Chapter 12 Natalie
NATALIE
Ilowered the bag. He couldn’t push me like this without any damn answers.
“Mommy, I want to be safe,” Maisie said from the bed. She hadn’t tried to get up, her innocent face frozen with bewilderment.
“Me too,” I told her. All the commotion and fear of the night rocked through my mind, making me stiff and achy in the aftermath of adrenaline. But that was no excuse to let Sergei take charge of my life.
“Then let’s go,” he ordered.
I shook my head. “Not until you explain.” I’d be only a fool to listen to this stranger. Too many questions swirled in my mind. Too much fear and confusion claimed me.
“Later,” he replied curtly as more men entered the room.
I panicked at once, rushing to grab Maisie again. As I moved, Sergei lifted his hand. The two suited men stopped mid-step.
“They’re with me. It’s okay.”
Maisie didn’t tremble in my arms as I scooped her off the bed. “They are good guys too?”
The younger, baby-faced one smirked like he found that funny. The other man had blood streaked on his cheek and I shuddered at how he could’ve been marked like that.
From shooting someone up close.
Just like Sergei had.
Vivid flashbacks returned to me, nauseating me all over again.
Why are you fighting this?
He said he’ll explain.
Go and be safe and hold him to that.
It seemed so stupid to fight and resist his order to go home with him. He saved me. He’d risked himself to save my daughter. It made so much more sense to go to him and cave to the feeling of security he so freely offered me.
Yet, I knew nothing in life was free. With life came death. With rewards came losses.
If I went with him and put my trust in him tonight, what would be expected? What would happen?
“They’re with me,” Sergei told Maisie, as if hedging the label of good or bad. I noticed, curious whether this could only mean he didn’t think he was a good man.
“A car is waiting at the back,” the older man told Sergei as he lowered his arm.
“Let’s go.” Sergei narrowed his eyes at me, as if counting on me to protest again. It would be stupid to now, with three men in here, outnumbering me. Maisie was young and impressionable. She’d obey and listen to me when I said he was a good guy.
Already, she saw him as a hero because he’d saved her from being taken on the sidewalk.
But was I really any better off being told to go home with him instead?
“Do you want to bring anything?” Sergei asked Maisie.
“For a sleepover?” she asked, sounding so young and sweet compared to his serious and gruff tone. “Can I bring my bear?”
He nodded. While I didn’t lose the scowl for him, I carried her out of my room and took her to hers. Sergei followed us in, but when he scanned the small space, it seemed like he was scoping for a threat, not hovering over us.
Maisie picked up her favorite teddy bear and I grabbed the small throw that she liked on her bed. Wrapping it around her as I carried her, I gave her the space to hug her bear to her chest.
Grabbing some clothes for myself would’ve been nice, but I resisted the urge to protest or ask for anything. This wasn’t a vacation. This wasn’t my idea.
But as Sergei and the two men exited with us, all the way down to the rear door of the building, I wondered if this was a kidnapping.
I was walking out voluntarily, but it was coerced.
He’d shown up out of nowhere tonight and was now dictating that I’d go home with him?
It was too surreal, too sudden to rationalize.
This entire night was too much to process, but as I saw the expensive car with tinted windows in the alley, I felt like I’d fallen off the face of the earth and had entered another world.
An alternative universe where I’d know a strong, brave man who had access to a chauffeured car, with bodyguard-like men flanking him.
“Get in.” He opened the door, the expression on his face unreadable. Behind him the guards had their guns out and at the ready, as if they expected more trouble to sneak up close and threaten us.
Who are you?
What life do you lead with this familiarity of guns and violence?
What’s going on?
Ducking lower to crawl into the backseat, I dismissed the racing questions and worries that clogged my head.
He said he’d explain, and I would wait and see what he had to tell me.
Expecting him to close the door, I relaxed on the plush cushion of the seat and situated Maisie on my lap.
She leaned against me as she hugged her bear, her eyes worried and watching.
Perceptive and quiet, she proved how observant she was.
Introverted, but also careful, as if she wanted to watch before acting or speaking.
Instead of giving us the back seat and getting in the front, Sergei followed us in. He sat across from me, facing us, in this limo-like setting.
