Chapter 23 Mina
MINA
I sleep in pieces. A doze, a jolt, the fan ticks, the house settles, and my body braces for something that does not come. The sheet is hot, then cold. I reach for a baby out of reflex and grab air. My chest hurts from the reach.
I count the way Roman taught me. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. It works until it doesn’t. My mind fills with thoughts I don’t want. A wall breaking. Pillows shaped like bodies.
Fourteen dead.
I must fall under for a minute because I wake from a dream of halls without doors, and Vitaly standing at the end of them. Leering. Waiting for me.
The night-light throws a soft bar across the carpet. I stare at it until the bar blurs. My phone buzzes to life, and I grab it without a thought. Must be Roman or Mom. I check the text.
Come to the window, Scarface.
Everything in me freezes. The name crawls under my skin and sits there. I look at the number again like a different answer could appear. It does not.
There’s only one person who has ever called me that, and he wants me dead.
Vitaly means the side casement window that looks toward the service lane and the far fence.
He would know the layout. He grew up in this house.
He would know exactly where I sleep—his father’s bedroom.
I hadn’t considered that until now, but knowing that he knows where I sleep sinks something vital inside of me and drowns it in black water panic.
I stand and cross the rug, then push the shade up an inch. It’s night out, but the lawn glows under security lights. The inner fence makes a clean black line and the trees beyond it hold their own dark. But all I can see clearly is them.
Vitaly has my mother by the arm.
Her hands are tied behind her. A cloth covers her mouth. Her hair is pinned badly. There is a dark mark on her cheek. A bruise or dirt, I can’t tell from here. Her chest moves in short, hard jerks. She looks up at the window, a plea in her eyes. She shakes her head.
She means for me to not cooperate.
As if I have a choice after seeing this.
Vitaly lifts a phone and points it toward the window. My phone vibrates in my hand. I answer because there is no world where I do not.
“You will not speak. You will listen.”
I try to swallow words that want to spill. My throat does not work.
“You will go with my father to that club tonight,” he sneers.
“You will be his whore there. Do the things he wants. Make him feel good and safe. He will put the walls up around his throne for privacy, because he won’t want to share you with the perverts.
Then you will find a knife tucked in his throne.
You will plunge it into his chest so he knows what it is like to be stabbed in the heart by you too. ”
My hand goes flat to the glass. The other keeps the phone at my ear because dropping it would feel like throwing her away. “Please.” It scrapes out of me. “Don’t hurt her. Take me. Not her.”
“This is not a negotiation, Mina.”
“She is not a part of this. You’re angry at me. Be angry at me.”
“You’re still not listening,” he says, softer and worse.
“You will be sweet with him. You will make him trust you. He is stupid. He wants to believe a pretty girl like you could love a piece of shit like him. He will press the button and raise the walls around his pretend throne. The knife is under the left arm. Do you hear me?”
I hear myself breathe in a small, ugly way. “I can’t do that.” It comes out small. I hate the sound of it. “I can’t kill him.”
“Then they all die, Mina. It won’t be fast. You know how I like to take my time.”
“Please,” I say again. I hate that I am begging him. I hate that it still feels like a move he trained into me.
“Your mother is old and loud and raised a disrespectful, ungrateful daughter.” His words are designed to upset us and give him an excuse to hurt her.
I won’t take the bait. I will not react.
“An old woman and a pair of infants? They are not worth what I am giving you. I’m offering grace and mercy, and you beg me for more?
I will not make this offer twice, Mina.”
“They are my family, Vitaly. If you hurt them, I will end you.”
He laughs. It’s a chopped and broken laugh, and it sends a shiver down my spine. “You can’t kill me. You couldn’t even leave me right. You never do anything right, Mina. That’s why you need me. Do this right, and I might even take you back. Tell me you’ll do it, and she lives. For now.”
“You’re a monster.” Tears burn my nose and I hate that he can hear it. “I will never be with you again.”
“Say the words, Scarface.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap before I can stop it.
He drags my mother hard enough that she stumbles. He catches her by the hair to keep her up. The sound I make is not a word.
“You will do it,” he says, using a flat voice like he’s bored with me. “Your mom lives to take care of your bastards. If you don’t do it, they all die screaming for days.”
“No—”
“The choice is yours. Either way, baby, you’ll end up in my bed again. If you’re a good girl.”
“Vitaly—”
“Kill him, and save your family.” The line goes dead.
