Chapter 26 Katarina
KATARINA
Lucy was a student in her final year at a prestigious culinary school in Florence. We went back to her hotel by taxi and soon were locked safely inside. She was in Torino for a few days to take an exam.
“I can’t believe this snow,” Lucy said, gazing out the window. “We never get this down South.”
She’d just ordered a whole lot of food from room service, and we were waiting for it to be delivered. Nina, her bodyguard, was outside the door. I wasn’t sure how to ask her why she needed one.
She’d very patiently reminded me of her name, the bodyguard’s, and why she was in the city three times already. My short-term memory didn’t seem capable of holding more than half an hour of time. It was horrifying. I’d never been more confused.
“I have someone I could ask about your missing soldier,” she said, coming to sit on the sofa. This wasn’t just a hotel room, it was a suite. Lucy wasn’t a poor student, that was clear.
“Who?” I stared at her, confused.
Until she nodded toward the dog tags around my neck hanging out of the cozy white knit sweater dress she’d let me borrow.
“Oh, him.” I picked up the metal disks and stared at the name etched into the surface.
“Who could you ask?” I wondered.
“Someone who’s like a sister-in-law to me. She’s actually pretty impressive with tech. I bet she could find him.”
“I don’t even remember getting these, that’s the problem, or when or where I got them.”
I held the dog tags in my palm. They felt oddly precious to me.
“Are they from a family member? Or a boyfriend? As far as I know, they’re sentimental things to part with.”
I shrugged. Under the dog tags was a small crucifix, the only thing I recognized.
“This is mine.” I held up the cross. “But the rest, I don’t know.”
“Is this memory loss thing new, or . . . what do you remember?”
I took a deep breath and thought about it. “I’ve been in the hospital, I think. I don’t know where. I’ve been staying there for a long time, I think. My mom is waiting for me to get out. There was a fire . . . I don’t know what happened.”
“If you’ve been staying in the hospital, how come you ended up running into the stazione centrale in the middle of a snowstorm?”
I shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“What’s your whole name? You want my friend to look you up, too?”
That I knew. Just like I knew my mother, I knew my name. The rest of my life remained shrouded in fog.
“It’s Katarina Dmitrova.”
A knock sounded at the door, signaling room service had arrived.
Lucy stood and crossed to the door, peering out quickly before she opened it wider.
The waiter wheeled the food in and then left. Smells of pasta with tomatoes and basil hit the air, and I groaned.
“Come on, let’s eat, and tell me more about what you remember,” Lucy offered, sitting at one side of the table.
My stomach growled loudly, and I joined her.
“That’d be a short conversation,” I said with a sigh, and sank into a chair beside her.
The hotel suite had a real-life dining room area. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the place. It felt like an apartment. The quiet luxury felt entirely foreign to me.
The food tasted better than anything I could remember having eaten before. The texture of the pasta and simple, strong flavor of garlic and basil was so good it brought tears to my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asked, quietly watching me as I struggled through my fifth mental breakdown of the day.
I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not entirely sure.”
She nodded. “What are you going to do after this?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I need to go and see my mom, but I can’t yet. I need to lie low until my head clears.”
She didn’t ask why my head would be so confused, which was good, because I had no idea how to explain it.
My thoughts were slippery, falling through my fingers like water.
I couldn’t seem to keep things straight, and everything felt like it was held back, just out of reach.
It was frustrating, and at the same time, I knew I’d felt like this before.
“Well, I’m here for a few more days. Stay as long as you need to.”
I studied her. She was small, with red gold hair and big hazel eyes. Despite her coloring, she didn’t seem to be Italian, not to mention her American accent.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “Are you some kind of saint, or are you—do you want something from me?” It came out rude as hell, but I had a deep-down certainty that no one helped me without wanting something from me. I knew in my gut that I’d learned that the hard way.
She set down her fork and took a moment to think of her reply.
“If you see someone who needs help, you help. My sister taught me that. She’s the best person I’ve ever met.”
I smiled at Lucy. There was such honesty in her words, I didn’t doubt their sincerity. A soft smile touched her lips as she spoke, and I envied her that beautiful sisterly bond.
I was all alone except for my mom. I missed her so much at that moment I could hardly breathe. All I’d ever wanted was a family to fall back on. A place to belong, to be protected, to be whole. I let out a held breath, urging the damn tears back that seemed to hover, never far from falling.
