Chapter Twenty-Six
My voice sounds faint, almost as if it’s coming from a different person. My thoughts fog up as my brain reverts to the survival mindset I learned while living with the man on the other end of the line. The scar on my leg starts to itch, as if reminding me of what Clyde’s capable of.
How did he get this number? I changed all my personal information when I managed to escape him and go to college. I have a new phone number, new last name, new life. With the threats I dropped on Clyde before leaving, I thought he’d let me go.
He has to let me go, I remind myself. He can’t do anything to me without me fucking him over and getting him killed. One conversation with his boss is all it’ll take to bring his carefully-constructed life crumbling around him. One whisper in the right ear and he’s done for.
I move to hang up on him; Clyde stops me with a single phrase. “It’s been a long time, Mira. Years. You really thought you could leave me in the past?”
Anger overtakes my fear. “I have left you in the past, Clyde. We’re of no consequence to each other, and that’s how I’d prefer to keep it.”
He clicks his tongue. “I thought that was the case, too,” he says calmly, “until I found out that you’ve been getting in bed with some very bad people.
I always knew you’d grow up to be a whore, just like your slut of a mother.
I just didn’t think you had it in you to spread your legs for a criminal.
” A low, rattling chuckle escapes him as bile churns at the back of my throat. “Like mother like daughter, I guess.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I hiss furiously.
“Oh? So, you’re not the side piece of one of Sergei Novikov’s foot soldiers? A boy who goes to that fancy university with you?” He hums. “I must’ve gotten bad intel, then.”
My fear reignites, a consuming dread that freezes me in place, dissipating my anger.
So Sergei Novikov is the boss Dorian keeps referring to; no wonder Dorian’s religious in sticking to Sergei’s orders.
I’ve heard of Sergei Novikov—anyone who doesn’t live under a rock has heard of him.
He’s an infamous Bratva boss who owns all of Russia and most of Eurasia; rumor has it he has several international operations, too.
One that I’m apparently caught in the middle of.
Clyde should have no way of knowing about my connection to Dorian or of Dorian’s connection to Sergei; both men are completely out of his reach.
He’s with a local gang in a town in Pennsylvania—an organization that’s made up of a collection of wife-beating imbeciles.
From what I’ve heard about Sergei, he runs an international criminal empire.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even though I try to make the words strong, they come out coated in fear.
Clyde chuckles. “Right. Here’s what you’re going to do for me, Mira. Carver wants in with Sergei Novikov. He wants to go into business together. You are going to get him a meeting with Sergei—”
“No, I am not,” I hiss. I refuse to be pulled back into Clyde’s world; I refuse to enable him by getting his boss a meeting with Sergei.
Clyde is nothing but a bad memory for me.
I will not allow him to invade my present.
“You can’t make me. If I ever talk to Carver, I won’t be arranging a meeting with whoever the fuck Sergei Novikov is.
I’ll be telling your boss exactly what you did six years ago and who died because of it. ”
My senior year in high school, I managed to find out about a crime Clyde committed that not even his boss would be horrible enough to overlook. Clyde liked to keep pictures of his victims for his own sick amusement, and I happened to stumble upon a stack of them while cleaning the house.
One of those pictures was of his boss’s late wife. I found indisputable evidence that Clyde killed the woman years ago—but not before he brutally tortured her.
That particular woman was a heinous person.
I am not sad she’s dead. I remember her suggesting that Clyde should force my mother to work at one of the gang’s strip clubs; she even said to do the same with me.
She obviously had a hand in some terrible operations, so she deserves to be dead.
If Carver ever finds out what my stepfather did, Clyde would die a torturous, painful death.
“You won’t,” Clyde says, full of an eerie confidence.
“Because, if you do, I’ll be sure to implicate you in that bitch’s death.
Maybe your mom put me up to it because she didn’t like how Maria talked about her.
Your mom’s not around anymore, so Carver will look for someone else to take revenge on alongside me. You.”
My eyes flutter as my breaths turn shaky, stuttering in and out of me.
In a fair world, Clyde’s threat would hold no weight, but I know that I don’t live in that world.
I live in an absolutely brutal one. There’s a chance, no matter how slim, that Carver would believe Clyde’s bullshit, and subsequently come for me.
