Chapter 19
19
OFELIA
I ’m dozing against the wall, Masha clutched to my chest, when I’m woken by the soft thud of Alexei’s rifle butt against the floor.
My eyes fly open to find him watching me from beneath a lowered eyelid. He’s still entirely still, his head bent as if he’s dozing, but I know him well enough by now to see the tension in his body and the warning in his lone eye.
Bathroom time , he mouths.
Our breaks are strictly monitored, and we visited the bathroom across the corridor barely two hours ago.
There’s a reason for this.
I subtly shake Masha, who wakes instantly, staring up at me with unblinking eyes. I hate how quickly she’s become attuned to the tension we’re living with, reacting to my smallest signal.
“Excuse me.” I say it loudly for the cameras. “I don’t feel well. I need the bathroom.”
Alexei stands up threateningly. “You’ve already had your break,” he snarls.
I glare at him. “I can’t help it if I need the bathroom. Unless you want diarrhea all over this floor, I need the bathroom. Now.”
He makes an annoyed sound and looks up at the camera in the corner, lifting his shoulders as if to say what do you want me to do?
A disembodied voice comes through the speaker. “Take them to the bathroom.”
Alexei pushes off the wall and gestures impatiently to the door with his rifle. “Come on, then.”
I uncoil my stiff limbs, trying not to wince at the stinging of his most recent knife cuts. Fortunately, I’ve learned they usually don’t open again. Alexei’s cuts are thin and incredibly precise. They bleed profusely—Vilnus, I’ve learned, likes the sight of blood, and Alexei always gives him a good show—but they are surface wounds, designed to produce the greatest show for the least pain.
I don’t need a therapist to tell me how twisted it is that I feel grateful for the care Alexei takes when he cuts me.
We walk out of the room, the muzzle of his AR cold and hard at the base of my spine as he nudges me across the corridor to the bathroom. He accompanies us into the small space. The toilet has no door, and the mirror is polished metal instead of glass. The bathroom is an uncomfortable reminder that Masha and I are not the first ones to be held captive in this horrible place.
There is one advantage to the bathroom, however.
There’s a place in the corner, under the camera, that is out of sight of the watching eyes, which are instead trained on the toilet itself. Best of all, Alexei told me, there’s no audio feed in this room.
The bathroom is the one place we can communicate, however small those communications might be.
I push Masha toward the sink. “Wash your hands and face,” I tell her, smiling. I put my mouth close to her ear as if I’m kissing her cheek. “Keep the water running.”
She knows better than to nod.
I pull up my dress and sit on the toilet, my head in my hands as if I’m hiding from the cameras. In reality, I’m listening hard.
“Roman will be coming for you soon.” Alexei’s voice is low, and I don’t have to look at him to know his mouth is barely moving, although his rifle will be trained on me. “He’s hacked into the video feed, which means he and Darya are working together.”
I want to ask when soon might be, but in full view of the camera, I can’t. Alexei being out of sight is one thing—me, quite another. The one time I tried to stand in the corner myself, the door was flung open in seconds, and three guards chewed Alexei out.
“They will attack in the next few days,” he goes on. He has an uncanny ability to read my mind. “Until then, no matter what Orlov does, you have to obey him. I know it’s hard.”
Hard?
I almost laugh.
Hard is a small word for what these days are like.
For the daily visits from Vilnus, when he asks Alexei to use his knife and watches me with eyes that touch every inch of my flesh.
Hard doesn’t begin to cover the humiliation and rage I feel every time Vilnus makes his guards watch or the shame I feel when they openly stare at my most intimate parts.
“Orlov will tell you lies.”
Alexei’s voice is so low I have to strain to hear him.
“He will likely bring your mother back and use her to manipulate you. Vilnus wants you scared and disoriented when Roman comes for you. He wants you so scared that you will obey him, or me, instead of Roman. But when Roman comes, you must do as he says. If he attacks me, you let him, do you understand me? Nothing matters more than you and Masha getting out of here. Don’t hesitate, no matter what you see. And between now and then, no matter what Orlov does to you, don’t lose your sanity. Remember who you are. The end is close, Ofelia. It’s coming. You just have to hold on.”
No matter what Orlov does to you.
There’s something odd in his voice that sets my nerves on edge.
“Masha,” he says. “Don’t look at me. Just listen.”
Masha keeps her head down and keeps washing her hands.
“No matter what happens to your sister, you have to stay calm, okay? Vilnus will hurt you if you try to fight. I’m going to make sure you go home safely, myshka . But until then, I need you to do exactly what he says.”
“’Kay.” Masha’s one-syllable response is low, and her lips hardly move.
I hate how fast she’s learned the rules here.
My only comfort is that so far nobody has touched her.
A guard bangs on the door. “Hurry up, Petrovsky.”
I stand up and flush the toilet, keeping my head down. Alexei prods my back with his rifle. “That’s long enough,” he says, in full view of the camera.
