23. Sofia
SOFIA
Titus has been in a shitty mood for the past week. Then again, I haven’t exactly been a bowl of sunshine myself.
This entire situation has us both on edge and it’s to the point where I’d rather not even see him at all if I can help it. Despite the change on my imprisonment status, I’ve been staying in my room for the most part.
Except in the mornings. I’ve been taking full advantage of his pool. Somebody should. I don’t think I’ve seen him swim in it once since I’ve been here.
It’s getting hot in the afternoon, so I’ve been staying inside these last couple of days, reading books from the little shelf that he’s had put in here.
The books are all so random that I realize he didn’t have me in mind at all.
Then again, it’s not like he cared to know anything about me when I first arrived here.
Still, I’ve managed to make it halfway through Wuthering Heights. A book that I feel like he’s probably read. There’s something about Heathcliff that reminds me of Titus. Maybe it’s his need to make everyone around him suffer.
I stop at that thought, my finger still pressed to the page, my thoughts traveling elsewhere.
I am suffering. I’m suffering worse than I ever have living here.
One of the things he said to me when we last had sex was Don’t you dare come or I’ll make it worse for you.
I wonder if this is what he meant. I’d much rather be trussed up and hung naked from the ceiling like a lamb going to slaughter than this. It’s better than being ignored.
Luka’s been gone this whole time and I feel that hole in my day. I was getting used to sharing meals with him, playing games with him, and before all this civil war shit started, going to the park or in the garden with him.
It’s appalling to me that he would rather Ignat take him away than have me be the one to protect him. I’m as tough as any of his men and at least half as smart as his top brigadiers. I could have done the job just as well as Ignat.
It all comes down to the fact that he doesn’t trust me. Even after that one night that turned from punishment to passion. Even though he’s been kinder to me since Adam died. I’m still just his toy. And the worst part about that is that I’m not even a toy that he plays with anymore.
I’ve thought about leaving, but I think he would chase me down to the ends of the earth just to prove that I was his. Then he’d probably lock me back in that warehouse to rot.
I keep trying to tell myself that limbo is better, but it’s not. Not really. I crave some kind of movement.
I close the book and set it aside and get up. I’m going to go crazy in this fucking house.
I walk out into the hallway and I see Luka’s door across the way. Wonder how he’s faring out there in the world without us…
I go to the door and open it. The air smells like him.
Like the salt sea and bubblegum with a slight hint of grass or dirt.
I walk over the toys and clothes he left on the floor to his unmade bed and sit down.
Titus hasn’t had the room cleaned since he left.
Maybe he’s planning on bringing him back soon and wants to keep his room like this for a while.
The door to his closet has been left open, and I see the board games on the top shelf and a memory slides into my mind. One night after dinner, he was in my room, board game in hand.
“I just thought it’d be cool if we played in here.”
He’d broken out the way he tended to do from time to time. What was that Titus called him? Pauchok. His little spider. It fits.
This is wrong. He shouldn’t be gone. He needs to come home.
I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. It sounds like Titus’s heavy footfalls.
I leave Luka’s room and walk out into the hallway just as Titus is coming up the stairs. He pauses when he sees me, then he continues his path to his bedroom.
“Hey,” I say as I walk up to him, jogging a little to catch up. “Hold on.”
I stop in front of him, standing between him and his bedroom a few steps away. He looks down at me with weary, bloodshot eyes.
“What is it, Sofia?”
“I just want to talk to you. Please?”
He hesitates, then, “Talk.”
“I think Luka should come home.” He starts to speak and I quickly add, “I miss him, Titus.”
The admission stops him cold. He stares at me with a furrowed brow, but his eyes sparkle with questions and maybe a little wonder.
“I know that you’re doing everything you can to keep us—to keep him safe.
You’ve worked so hard for your son. To protect him.
I can’t help but wonder, though, what he must be thinking about all this?
He’s just a little boy. He doesn’t understand why he’s got to go away or why you locked him down in the first place.
