Chapter 57 Gabi
GABI
Ivan turns away as he reaches for a towel. “Get dressed. We’ll go to my office, and you can explain. Remember, bullet points.”
He walks out, not giving me time to protest or even catch my breath. I’m spent from multiple orgasms, my legs weak and my butt numb where I’ve sat on the bath’s edge for so long, but the tightly wound coil in me has loosened, and I seem to levitate.
I need to gather myself. I don’t know how I managed to let go to such an extent that I touched myself in front of Ivan.
It’s partly because I got so turned on watching him wash himself without any shame in front of me.
It’s also his body, the ridges of his six-pack and the muscles on his thighs, his giant cock that made my mouth water—a cock that still hasn’t been inside me.
A longing ache still hums in the background, one that isn’t going to go away…
but it’s also because I could be at death’s door.
That was no idle threat. At this rate, I might not see tomorrow… so why the fuck not?
Ivan’s hands might be perfect for making me come, but they would strangle me with just as much ease.
I get up, limp to my closet, find my clothes rearranged from Yuri going through all my things, and get dressed in a T-shirt and jeans.
When I walk into the corridor, Ivan is already there, in his usual shirt and pants, smelling like freshly showered man and totally…edible.
“Are the girls okay?”
“Yes,” he says curtly. “Lead the way, since you know where my office is.”
His tone says everything: I bet you’ve been trying to go snoop around like a spy ever since you got to see my office the first time. I walk down the corridor to the stairs where two guards are standing, now visible. They usually stick to the shadows, but I suppose those days are over now.
We make it to Ivan’s office in awful, tense silence, crossing paths with two more guards on the way. The office door is open, and Yuri is sitting in one of the chairs facing the desk, nursing a drink. A small laundry basket with my things takes center stage.
“Sit,” Ivan says as he indicates the other chair for me.
He pours two drinks as I sink into the chair, sitting on my hands, too fidgety and needing to keep some sort of composure.
He hands me a glass. “Drink up. It’ll help the words flow.”
“What is it?” I ask as I reach for it with a shaky hand.
“Vodka.”
It looks like water. I sniff. It’s strong. “I don’t—”
“Just a sip. It’ll help.”
I do as he says because right now, I don’t want to piss him off, but as soon as the clear liquid hits my tongue, it’s too strong, and I start to cough.
Yuri leans in and takes the glass from me with a soulful slap to my back. “This will make her so drunk she won’t be able to talk at all, Pakhan. She isn’t used to drinking.”
“Good to know.”
This man…he is testing me.
Ivan leans back against the cupboard lining the one wall. He drinks deep, his gaze on me.
“The floor’s yours, Gabriella,” he says eventually.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Easy. Think of this as confession. Start with why you have a piercing and who gave it to you.”
I cup my hands over my face, hiding. Yuri is in the room, for heaven’s sake, and to this day, only a handful of people know, most of them dead, and I would love to keep it that way. I can hear him shift in his seat next to me.
“What type of piercing?” he asks into the silence.
“Actually,” Ivan says as his glass clinks onto his desk. “I can show you.”
Please. Spare me. The last thing I need or want is to spread my legs for this old man who has the role of grandad of the family. But Ivan doesn’t reach for me—instead, electronic buttons beep, and I drop my hands, cheeks on fire, to watch what he’s doing.
He’s opened a safe and is pulling a small box from it. “This is Darya’s jewelry. They took everything off before they cremated her.”
He spills the box’s content into the lid and places it on the desk, then starts to fish.
Between heavy rings studded with diamonds twinkling in the overhead lights, more diamonds on hoop earrings, more things that look like they were stuck in flesh at some point, he picks out a platinum piercing, shaped like a slightly bent barbell.
I still, my heart thumping in my chest. Darya had one, too? Good grief…no wonder Ivan is losing his shit. My Russian is connected to his ex-wife.
Ivan hands the piercing to Yuri, and my eyes follow it, hungry for details of this thing that has plagued me for nine long years. I’ve never seen it up close. Never even looked in a mirror. I just couldn’t. As long as I ignored it, it was as if I didn’t go through that trauma.
To be a good Catholic girl, never touching myself came easy to me, something Chiara couldn’t understand.
I never told her about the piercing, because I hate it for reminding me of Randazzo, that decrepit Russian, and the promise they made.
I hate how they’ve been manipulating me through it for years.
It’s a symbol of the mere object I am, as if there isn’t a human carrying its weight.
