Chapter 15 Igor #2
Ants crawl all over my skin, my breathing coming out in ragged pants. What the fuck did I think would happen? That he’d be on guard to answer any unknown number? After so many years, I can’t even be sure he remembers my name. I was always supposed to be temporary.
We might have married in secret in the vineyard, under the watchful eyes of our officiant—the kind and welcoming Mammona was always up for sneaking around, keeping secrets and playing senile—but by now, he could have gotten an annulment.
He could have just decided he was better off without me and my fucking baggage.
I’d seen how rattled him and Lana got after we opened the first centre for victims of trafficking.
Just as my thoughts start their descent toward the ninth circle of my personal hell, the landline rings. The boy looks at me, and frowns.
I’m frozen.
It rings for a second time. I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
On the third ring, the boy picks up. “Hola?”
I don’t hear what the other person says on the other end of the line.
The boy tells them that he only speaks Spanish, that he is six.
Then, he turns to me again and hands the phone out.
His eyes are pleading. The cable is short so he can’t approach me, but he tries, looking behind him as though he can summon a longer cable so he can walk up to me and hand me the communication device.
In the distance, Misha’s hounds bark, so jarring against the silence of my home. I blink. Take one step forward. My fingers close around the old telephone. I bring it to my ear.
“Igor?” I hear him ask my name, so much anguish in the voice I forgot that I drop to my knees. “Igor, I know it’s you. Talk to me, baby.”
My lips quiver. Silver lines my eyes until I can’t see the boy anymore. Everything shifts, taking on a blurred edge.
“Please, Igor. Say something.”
A strangled sob escapes my lips.
“Baby… Please.”
If agony was a melody, it’d be our intertwined lament after three years of careful silence.
A commotion outside my shed has me jumping and hanging up. I was so focused on his voice that I forgot myself. And that could get me and the boy killed.
Speaking of the child I’m trying to save from pain, he looks at me with widened eyes, his gaze bouncing between me and the door.
“No, you go in,” someone says just outside my door. The walls of paper thin and I recognise Arkadi’s voice. He’s one of my brother’s most sadistic soldiers. Just knowing he’s stepping into my territory has my skin crawling.
“You said you needed the asset. I’m not going in there. You know how he gets.”
Hearing the fear in their whispers is a good thing. The only thing that has protected me in this place is the violence I’ve had to exude. The murders I’ve had to perpetrate. It doesn’t matter that every single one of them haunts me and that my ghosts take up more space in my head than the living.
A knock rasps on my door.
“Stay,” I tell the boy, whose shoulders drop ever so slightly. He shouldn’t trust me.
I open the door and come face to face with not two, but five of Misha’s men.
I grunt as a way to ask them what they want. Three of them shift on their feet but a newbie takes a step forward and boldly asks me to give the boy over.
“No.”
I close the door and just wish for them to fucking leave.
Of course, they don’t.
The new soldier bursts through my door, kicking it with his boot. I don’t even have a deadbolt here. Privacy is an illusion.
I don’t want to kill that man. He’s one more soul I don’t want to collect. One more coffin I don’t want to make. But his audacity has me seeing red. His eyes land on the boy, and a wave of fierce protectiveness takes over.
I seize the soldier by the throat and push him out of my place, throwing him onto the ground. Stepping outside after him, I spit on his face and turn my attention to his comrades.
“The boy is mine.”
“You can’t just take whoever you want,” Arkadi complains, but doesn’t move to help his friend up. “There’s a vetting process and this boy has been spoken for. By someone way more powerful than you.”
I prowl to him, the monster in me delighted when he gulps. The other three men take a step back. Good.
“And who’s going to stop me?”
Fear shines in Arkadi’s eyes, his whole body almost catatonic at how much bigger than him I am, and how much stronger.
But I underestimated him.
I study Arkadi’s face. His lid twitches and his pupils slide to his colleague behind him. I react fast, whirling on the man who just approached me silently, a syringe at the ready, aimed for my neck.
My fist connects with his temple, and he drops it. I crouch to catch it, and use it on him, right in his fucking left eye. Viscous fluid runs out of it and the soldier cries out, hard enough to call the boy I’m trying to save out of his hiding place and at the threshold of my place.
Arkadi runs to him, grabbing him roughly by the rags that serve as a tee-shirt on his back.
“He’s mine,” I yell.
The three remaining soldiers jump me at once.
A fist connects to my brow bone, breaking it as blood pours over my face, down my nose and into my mouth. Another hits me in the kidney. Fucking dirty move but effective. I double over and get a knee to the nose. I stumble back, shaking my head to disperse the white stars in my vision.
Too slow.
I’m too slow.
Something prickles my neck. I slap a hand over it, then turn.
The soldier I spit on has another syringe in his hand. His smile is wild and unhinged. “Night, night,” he taunts.
I advance on him, nostrils flaring but my feet aren’t obeying my brain. I waver, then careen to the side. After what feels like a full minute, I drop to my knees and fall down on my side.
The soldier hovers over me, and liquid lands on my face.
The humiliation is nothing compared to the torture of seeing Arkadi carry the boy back to the main house. He’s crying, holding out his hand for me.
Meanwhile I remain immobile on the ground, tasting dirt and the salt of my tears. My mouth refuses to move to call out for him. My body refuses to move to save him.
It’s going to be so much worse for him now.
I shouldn’t have taken him.
I shouldn’t have tried to save him.
Maybe I should have just killed him. It would have been a mercy.
To him. And to me.
His baby blue eyes flash with tears before he gets too far for me to discern.
I retch, vomit dribbling out of my mouth. I wish I was on my back, so I could die choking on my shame.