26. Ofelia
Ofelia
I should have run when she told me to.
Ever since the night Masha and I were kidnapped, I’ve always thought I’d react differently if ever there was a next time.
I thought I would be ready, that I’d sense danger before it was close.
But danger has been reading my tarot cards for over a year, and I had no fucking idea.
And right up until I hear that cold Russian behind me, I genuinely think that Seline is being typically dramatic. That any moment Teresa will come around the corner, waving my phone at me with a long-suffering eye roll.
Instead, my hands are brutally wrenched behind my back, held so hard I have no chance of freeing myself.
Seline cowers against the wall, a man towering over her, Spanish by the sound of his hissed warnings.
Two thickset men appear carrying Teresa’s slumped body between them, blood running down her face from a brutal cut on her temple.
“Bitch knows how to fight,” one of the men growls in Russian and spits a gob of blood onto the stones. “Took down Alek and one of the Duvals before we knocked her out. This would be a lot easier if we had guns, Ivan.”
“This isn’t Atlanta.” The man behind me answers curtly in the same language. “Any kills need to look like an accident. And right now we need to get off the street.”
“In here.” The Spaniard holding Seline opens a door and shoves her inside.
The Russian, Ivan, pushes me in after her, and his goons holding Teresa close it behind them.
It’s a local bar I’ve passed a hundred times but barely noticed, a small hole-in-the-wall that usually opens late at night.
Going by the familiarity with which the Spaniard flicks the lights on, he clearly owns it.
“The car will be out front in five minutes,” he says. “What do you want me to do with this one?” He nudges Teresa’s unconscious figure with his boot.
“Keep her out cold until we’re gone,” Ivan says curtly from behind me. “Then take her somewhere out of town and make sure she can’t come back as a witness. Did we get that other bitch?”
Julia. My stomach lurches with horror.
“Si.” The Spaniard nods. “She took the bait after we called from this one’s phone.” He nods at me.
The gypsies on the main road. That’s when they stole my phone.
“Told her we found it lying in the street and then called the first number on it. She came out of the house right away. We snatched her when she got clear of the cameras, but we lost four men doing it. Four.” He glares at Ivan.
“Good men, and three of them won’t ever wake up again.
I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing, Ivan. Bodies draw attention.”
“Bodies can be disposed of. Just make sure hers is one of them.”
The man nods uneasily.
Teresa and Julia. Both condemned to death—because of me.
“Good.” Ivan fastens a zip tie around my wrists so tightly it makes me wince, then glances at his watch as he pushes me into a wooden chair and looms over me..
He’s an older man, in his late forties I would guess, with the dull, implacable stare of someone who long ago became accustomed to carrying out orders rather than giving them.
“Whatever money you want,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, “my father will pay it. There’s no need for any of this.”
“We don’t give a fuck about your money, or your father.” Leaning down to grip the armrests of the wooden chair in meaty hands, he puts his face close enough to mine that I have to actively discipline myself not to recoil. “We’re here for Alexei Petrovsky.”
“I don’t know where he is.” It’s not entirely a lie. I have no idea where the Quantum Drift currently is.
“That doesn’t matter.” Ivan gives me a cold smile.
“Alexei Petrovsky is going to come to us, not the other way around. All I need from you, Miss Borovsky, is cooperation.” His smile fades.
“In a moment we will walk out the front door and get into a car. You are not going to call for help or attract attention in any way. If you do, your friend here will die instantly.” He nods at Seline, and one of his men grips her roughly as the Spaniard binds her hands as tightly as my own. Her face is pale and terrified.
Ivan glares at her. “And if you think we won’t do it because of your brother,” he snarls, “believe me when I say that Kiril gave us carte blanche to deal with you as we see fit. You had one job to do. And instead of doing it, you betrayed your family.”
“I did not.” Despite her visible fear, Seline stares directly at him, her eyes flashing.
“I am not my brother’s slave, to be ordered around like he does you, Ivan.
I decide my own fate.” It takes me a moment to realize her French accent has disappeared entirely.
She speaks fluent English with an American accent, and a slight southern drawl.
“And how’s that working out for you, bitch?