“Where—”
He held his hand up as he stared me down and cut me off from asking him anything. Then he brought his other hand up and answered a call, indicating that he was on the phone, unable—or unwilling—to answer me. The explanations he promised weren’t coming yet.
“I trust that everything will be handled quickly,” he told the caller.
Even though he looked at me while he spoke to someone else, it was quiet in here.
Intimate. Calm. This serenity and safety were what I needed after the danger on the sidewalk.
The ride was smooth as a driver took off, and with the partition between us and the front of the car, we were ensured privacy.
Staying mobile added to the sense of security I so badly craved.
That random moment of street violence was beyond me now.
Distance grew between me with my daughter and where those men had tried to attack us and capture us.
It was him, though. Sergei was the reason I felt so safe. Simply having him with me grounded me, but I detested that reliance. I wasn’t supposed to need him. I didn’t even know him.
Why me?
Why would you go to such a risk to save me?
He didn’t even know I had a daughter until now, but that hadn’t stopped him from stepping up to save her from danger, too.
Who are you? Why is any of this happening?
He spoke with murmured replies to whoever was on the other end of the call. Boring me with his sober and steady gaze, he kept those blue eyes locked on me while he mostly listened to whatever the other person said.
I couldn’t look away.
I didn’t know what to do, but watching this man warily and nervously, I wanted to convince myself that I wasn’t making a mistake by being in this car.
Maisie stayed put on my lap quietly with her chest rising and falling steadily.
I stroked her hair back as the car sped through the night with a smoothness no bus or subway would ever pull.
That was what Maisie and I were used to.
Between my hold on her body with my arms, how I caressed her head, and the lull of being in a car like this, it wasn’t any surprise that she fell asleep.
She had been so terrified, and she had to be crashing after all those emotions. It was late, in the middle of the morning, and way too early for her to be up. Glad that she was asleep and that she didn’t have to trouble her young mind with any of what was going on, I felt free to watch Sergei.
Looking out the window might have given me some context clues about where he was taking us, but I doubted I would create a reliable map in my head that I could refer to later.
Instead, I watched him. I stared at him studying me, all while he spoke on the phone.
As the car crossed through the city in the early hours of the morning, I grew more and more convinced that my instincts were right about him. He was a dangerous man. He wouldn’t have had a gun and known how to use it so well if he hadn’t faced any perils in his life
He was a serious and lethal man. That dark and brooding aura made more sense now that I could recall how effortlessly and willingly he’d killed those men.
I shouldn’t be here, with a killer. Even though it was in the name of defense, he was capable of killing.
I shouldn’t want to be near any more violence.
Fitz had been killed by a man who was good with a gun, too.
Like Sergei.
That one night that Fitz was in the wrong part of town trying to get home, he had been caught in a street fight.
Gangsters and thugs filled this city, and while it was usually safe, he had unfortunately been in the wrong place at the wrong time that night to get in the line of fire in a fight that had nothing to do with him.
Getting over the death of my late husband seemed impossible some days, and for that reason, among many others, I should’ve been trying to run in the opposite direction of any more violence. My job was to spare Maisie from any further bloodshed.
But it was too late.
I was in this car.
Driven away under Sergei’s say-so.
Having second thoughts about agreeing with his orders wouldn’t do me any good now. I couldn’t reach for the door handle and then launch myself with my daughter out into the street. The doors were probably locked anyway.
The only thing that could calm me from this lingering sense of danger was if Sergei could explain who the hell he was and how he could keep me safe tonight. The little I knew about him wasn’t enough.
He was dangerous. He was armed. He was able to accept the surprise that I had a daughter and risked his life to save her.
He’s wealthy, too.
Riding in this car was an experience I never imagined having. Nobodies like me didn’t ride in the back of limos. Nobodies like me weren’t treated to bodyguards.
As I waited for Sergei to stop speaking on the phone, this person he asked about disposing of bodies, I thought back to how he always tipped me generously at the bar.
Of course, he was rich.
No one tipped a hundred dollars for one beer if they weren’t loaded. That was every time he came in, too. He always gave me at least one hundred, and he often left another for Rosa even if all she did was say hello to him.