Then, everything I’ve worked for will have beeen for nothing.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, cunt. You’ll talk to your soldier and tell him your dearest stepfather has a boss who’s interested in doing business with his boss. You’ll get your little boyfriend—if he’s even that much—in contact with me. We’ll run things up the hierarchy. Got it?”
I do the only thing I can think of doing; I hang up on him.
Then, I sink into my chair, and for once, I allow myself to dissociate without the aid of music.
The pain and panic from Clyde’s threats is just too much, so I slip away from those feelings.
I let the world become muted, and I gradually feel my problems and worries fade into the ether, replaced by a blessed numbness.
The numbness isn’t cold or cruel; it’s placid.
Steady. Almost content. It’s a bubble outside of space and time that I try to avoid, because it can become too comfortable, and I can forget the importance of being present.
Right now I just don’t have it in me to care about the consequences of uncontrolled dissociation.
The phone rings again, and then again; I watch it vibrate on the cool tabletop, feel the echoes of the vibration from where my thigh rests against one of the table’s legs.
No fear accompanies watching Clyde’s number flash across my screen, not anymore.
My detachment frees me from the fear. The pain.
The memories. It envelops me in a cocoon of nothingness that I could comfortably inhabit until the day I die.
I feel my body start to grow stiff from the cold outside, but I’m in no hurry to react or warm myself up. It’s as if I’m experiencing the world from under a layer of water, as if nothing can actually touch me.
It could be moments or hours that pass before I hear the patio door open with a loud creak.
I don’t care enough to find out who opened it, so I continue staring at my phone screen, which still vibrates with an incoming call every few minutes.
I wonder how many times Clyde has tried to call by now, or how many more he will.
If he keeps it up, my phone will die, and I have no intention of recharging it.
“Mira,” Dorian says, sounding a touch alarmed. His footsteps echo across stone as he makes his way over to me. My eyes shift to his as he walks into my line of sight and leans over the table, peering at my phone. His eyebrows draw together as he sees it light up with yet another incoming call.
“Who’s calling?” he asks, glancing at me.
“Jesus, Mira, you’re turning blue.” My phone temporarily forgotten, he rubs a hand up and down my arm, and nearly recoils at whatever it is he feels.
“Christ,” he mutters. “It’s thirty fucking degrees outside and you’ve been out here for the better part of an hour—why didn’t you grab a sweater? ”
I gaze at him for a moment, deciding if I want to put in the effort of responding to him. Then, my phone lights up yet again, and Dorian glances at it with an irritated scowl. “Who the fuck is calling you repeatedly?”
He reaches for my phone, and that’s what finally spurs me into speaking. Even in my disconnected state, I can grasp the implications of how bad things could get if Clyde got talking to Dorian; I just can’t find it in me to care as much as I should.
“Clyde,” I murmur.
Dorian rears back, recoiling from the phone, and gazes at me with shock. “Your stepfather?”
I nod, just once.
“What the fuck does he want with you?” Dorian demands, sounding shocked. “Did you talk to him? Are you okay?”
I spend a few moments trying to formulate a response, then realize there’s too much emotional effort involved. Instead of answering his questions, I say, “Ignore him. My phone will die eventually.”
Dorian grasps my chin in his hand and angles my head, forcing me to face him. I gaze at him, not bothering to pull out of his grip.
He rubs a thumb over my cheek, brows furrowing, eyes filling with what might be comprehension. “You’re dissociated right now, aren’t you? Zoned out, whatever you call it?”
“Yes,” I nod. He’s already caught on; there’s no sense in refuting his assessment.
“Fuck.” Dorian takes a few deep breaths, then gently wraps his hand around mine and pulls me up from the chair.
Once I’m standing, I notice the way my limbs tremble, either from the cold or the adrenaline coursing through me.
Just because I no longer feel the effects of my anxiety doesn’t mean it’s disappeared; I’ve simply removed myself from it.
“Alright, baby,” he says, picking up my phone and pocketing it. “We’re going inside.”
“Val and Cara will get spooked if they see me like this,” I say factually.
“They’re distracted by the movie. We’re going to our room; I’ll let them know something’s come up, then we can handle your piece of shit stepfather.” He pauses, rubbing a hand up and down my arm. “Is that okay?”
I… don’t know. I don’t really care. “Sure.”