” Ivan laughs without humor. “All your little rebellion achieved is alienating your Duval relatives as well as your Novikov ones. If you’d just given us the information we asked for weeks ago, you’d be back in Paris now with a fat bank account and your mother’s hospital bills in Atlanta paid in full. ”
All this time, I think dully, all those readings. Seline appearing in Granada.
All a set-up.
From Seline’s defiant expression and Ivan’s hostility, her role in the plot was clearly against her own wishes.
“Instead, you told lie after lie until we had to bug your phone to get the truth.” Ivan glares at her. “And the truth is that Alexei Petrovsky is fucking obsessed with this bitch, exactly as we suspected.”
He nods contemptuously at me.
“Your lies delayed us by weeks, Seline. And your brother doesn’t like lies or delays.
He doesn’t much like you, either. He never has.
He likes your mother even less. Which means no more cozy little hospital stay for Mommy—and as soon as we’re somewhere more comfortable, you’re about to get fucked within an inch of your life by every Novikov man in this room, and probably some of the Duvals, too. ”
“Cochon!” Seline spits in his face.
“You may as well call me a pig in English now, bitch.” Ivan hits her brutally hard across the face, then wipes her spit off with his sleeve.
“The game is up. Your tarot-reading bitch friend is American,” he says, grinning as he turns to me.
“For all she likes to put on the Brigitte Bardot act, she didn’t come to France until her brother kicked her and her whore of a mother out of the family home. ”
“My father would kill you for those words,” Seline hisses.
He shrugs. “Your father is dead. Your uncle is dead. Now it’s just Kiril. And as you well know, he won’t care if the next time he sees your face it isn’t attached to your body.”
She slumps in the grip of the man holding her, the fight fading from her eyes.
Oh, God.
I’ve seen enough of brutal men to know there’s nothing idle about Ivan’s threats. Clearly, Seline has come to the same grim conclusion.
Ivan glances at his watch again. “Time to go.” He wrenches me to my feet, then wraps a jacket around my shoulders, hiding my zip-tied hands from sight. “Walk.” He pushes me in front of him. I take a deep breath, planning to scream as soon as I hit the pavement.
I never get the chance.
The moment the door opens onto the street, Ivan wraps his arm around my shoulders and turns my body forcefully into his, covering my mouth with his hand.
Someone opens a car door, and he puts his back to it, kicks my legs from beneath me, and bodily pulls me backward into the rear seat of a sedan.
Seline tumbles in after me, and the door slams closed. It’s done in seconds.
“Go,” Ivan growls, and the car moves away from the curb.
I stare out past Seline, through the tinted window, at the laughing, chattering passersby, none of whom seem to have noticed anything at all amiss.
I have a strange, disjointed feeling of living in an alternate reality.
My life is shattering into a thousand dangerous pieces, while people are still heading out to have ice cream like nothing has happened.
I know this feeling. I’ve been here before.
How many times, I wonder? I’m filled with a bone-weary sense of inevitability. How many times have I sat behind tinted windows, breaking apart as the world continues around me, completely unaware?
On the way to the airport as a child, the day after news came that Papa Mikhail had been killed in a car bomb.
On the road to his funeral, surrounded by grim-faced men with visible guns and the scent of danger all around us.
Sitting in a limousine with Masha after the bomb blast in Malaga, slowly realizing that we’d been kidnapped instead of saved.
It was always going to come to this.
I feel the words rather than think them.
Someone was always going to come for me again.
Now that it’s finally happened, I feel less afraid than I do resigned. In some strange way, maybe I did sense danger coming. Maybe I’ve been sensing it for months now—just like Seline’s tarot cards foretold her own betrayal.
Seline always accused me of allowing the men in my world to control my life.
And in a way, she was right. Men rule the world I was born into, whether I allow them to or not.
The first time my family’s enemies came for me, I was just a piece on the chessboard, taken as part of a game I knew nothing about. I had no choice and no idea how to fight back.
But this time I chose it.
I chose Alexei. Even knowing it would put me in danger, still I chose him.
And there’s no way I’m going to let them play me against him.
A strange thrill of strength goes through me. I won’t be used as a pawn, I think. Not again.
Which means I need to start playing the game myself.
I glance surreptitiously out the window.
We’re heading for the bridge over the Genil river, on the outskirts of central Granada.