“So, stay here, let Nina protect both of us for a bit. We’ll work out what to do. Maybe after a good meal and a good sleep, your head will be clearer.”
I nodded and reached out to grab Lucy’s hand when she went to stand.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “Seriously, thank you. I think you might be saving my life.”
It was a dream. I knew that it was a dream. It had to be.
In it, I ran down a white hallway, and everything burned around me.
I reached a door at the end and nudged it open.
It stuck on something. I shoved harder. The obstacle gave way, and the door swung in.
This room wasn’t white. It was red. Bloodred.
Blood dripped off every surface, pooling on the floor.
There wasn’t a single inch of white left. Blood as far as the eye could see.
“Kat!” A kid’s voice broke through my horror.
I spun around to find her. Tatiana.
A person strode down the hallway, fire trailing in his wake, licking up around his ankles, touching his priest’s robes.
His eyes stared into my soul.
Massimo.
I woke with a cry, a hand touching my shoulder.
“Wake up! You’re having a nightmare!” Lucy’s worried voice broke through my swimming thoughts.
Right. Lucy, the girl from the train station. The hotel. Dr. Blackwood.
Massimo.
The fog in my head had cleared. I’d left it behind in the night, finally escaping it.
I pushed out of bed. Lucy hovered beside me.
“What did you dream about?”
“I—they weren’t dreams. I remembered,” I got out.
Panic clutched my chest in an unbreakable grip.
The night before filled my mind. Going to Pavol’s office.
Being injected. The fire. Being outside and confused.
Massimo in the snow, looking for Tatiana.
Massimo going back into the burning building.
They’d given me something again, and it had made me confused, but it had worn off. How long had it lasted? A day?
“You need to breathe. You’re hyperventilating. Calm down and tell me everything.”
I nodded, taking the glass of cool water she passed me and sinking into a chair.
“It’s a long story,” I warned her.
She shrugged. “I’ve got time. Tell me.”
So I did.
After, Lucy sat for a moment, stunned by the convoluted tale, before twisting for her phone.
“I need to find Massimo. I don’t know what happened after he went back into the building. He could have been hurt. He could have . . .”
No, he couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. I refused to even consider it.
“Okay, right. We need to find him. And as for the doctor you ran away from, he sounds just as dangerous as the other men who were in charge. He needs to be caught.”
“Yeah, but how? Without Massimo, I can’t even dream of being a match for Blackwood.”
“We need to talk to my brother-in-law.”
“Who’s your brother-in-law?”
“He’s someone who can . . . protect people and deal with problems,” she said somewhat evasively. “He’s the reason I have Nina outside.”
“He must be someone important. A politician?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. He doesn’t have a conventional job. Anyway, we need to talk to him, or at least the woman I told you about earlier. My IT guy.”
“Okay. Let’s speak to her . . . maybe she can find Massimo.”
Lucy nodded and dialed on her phone, putting it on speaker and setting it on the table between us.
It rang and rang. Just when I thought no one was going to answer, a voice came over the line.
“You’re lucky I barely sleep, kid,” a woman said.
A deep, rumbling male voice spoke in the background.
“I’m sorry, it’s an emergency,” Lucy said quickly.
I could hear when the woman on the other side of the call snapped to attention.
“What’s going on?” she asked with intention.
Lucy took a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy, but I met this girl last night. She was running away from someone—someone dangerous. She was staying at this place in Torino, a hospital of some kind.”
“Hallow Hall,” I leaned forward and said toward the phone. “It’s a Church-run, kind of, home for unwed mothers and the elderly, some psychiatric care.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before the woman on the other end spoke.
“You’re shitting me.”
“What?” Lucy raised an eyebrow at me.
“Kid, you have a very special talent, like an eerie ability, to walk right into the shit, every single time. Trouble finds you, Lucy. It’s a gift, or in my case, since I’m forced to care if you live or die, a curse.
” The sounds of rustling covers filtered through, and the phone speaker being jostled about.
“What are you talking about?” Lucy called.
A man, his voice tinged with an Irish accent, spoke instead of the woman. “She’s off to get her laptop fired up. How are you keeping, kid?”
Lucy smiled toward the phone. She obviously liked this guy. “I’m good. I just want to help Katarina, and I don’t know how.”