Chapter 14
KAZIMIR
So instead, the next day that she’s out, I make a plan to ensure that I can keep an eye on her room, at the very least, even when I can’t physically watch her.
The motel she chose is the kind of place where the desk clerk doesn't look up from his phone when I walk past. The security cameras in the hallways have been broken for months, and no one's bothered to fix them, and the locks are so old I can open them with a credit card.
The room is worse than I expected, and I've been watching her go in and out of this place for days now, so my expectations were already low.
The carpet is stained with things I don't want to identify, the walls are thin enough that I can hear the couple next door arguing about money, and the bathroom has a persistent drip that would drive me insane within hours.
She's been living here for almost a week now, and the thought makes my stomach twist as I look around and imagine her sleeping in the bed with its threadbare sheets, showering in the bathroom with its broken tiles and mildewed grout, eating whatever she can afford from the convenience store down the street because she's clearly hoarding the money I gave her.
I should have given her more cash or should have set up an account she could access without leaving a trail.
But I was too focused on keeping my own involvement hidden so that Ilya wouldn't put a bullet in my head for betraying him…
and it was hard enough getting her to accept that first installment of cash.
Still, I should have tried harder, because now she's here, in this shithole, and I'm installing cameras so I can watch her every move.
I put the first one above the door, angled down to catch anyone who enters.
The second goes in the smoke detector, which clearly hasn't had a battery in it for years, giving me a clear view of the bed and most of the room.
The third is the hardest—I have to unscrew the vent cover in the bathroom and position it just right so I can see the sink and the shower without being obvious about it.
It takes me twenty minutes to get the angle right, and the whole time I'm working, I'm listening for her footsteps in the hallway or the sound of her key in the lock, any indication that she's coming back early and about to catch me in the act.
She doesn't. I finish the installation, test each feed on my phone to make sure the angles are right and the resolution is clear, and I'm out of the room with five minutes to spare before I see her heading back toward the motel with her hands shoved in her pockets and her shoulders hunched against the cold.
I watch from my car as she climbs the stairs, unlocks her door, and disappears into the room. I should feel like I’ve violated her privacy in an unforgivable way—I know—but I don’t. All I feel is relief, because now I can see her and make sure she's safe. Now I can watch her all the time.
I’m aware that, all justifications aside, what I'm doing is so far beyond acceptable that there's no coming back from it.
But that part is getting smaller every day, drowned out by the obsession that's been growing inside me like a cancer, spreading through my thoughts and my dreams and every waking moment until there's nothing left but her.
I've never been like this before. Never felt this consuming need to possess someone, to know every detail of their life, to insert myself into their world even when they've made it clear they don't want me there.
I've wanted women before, fucked them, forgotten them.
I've had relationships that lasted months, even a year once, and when they ended, I moved on without looking back.
I've killed people and felt less afterward than I feel now, sitting in my car watching a grainy feed of Svetlana taking off her coat and sitting on the edge of that terrible bed with her head in her hands.
I've wanted her for years. Thought about her, dreamed about her, imagined what it would be like to touch her and taste her and hear her say my name.
And then I had her, finally, and it was better than anything I'd imagined—and worse and more complicated, because she gave herself to me out of anger and desperation, a need to reclaim something that had been taken from her, not because she wanted me specifically.
Not because she felt this same consuming need that's eating me alive from the inside out.
Once wasn't enough. Once was just the beginning, the first hit of a drug I didn't know I needed until it was coursing through my veins and rewiring my brain to crave nothing but more.
She's mine now. She has to be mine, because I can't go back to the way things were before. I just have no idea how to make her see that without getting myself killed in the process, without exposing what I've done and losing the only leverage I have to keep her safe.
I sit in my apartment with my laptop open and the feeds running on multiple screens.
She doesn't do much. She doesn't go out except for necessities, doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't do anything that might draw attention.
She's being smart about it, careful, and I'm proud of her for that even as I'm frustrated by how little I can see, how much of her internal world remains hidden from me despite the cameras I've installed.
I watch her sleep, curled on her side with one hand tucked under her pillow, and I wonder what she's dreaming about.
I watch her stare at the ceiling for hours, and I wonder what she's thinking, if she's thinking about me at all or if she's already relegated me to the category of mistakes she'd rather forget.
All I can do is watch.
I quickly realize she's not eating enough.
I see her go to the convenience store for food—crackers, instant noodles, cheap protein bars—but when I watch her in the room, she barely touches them.
She'll open a package, eat a few bites, then put it away like the act of eating is too exhausting to continue. She starts to lose weight she didn’t have to spare, her face getting thinner, her collarbones more prominent, and the sight of it makes something twist in my chest that feels very close to panic.
She needs to eat. And she needs someone to take care of her, because she's clearly not capable of doing it on her own right now.
She needs me, even if she doesn't know it.
So I start making sure that she has food.
I wait for her to leave and then drop bags of groceries in front of her door that have protein shakes and easy-to-heat meals that are actually nutritious.
I have prepared meals delivered to her that I think might tempt her.
I leave coffee grounds from a fancy place downtown, and creamer.
She looks utterly confused when she finds the first delivery.
She looks up and down the hallway like she's trying to figure out who left it, before taking it inside cautiously.
She examines everything like she's checking for poison or tracking devices, and then—finally—she eats.
Not much, but more than she's eaten in days, and the relief I feel is overwhelming in its intensity.