We exit the bathroom, and the two guards standing there grin knowingly at Alexei. “You’re starting to like babysitting that tasty little piece a bit too much, Petrovsky,” one of them says. “Maybe it’s about time I took over. Wouldn’t mind taking a knife to her myself.” His eyes roam over me in a way that makes me pull the torn remains of my dress closer around my body. “Orlov is going to break her in, you know,” he goes on conversationally. “He might let you cut the bitch, but there’s no way he’ll let you pop her cherry.”
“Vilnus can fuck her bloody for all I care.” Alexei’s face doesn’t change at all. His eye remains dull, distant.
The guard’s lip curls. “You’re a twisted fuck, Petrovsky, you know that? I bet you’d slice her open from ass to pussy if he told you to.”
“You think I enjoy babysitting two spoiled fucking cunts?” Alexei’s face is flat and unemotional, and he uses the expletive as casually as if he’s ordering tea. “But you’re right about one thing: my knife belongs to Vilnus.” He stares at the guard with a blank, dead eye. “It has ever since he gave me this.” He holds up his fist, showing the men the sparrow tattooed there.
The guard shakes his head contemptuously. “If you think Orlov will ever trust you, you’re a fool. The day he opens that vault is the day you die. That sparrow won’t save you.”
Alexei shrugs. “That’s his choice. It’s not my place to question what he does.” His eye flashes suddenly, and he takes a step closer to the guard. “But it’s not your place either. I suggest you don’t joke about touching the Stevanovsky girls. We both know what Vilnus does to anyone who lays a hand on what is his.”
“You’re fucking pathetic, Petrovsky. A mad dog on a leash.” The guard twirls his finger close to his temple to indicate insanity, but I can’t help but notice he takes a step backward. “Maybe I should put you back on the table and give you a few more cuts, just for old time’s sake. Maybe make you fuck that pussy you seem to like cutting so much. Can you even get it up without a knife in your hand? I doubt it—”
In a sudden, terrifying movement, Alexei is up close to the guard, his knife at the man’s throat. “Vilnus commanded me to guard them,” he says in a low, chilling voice. “And like I said, my knife belongs to him. So if you come for those girls, Carlos, you better make sure I’m dead first. Because if you don’t, I’ll strip every last bit of flesh from your body.” His lips part in a smile so disturbing it makes me shiver. “You know what I can do with my knife. You’ve seen it yourself. I suggest you don’t test me.”
The two men back away, holding their hands up in a gesture of surrender, and even I can see the fear in their eyes.
What, exactly, have they seen Alexei do?
I shut my mind to that. I don’t want to know.
“Don’t you have patrols to make?” Alexei stares at them with a cold, dead expression.
The men cast a wary look at the cameras overhead and step aside.
We shuffle back to the room, and I sink to the floor in the corner, my heart still thudding, careful not to look at Alexei.
That’s another rule I’ve learned.
The delicate balance of our strange existence here depends, I’ve concluded, on him remaining our guard. By the contemptuous way the rest of the men treat him, it’s clear they consider Alexei almost subhuman, but they also fear him. Even Vilnus, for all his bluster, listens when Alexei talks. He compensates for that by humiliating Alexei every chance he gets. He has made him our guard as some kind of punishment. So long as he believes Alexei hates his duty, and that we’re terrified of him, Alexei will remain our watchdog.
I shudder to think of what will happen if he is taken away and I’m left in the hands of someone like the guards we just encountered. I’ve seen the way they look at me.
I’ve learned to obey Alexei’s commands, to hang on to the lifeline of his quietly breathed instructions, the strange comfort of his lone eye staring fiercely into my own. That way the torture Vilnus forces him to inflict shrinks to a private space where there is only Alexei, me, and the cold blade pressed against my flesh. It becomes a strange, intensely intimate dance between just him and me, a place where we are entirely alone, the only two who truly understand what is happening.
I’ve never been more intimate with a man than a couple of kisses with schoolboys, both times at private parties in the homes of girlfriends. They were brief, fumbling encounters that left me with more questions than answers. I guess if I ever imagined having a real boyfriend, it might have been Matvei, who I danced with the night of the ball. He, at least, understands some of my world, if not the entirety of it. And he seemed genuinely nice, if a little bit naive.
Alexei isn’t anything like the boys from my school or the cultural center. He’s much older than me, to start with. I know Darya is twenty-seven, so he must be close to that, or in his early twenties at least, which makes him older than me by six to ten years.
And the fact that you’re even thinking about this is completely twisted.
The fact is that my lack of any real sexual experience hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it, even before I came here.
I think about sex more, I’ve always been convinced, than other girls my age.
Not that I’d know. I’ve never had friends I could talk to about that kind of thing. Girls my own age always seem impossibly young to me, like they live in a different world. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the adult emotions in the room, the undercurrents other people my age seem to simply not notice.
The idea of having a boyfriend, someone like Matvei perhaps, seems to belong to that other world, the one of teenage sleepovers and dating. If I’m being honest, I can’t even imagine myself in that world.