I watch him pocket the phone, before he drags her toward the van. Her knees hit the bumper. She scrambles. She turns her head and looks at the window. I press my palm to the glass. I don’t know if she can see me. I hold my hand there anyway.
She disappears inside. The door closes with a soft thunk. The van rolls back without headlights, slips out of the white line of the floodlight, and is gone. The hedge swings and stops. And then, they’re gone.
I lower the shade. I raise it. I lower it again. I don’t know what else to do. My brain cannot accept what just happened, so I replay it over and over and over until the skin on my hand feels raw from raising and lowering the shade.
This has to stop. I can’t live like this.
And if I fail, they won’t live at all.
My heart runs so fast I taste metal. I walk to the bathroom and grip the sink until my fingers ache. I splash water on my face. It does nothing. I turn the tap off and on and off again. I stare at tile until it looks like a map that refuses to give me a route.
If I use the code on the nightstand, the inner doors lock and the cameras pivot and every person in this house moves. Vitaly will make good on the promise if I test it. Sealing myself in here won’t help anyone.
If I call Roman, he will do everything in his power to help me, and it won’t be fast enough to stop Vitaly from killing my mother or our sons. I don’t know how he took her from the retreat, but I have to assume he has Yuri and Xander too.
And that the women protecting them are dead. He wouldn’t have left them alive to alert anyone or try to escape.
More dead. All because one man didn’t accept a fucking breakup.
I walk back to the bed and sit. My legs shake, so I rock to burn off the energy. I put my hands under my thighs. Not sure why, but it feels more secure.
Until it doesn’t.
I set the phone on the table and then pick it up and type the words he said into a locked note. Knife. Throne. Left arm. Under. My fingers stumble. I delete and type again. And delete again.
If I text Roman, it won’t help. He will never get to them in time. We don’t even know where they’re being kept.
And if I have to kill him…I probably shouldn’t warn him ahead of time. I don’t know how he’d react, but it would likely involve trying to find Vitaly first instead of letting him come to us, and that brings us back to square one, with him killing my family before we can reach him.
But how can I shove a knife into the man I love?
My sons’ faces spring to mind, and I wonder how it’s even a question. I’ll do anything to save them. Anything.
There is a knock at the door. Sergei. “Mrs. Ekimova. Do you need anything?”
“No. Thank you.” I am surprised by how calm it sounds. A lifetime of customer service jobs and secretarial work left me with the ability to sound fine under any circumstances.
I shower because I need a thing I can complete. Steam fills the glass. I sit on the closed lid, still rocking. I get into the shower, hoping it’ll work like a baptism. I wash until my skin feels like it belongs to me. Only, it doesn’t. This is the skin of Vitaly’s assassin.
The skin of a mother who will stop at nothing to save her children.
I retch into the drain. I haven’t eaten anything all day, so it’s little more than bile, but I can’t keep anything down when I think of stabbing Roman.
I step out and wrap in a towel and stand in front of the mirror until my face goes blank. I put on cream and a little makeup. My hands are steady now. I am good at pretending.
I make tea because my mother would. Mint. I drink it hot. It pushes metal taste out of my mouth.
The dress I choose for the night is black. It hides blood well, and that seems like an asset right now. I set a small clutch on the chair and put nothing in it. No phone. No pen. No object that can be taken and turned into a reason to die. Nothing the police will take when I’m arrested.
Not that I believe that will happen.
Vitaly knows tonight will end one way and one way only. If I kill Roman in his club, his men will take me out. Vitaly said that thing about us being together after this, but he’s always been a liar.
I won’t survive the night.
But my boys might. My mother might. I don’t want to kill Roman for “might,” but what choice do I have?
I’ve never trusted Vitaly. Not even when we first started dating. There was always a nagging thought in the back of my mind, telling me he was too good to be true.
But my choices aren’t what they were back then, and tonight, I have to believe Vitaly when he says he will let them go. The alternative is too mean to accept.
Even still, a quiet voice in my head asks, “What if he kills them anyway? You’ll all be dead for nothing.”
I can’t give that voice any energy. I have to believe he will be true to his word. It’s the only hope I have.
I raise the shade one inch and check the lawn. Trees. Fence. Nothing else. I let the shade fall. I sit on the edge of the bed and do not reach for the phone. I count four breaths. I stop when the counting starts to feel like a cliff.