All he knows is that he’s not with his father. ”
He takes a half step back from me, and surprisingly, he seems to be considering that. “If they attack us,” he says slowly, “he might get caught in the crossfire. I may not be able to keep my eye on him like I would need to do.”
“You know you’re not alone, right?” I tell him with a little lift of my eyebrow. “I know you don’t want me to fight your battles, but practically speaking, who else other than Ignat could keep him safer? If he’s here, both of us can keep an eye on him together.”
I’m doing my best not to say the words that keep trying to come up. I want to be by your side. I want to face this with you. I don’t know what’s possessing me to think that he would ever want something like that in any sense.
But I think what I’m trying to say is getting through because he nods slowly and says, “All right. I’ll call Ignat.”
I could jump for joy. I maintain my composure, however, and say, “Thank you.”
I start to walk away, but he stops me with, “When he comes home, he’s in your care, Sofia. I expect you to protect him as I would.”
“I hear you,” I tell him. “I’ll do my part.”
I think I see him smile as he walks to his bedroom. As soon as he’s gone, a sort of calm comes over me. If at least that much can be made right, then maybe everything can.
The sun is setting and there still hasn’t been any word. Titus has assembled a virtual army of his men in the living room. There’s a din of sound that surrounds me that’s coming from downstairs… and I can’t sleep.
Titus tried to call Ignat hours ago and he’s yet to get an answer back.
After the second hour of radio silence, he started moving, making calls to his men to find him and even sending some of them who were here out to look for any sign of Ignat.
Suddenly, the issue of Luka being a secret is secondary. He just wants them to be found.
And there’s nothing I can do. I’ve kept my distance. I don’t want to get in his way and distract him from what he needs to do. I wish I could help him somehow. I just don’t know how.
I’ve been lying on my bed watching the light in my room change and I don’t think I can take it any longer. I need to do something to get my mind off the worry swirling around in my head.
My first thought goes to the pool. I usually like to go late at night when I can’t sleep.
The fence around the pool is high enough so that Titus’s guards can’t accidentally walk up on me, which is nice when I want to swim without my clothes on, but the house is crawling with his men right now.
I’m not even sure if I feel comfortable swimming in a bathing suit right now.
Fuck it. Titus is around and despite it all, I doubt he’d allow anyone to lay a hand on me.
I get up from my bed and rummage through my drawers, looking for my bathing suit.
It’s a simple one, nothing too small or with too much flair.
Just a plain blue suit that looks like the generic ones they used to give out in school when I was on the swimming team as a teen.
I grab it and put it on, then wrap myself up in a robe and leave my room.
The din of conversation gets more intense as I walk toward the landing.
The living room is packed with Titus’s men.
A couple of them are on the couch, cleaning their guns while drinking bottles of beer.
Some of them are walking through with ARs strapped to their backs, bantering back and forth in Russian.
Some are just standing around with glasses of liquor in hand, in deep conversation.
I don’t see Titus. I wish I did. I’d feel a little better about having to walk through this thong of men who would shoot me in the head the moment they were given the order to do so.
I take a short breath and stick my chest out and hold up my chin.
I’m here and everyone knows it. I might as well settle into my momentary title as the untouchable fuck toy.
I start walking down the steps. My bare feet feel chilled with every step I take down into the living room. Slowly, the din changes, quiets, as heads lift and eyes fall on me.
I ignore them all and walk around the stairs and down the hall toward the pool entrance. I can feel a dozen eyes on me as I walk away, probably trained on my ass, trying to see my hips move under the terry cloth robe I’m wearing.
It occurs to me as I step out into the humid air that this is what Helen of Troy must have felt like, walking through the streets of Troy as every eye watched and judged her. The reason they were at war and the reason the entire city would eventually be conquered.
Only difference is that Paris loved her. And I’m much more disposable than she ever was.
I take off the robe and drape it over one of the pool chairs nearby and take a moment to look up at the dying light in the sky above me.
Any second, it’s going to be night proper and the only thing separating me from total darkness will be the lights around the pool.
It’s almost symbolic in a way, I guess. The light keeping me from darkness seeking to claim me.
The only question is what part of my life is the light and which part is darkness?