I leave more food the next day, and the day after that.
She stops checking it so carefully, starts accepting it as something that's just happening, some strange kindness from the universe.
She doesn't know it's me. I make sure of that, because if she did, she'd probably throw it away out of spite, or pride, or the simple fact that she told me she didn't want my help.
But she's eating now, and that's what matters.
I tell myself I'm doing this to keep her healthy, to make sure she survives long enough to figure out her next move.
But the truth is, I'm doing this because I can't stand watching her suffer.
Every moment of her pain, every tear she sheds, every night she goes to bed hungry feels like a personal failure on my part.
I feel like I’m going insane sometimes, watching her.
I keep the feeds on whenever I can—at home, waiting for a meeting with one of Ilya's lieutenants about a shipment coming in from New York, any time that I can keep an eye on her. Most of the time, she’s just sitting there.
Not doing anything, not moving, just sitting on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, staring at nothing.
This is obsession, pure and simple, and it's consuming me in a way that nothing else ever has.
I've killed people without losing sleep.
I've destroyed enemies and done things that would make most people sick to their stomachs, and I've always been able to compartmentalize it, to separate my work from my life and maintain some semblance of normalcy.
But this I can't compartmentalize. It's bleeding into everything, taking over my thoughts and my time and my priorities until there's nothing left but her and the desperate need to be close to her, to know what she's doing and thinking and feeling every moment of every day.
A few days later, I’m watching her from a distance on a sunny afternoon that’s finally starting to warm up.
She’s at a shitty park near her motel, one that has plenty of people hanging out around it that I’d like to keep an eye on in case they get too close to her, but she’s not paying attention to any of them.
She's also not just walking aimlessly like she usually does.
She's stopping every few feet, raising something to her face, looking at things with a brightness I haven't seen from her in weeks.
It takes me a minute to realize what she’s doing: she’s taking pictures with a disposable camera, one of those cheap plastic things you can buy at a drugstore for ten dollars.
She's taking pictures of the city, of buildings, streets, and small details that most people would walk past without noticing.
A fire escape with plants growing on it.
A mural on the side of a building. The way the light hits the pond in the early morning.
She used to love photography. I remember that from before, from the research I did on her when I first saw her at that party, and couldn't get her out of my head.
She had a whole Instagram account dedicated to it, thousands of followers who appreciated her eye for lighting, comments from people asking what camera she used, and how she got her colors so rich and vibrant.
I remember noticing, after the warehouse, that the account stopped posting. I should have known something was wrong then.
But she's taking pictures now, with a disposable camera that will give her grainy, imperfect images that are nothing like the crisp digital photos she used to take.
And the fact that she's doing it at all, that she's finding something to care about besides just surviving, makes my chest ache with an unfamiliar sensation.
Seeing her like this makes me…happy.
I want her to be happy.
I’m well aware that, as far as she’s concerned, there’s nothing I could do to ever contribute to her happiness. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. And when, a few days later, I realize that she’s getting sick, that feeling of panic returns.
She starts sleeping more, not getting out of bed, wrapping herself in blankets even though the room isn't that cold. By the afternoon, a day after, I notice she doesn’t seem to be feeling well, she's clearly feverish, her face flushed, and her movements sluggish, and when she finally drags herself to the bathroo,m and I see her leaning against the sink like she's about to collapse, I'm already in my car heading to the pharmacy.
I leave cold medicine, fever reducers, throat lozenges, tea, soup, everything I can think of that might help. I leave it outside her door like always, and I watch her find it and take it inside.
She takes the medicine and crawls into bed, and I watch her sleep fitfully, her face still flushed with fever, her breathing rough.
I watch her for hours, unable to look away, unable to focus on anything else, even though I have work to do, people to meet, a life that's supposed to exist outside of this obsession.
But there is no outside anymore. There's only her, and the desperate need to make sure she's okay.
I've become someone I don't entirely recognize, someone who installs cameras in a woman's hotel room and watches her sleep and convinces himself it's protection.
But I can't stop, because the alternative is not knowing if she's safe, not knowing if she's eating or sleeping or taking care of herself, not knowing if someone's found her, and I'm not there to stop it.
The alternative is losing her, and that's not an option.
It takes her a few days to recover, but I see her slowly getting better as she consumes the medicine, soup, and everything else that I make sure she’s well stocked with.
I send her real, solid food once there’s more color in her face and she’s sitting up more often, and I try to put her out of my head when I’m doing business for Ilya or in meetings.
I can’t let my life unravel because of her, and I know Ilya has begun to notice that I’m distracted.
I’ve passed it off as tiredness, maybe even a little illness of my own, but that’s not going to hold forever. I need to get it together.
And, for a few days, I actually manage to pull myself back into some semblance of normalcy.
I remind myself that if I come apart, Ilya will figure out what’s wrong and interrogate me until I have no choice but to tell him the truth.
To keep Svetlana safe, to make up for everything I didn’t do before, I have to do better at keeping up appearances.
Until I check on the camera feed and see her in the motel room bathroom, holding a box that, even with the grainy feed, I can read the words that are on it.
I feel my breath catch, and my heart nearly stop, because I can see what she’s doing, but I can’t see the result.
And in that instant, I’m consumed with a need to know, to be absolutely fucking sure of what’s happening right now…
or what happened just a little while ago, when Svetlana was holding that box in her hand.
When she was taking a fucking pregnancy test.