My life isn’t like that. It never will be.
Any boyfriend I ever have will be carefully vetted by Roman, and my every move with him watched. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that if it is left up to Roman, my virginity is likely to be guarded, quite literally, at gunpoint until there’s a ring on my finger.
Maybe that’s why I’m having such a sick reaction to Alexei Petrovsky.
Because there’s nothing normal about the way I feel when he puts his hands on my body. Even if it is to cause me pain. And the more he does it, the more my body wants him to.
I know what Stockholm syndrome is. I did a project on it for media studies. The teacher showed us a photograph of the bank robber, Jan-Erik Olsson, who held up a Stockholm bank in 1973 and was so charismatic that his hostages wound up taking his side against the police. I’ve always thought the entire concept was crazy; how could you possibly like someone who has a gun to your head?
Only now that I’ve spent days with Alexei Petrovsky’s gun trained on me, and his knife slicing my flesh, I understand it far better than I ever could have imagined.
I jolt awake in the middle of the night, startled by a noise I can’t place. I know it’s night because the harsh fluorescent lights in our room are dimmed some time after the dinner tray is removed and we’ve visited the bathroom. I hate not knowing what time it is exactly. The only way I can measure it is by how much I feel like I’ve slept. I also know that Alexei usually leaves us at some point during the night, replaced by Dima, the same man who drove the limousine the day we arrived, whom Alexei clearly trusts. It’s usually only for a short time, when Alexei showers and changes, and, I assume, tries to sleep for an hour or so. At first, I think that is what I’m hearing, just the change of guards.
Then I realize that Alexei and Dima are talking.
It’s a low, hushed whisper, barely audible, and they clearly think I’m asleep.
“How many?” Alexei asks.
“All of Dom’s crew. And Krasky’s. Your own crew, of course. At least sixty, all told.”
“It will go down sometime in the next few days. Tell them all to be ready, Dima. This place needs to be disarmed the minute Borovsky breaches it, or they’ll all be blown sky-high.”
“We know. We’ll be ready, Lex.”
“I don’t like the way Orlov is looking at Ofelia,” Alexei mutters. “He might come for her before it goes down.”
Oh, God. That’s what he meant about “whatever Orlov does before then.”
I shiver inside.
“Surely he wouldn’t be that stupid?” Dima makes a disgusted sound. “Borovsky will fucking slaughter him.”
“Borovsky will slaughter him regardless.” Alexei’s voice is cold and dispassionate. “Either way, it makes little difference to Orlov. If Borovsky’s dead, he can’t hurt Orlov anyway. If he lives, he might murder Orlov with his bare hands, but he will still be too late to undo the damage Orlov has done to his girls. I know Orlov. I know how the sick fuck thinks.”
“Jesus.” Dima sounds appalled. “What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing I can do. We have to ride this to the end, or we’re dead men and it’s all been for nothing.” In the dim light, I see Alexei’s grim expression. “I’m likely dead either way. I can’t see Borovsky forgiving the man who took a knife to his only child.”
Dima clicks his tongue. “If it wasn’t for you, she’d have been raped on day one, and you know it. The only reason Orlov’s kept his hands off that girl is because he gets even more of a thrill out of making you cut her.”
“Well, I can’t hold him off much longer. Even his men are starting to eyeball her.” Alexei shakes his head abruptly. “Look, Dima. If this goes down and I take a bullet—”
“You won’t.”
“I fucking might. You know it as well as I do.” Even as a whisper, I can hear the hard note of realism in his voice. “If I do, I need to know you’ll get those girls to safety. Promise me.”
“You know I will, Alexei. You have my word.” The man’s answer comes immediately.
There’s a pause. I barely dare breathe for fear they realize I’m listening. Finally Dima breaks the silence.
“About Ofelia. What will you do if Orlov orders you to...” He leaves the sentence hanging, but I don’t need him to finish it.
“I don’t know.” Alexei’s head drops into his hands, the butt of his rifle rubbing tiredly over his head. “I have no goddamn idea, Dima. I just hope he doesn’t.”
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Dima rubs a hand over his face. “That bastard has been playing his games with you for so long, he knows exactly what buttons to push. Be careful, Alexei. If he gets even the smallest idea how much the thought of raping that girl sickens you, it will be the best fucking game he’s ever played.”
Alexei stands up abruptly. “Don’t you think I know that?” he hisses. “Don’t you think I fucking know? ”
A long, tense silence ensues. It’s broken in the end when Dima touches Alexei’s shoulder briefly. “We’ll be ready, brother. You have my word.”
He leaves the room, and I lie on the floor, my heart thudding, listening to Alexei’s uncharacteristically harsh breathing.
It’s all I can do to stop myself from crossing the room to offer him what little comfort I can.
The utter irony in feeling the urge to comfort my possible future rapist is not lost on me at all.
Nor is the fact that instead of feeling horror at the thought of Alexei taking my body, I feel a strange, uneasy excitement.
I shiver beneath the thin blanket and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.