But it looks so light. It’s small, yet distinct engravings on it make it haunting. Skulls…a tiny little skull at the end of each tip. I shudder, because it’s as if I’ve carried death on me all these years.
Yuri studies it for a tense half-minute, then shoots me a glance. “She has the same?”
“The exact same,” Ivan says.
Yuri’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline, and he drags in a deep breath. “Well, fuck me.”
“More like fuck us.” Ivan tosses another mouthful down his throat. “You’ve seen it before?”
“It’s Bratva, for sure. The engraving, the words, too small to read, but detailed enough to find the source. Russian, definitely. Which Bratva…I can’t say. The Pakhan might know.”
“The Pakhan doesn’t need to know.”
The men share a glance, a silent communication spelling out this stays here.
Then both men’s gazes home in on me, and Yuri cocks a brow, silently asking the question on everybody’s lips.
“I was thirteen,” I choke out as I hold out my hand, not wanting to touch the piercing but needing to see it up close.
Yuri drops it in my palm. I stare at it through tears that fall onto my palm, making little crying skulls of each barbell tip.
“And the whole time, I was waiting for them to rape me. To do to me as I witnessed when I was seven… I can’t recall, I—”
I drop the piercing back to the desk, my palm burning where it rested. Darya—she suffered the same fate, and now she’s dead.
A hand caresses my head, a soft stroke on my shoulder as Ivan goes down on his haunches in front of me, his hand running down my arm all the way until he reaches my thigh and pauses.
“You were only thirteen?” he murmurs, chilled shock in his tone.
“Yes! What did you think?” I want to shove him away, feeling so dirty, not wanting him to touch me. “That I got this last week? It’s ingrown, for heaven’s sake. I was told not to touch it to prevent infection, that it’s a little reminder for me to stay pure for the man I got engaged to that day.”
“Fuck.”
He wipes at my tears, cursing in such a low voice, I can’t decipher the words.
His touch is so gentle, it makes me want to weep, but I can’t do that now. I’m here to save my skin, but more importantly, I’m here to ask for help, to find and save Chiara. And every other girl still caught in the human trafficking mill I was fed through.
Running was always my solution. Ivan might have been murderous earlier, but I can’t run if I’m dead.
If I’m dead, what will I have achieved? Nothing.
Running and hiding all my life has stopped none of the shit that happened to me from happening to others.
But it happened to Darya, too. I can’t protect Irisha and Katya when I’m dead.
This isn’t about me. Maybe it’s never been about me.
I see the flow of my life, a river snaking through the valleys of God’s path, no idea where it’s heading, but picking souls up along the way.
The clarity I have in this moment is almost blinding.
I’m here for Milana, and Chiara—who I sense in my gut is still alive—and for all the women caught up in a trafficking network that probably existed before I was even born, but which I now feel destined to destroy.
“Who did this to you, Gabriella? And why?” Ivan asks, pulling me back to the now.
I should push his hand away, but I can’t. He doesn’t move and rests it possessively with the other one on my thigh.
“The why is obvious: to mark me as property, as being sold. Bottom line: you’ve married a woman promised to someone else. If you want the contract’s fine print, I can’t help you.”
I let that sink in, and Ivan just stares at me, his jaw ticking.
“Who else was there, moya ptichka?”
“Randazzo—my ‘dad’,” I say, making quotation marks with my fingers. “He was there, but he’s dead. That’s recent, if you don’t know. That fucking priest, who I recognized from the time in Mancuso’s cellar—I knew when he came for me—” That it was going to be bad.
I break off, needing to regain control over my quivering voice. I swallow and bite my lip as Ivan’s hands stiffen on my thighs, cold rage flashing in his gaze at the mention of Mancuso.
“Tell me,” he urges. “Tell me so I can kill him.”
“Too late,” I choke out. “He’s dead. That fucking priest was in on the whole thing and made sure I had a private ‘meeting’ outside of the convent.” And gave me the last, shattering glance into the rot underneath the gilded glory of the Catholic Church, breaking my faith into a million pieces.
“How did he die? Do you know?”
I shrug. “He died two weeks later in a mysterious single-vehicle accident, plummeting down a cliff on one of the winding mountain roads in that area.” I drag in a shaky breath, rattled at reliving this now.
“Does it meet your standards?” I stab back, hating that Ivan is making me talk, giving me the deep cleanse I probably needed ages ago.
“Not quite,” he says drily, anger biting in his tone. “Who else? Who did the piercing?”