian instructions I couldn't read. But I knew what to do now. Dmitry had taught me, patient and thorough, making sure I understood each step.
"Yankov will be back tomorrow," Dmitry said from somewhere behind me. "He wants to check your wounds too."
"I'm fine."
"You have an infected cut, malnutrition, and what he thinks might be a lung infection. You're not fine."
The fact that he knew this, that he'd cataloged me like evidence, should have enraged me. Instead, I just felt tired. So fucking tired of fighting, of running, of pretending I could survive on my own when my body was literally falling apart.
"Why do you care?" The question escaped before I could stop it, surprising us both.
He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer. I focused on drawing medicine into the syringe, finding the right spot on Bear's scruff, delivering the injection that would keep him healing. The puppy barely flinched, already trusting me completely.
"I don't know," Dmitry said finally, and the honesty in it was somehow scarier than any lie would have been.