The Armilla heliport is barely ten kilometers away, but once we’re over that bridge, I’m guessing Ivan will head straight for the highway.
And once we’re on that, getting away will be hard.
I shift slightly in my seat so I can touch Seline’s hand. Her eyes meet mine when our skin makes contact. I drop my own to the door handle beside her, and hers widen in understanding.
It isn’t locked.
I move my head very slightly and tilt it at the bridge coming up ahead, then cut my eyes back to the door.
Seline inhales sharply, then blinks in assent.
I turn back to Ivan. “Where are you taking us?” I demand, as the car inches through the traffic toward the bridge.
“None of your fucking business,” Ivan says disinterestedly.
Taking out his phone, he punches a number, and I hear the line ring, then someone answer on the other end.
“Kiril,” he says. “We’re heading out of the city now.
” He launches into a conversation in Russian, which, from the half I can hear, is about a flight we’re supposed to take in several hours’ time.
To the United States.
I have to get out of here.
Once I’m on that plane, I’ve got no hope of escape.
The car is slowing as the dual road narrows into one at a set of traffic lights. I gauge the distance from the lights to the bridge at maybe a hundred meters. The traffic is virtually at a standstill, as Spain heads home for lunch and siesta.
“The lights,” I breathe into Seline’s ear. Her mouth firms into a thin line, and she gives the briefest of nods. She surreptitiously slips her feet out of her high heels.
Ivan turns away from us toward the window, his voice rising as he tries to explain that he’s moving as fast as he can.
As the light turns yellow, and we roll to a halt, Seline turns toward me, her hands behind her back on the door handle. “Ofelia,” she says in a shaking voice, “I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”
“It’s okay,” I say, subtly shifting my body so I’m positioned to follow her through the door. “It doesn’t matter now. I know you tried to protect me.”
“Shut up,” Ivan snarls, covering his phone.
The light turns red.
Seline stares straight at him. “Fuck you.”
Then she opens the door.
She swings her legs out, spinning around so she hits the asphalt in a crouched run.
I feel the horrible drag of Ivan clutching at the zip tie around my hands, but it’s his weaker hand and I’ve caught him by surprise.
I manage to wrench myself free, landing clumsily behind Seline, who is already weaving through the paused traffic.
Picking myself up, I stumble after her, across the road, to the walkway beside the bridge.
“There!” She nods at a set of stairs about fifty meters away. “We need to get to those, then we can go into the tunnels.”
I glance behind us. The lights have changed, and the traffic is trying to move around the parked black sedan. Ivan has his door open, but between passing cars and scooters, he’s having trouble leaving the vehicle.
We might just make it.
We run to the stairs and down them onto the concrete-lined channel.
“See that opening?” Seline jerks her head at a narrow fissure in the concrete on the other side of the channel, directly beneath the arch of the pedestrian bridge. “That will take us into the tunnels.”
We head into the channel. In the middle of summer, the deepest point is probably only a couple of feet, but the sloping concrete is slippery, with a lot of broken stone underfoot. Having our hands zip-tied doesn’t make it any easier. Worse, we’re fully exposed to view.
“Ah!” Seline trips and falls into the water, then struggles to stand up. “My foot is stuck.”
“Take my hands.” I crouch down with my back to her. “I can pull you up.”
“I can’t,” she gasps. “My foot is wedged in something.”
“Stop!” roars Ivan from above us. He peers over the bridge, then races for the same stairs we took.
“Go.” I turn to find Seline looking up at me, her face set with pain. “Get into the tunnel and turn upstream. Follow it about half a kilometer, then go south again.” I glance over her shoulder and see Ivan already halfway down the stairs.
“Go!” She nudges me with her head. “This is my fault, Ofelia.”
“They’ll hurt you—”
“They’ll hurt me anyway. Go.”
The screech of a siren cuts the air.
Police.
Relief spreads over Seline’s face, and for a moment I debate whether or not to take my chances and stay.
But the reality is that in the world I come from, the police side with whoever happens to be paying them. And that isn’t a chance worth taking—not if it means someone using me in their chess game to trap Alexei.
I duck into the fissure just as Ivan rounds the arch of the bridge and comes into view.
“Where is she?” he yells angrily, splashing through the water toward Seline.
I don’t wait to hear her answer. I just turn into the darkness and start walking.