Chapter 6
Yelena
Iwoke with a dog’s beard stuck to my mouth and ninety-one pounds of warm Italian judgment pressed across my shins.
For a few seconds, I did not know where I was.
Grey blanket. Dark lake beyond impossible windows. The soft mechanical breath of heat coming through hidden vents. A giant shaggy animal stretched along the length of my legs, his rough orange-and-white coat warm under my hand.
Then memory came back in pieces sharp enough to cut.
The road. The gunshot. Salvatore’s blood on my fingers. The plane. His hand around my wrists. The penthouse door locking behind me.
I sat up too fast.
Olimpo made a long, offended noise and put his giant head in my lap as if I had disturbed him for no reason at all.
“You are in my way,” I told him.
His tail thumped once against the carpet.
The clock on the wall said ten past nine.
I had slept.
Not dozed. Not closed my eyes and listened for footsteps through the door. Not dozed with one hand around a weapon and my shoes on. I had slept deeply enough that the sun was already turning the lake silver.
Fury arrived clean and immediate.
My body had betrayed me in a strange man’s house. In a cage with nice furniture. It had accepted a blanket, a dog, a low voice, and decided the escape could wait until morning. I was angry with myself—incandescent.
I pushed the blanket off and stood. Sal’s coat slid down my arms, heavy and dark and smelling faintly of wool, soap, and him.
I hated that I knew the smell already. Hated that some low, traitorous part of me wanted to put my face into the collar and breathe it until there was nothing else in my head.
The wedding dress underneath was ruined. One shoulder bare. Silk torn at the bodice. A brown stain where somebody’s blood had dried near the hem.
I walked toward the kitchen because I could hear a pan.
Sal stood at the marble island in shirtsleeves, his jacket gone, dark shirt rolled to the elbows.
Morning light cut across him from the windows.
He was too large for the room in the way some men were too large for any room—not because he moved loudly, but because everything around him seemed arranged by his presence.
His forearms were bare. Olive skin. Dark hair over muscle. The old knife scar ran along his right arm, pale and uneven against the strength of it. His hands looked made for difficult work: broad palms, blunt fingers, a faint dusting of dark hair over the knuckles.
The butterfly closures on his cheek were stark against his stubble.
I had put them there.
Guilt should not have moved through my body like heat.
It should not have gone low and fast when he glanced up, dark eyes finding mine beneath those heavy brows.
It should not have made me notice the hard line of his jaw or the silver beginning at his temples or the open collar of his shirt showing a strip of throat.
My brain was a traitor too.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Debatable.”
Something almost like a smile altered his mouth. It transformed him. That was inconvenient.
He turned off the burner. “You slept. I’m glad.”
“You must have drugged me. It’s the only explanation.”
“No.” His eyes held mine. “No drugs. From anyone, thank god.”
I folded my arms over the torn bodice, squeezing my breasts together. “It was a close-run thing.”
He did not take the bait. Of course he didn’t. Men like Gianni lunged for every hook. Salvatore watched it swing and waited for me to cut myself on it.
His phone buzzed on the counter. He picked it up, checked the screen, then looked at me.
“Tonio.”
I went still.
Sal touched the speaker icon. “Talk.”
Tonio’s voice flooded the kitchen, warm and loud even through a phone. “He showed at the east window fifteen minutes ago. Curtains open, face visible. He looked scared, which is sensible, but unharmed. Had breakfast with Lev at eight-forty. Tea, bread, two guards outside the blue room.”
My knees nearly stopped working.
I put one hand on the marble island because it was there.
“Did he see you?” Sal asked.
“No. I’m not an idiot.”
“I disagree.”
“Fuck you, vecchio. I have eyes on both service exits and the east wing. He is alive. He is fed. For now.”
For now wasn’t good enough. But ate least my brother was alive. Fed.
I swallowed around something painful.
“Thank you,” I said before I could stop myself.
The line went quiet for half a beat. Then Tonio’s voice gentled.
“Any time, bella. We’ll get him out.”
Sal ended the call.
I hated the shine in my eyes. I blinked it away before either of them could own it.
He turned back to the counter. “Coffee. Tea. Hot chocolate.”
“I don’t need—”
“Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.”
The choices were deliberate. I recognized a tactic when I saw one. Tiny freedoms arranged like bait in a trap.
“Hot chocolate,” I said.
The answer escaped before pride could catch it.
Sal’s face did not change. Not a flicker of triumph. He simply reached for a small saucepan.
“I don’t want you to make a thing of it,” I said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He poured milk into the pan. His movements were exact, quiet. He added dark chocolate from a tin, then something from a small jar that smelled faintly of cinnamon. I watched his hands despite myself. The controlled strength of them. The way he rested one palm flat on the counter while he stirred.
A plate sat beside the stove. Toast. Eggs. Fruit.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“I’m not eating.”
He looked at me then. Really looked.
The kitchen went too quiet.
“I’m angry with you,” I said, because it was safer than saying anything else.
“You know, I was actually pickign up on that.”
“I think you’re arrogant, controlling, and dangerously pleased with yourself.”
“Possible.”
“And I may decide to punish you for what you did.”
His gaze lowered briefly to the closure on his cheek. “You already started.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
The question escaped before I could stop it.
His eyes lifted to mine.
“The cheek? The place you skewered me? Gave me a new piercing?”
“What else?”
“Well, I mean, you hit my throat too.”
“You survived.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“It hurts.”
Guilt gave another hard turn beneath my ribs. I covered it with contempt.
“You should have moved faster.”
“Yes.”
“I could have taken your eye.”
“You’re a little monster, you know that?”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
He poured the hot chocolate into a mug and set it in front of me. It was blue ceramic, plain and warm between my hands. He had not made it too sweet. I took one sip, and the chocolate hit my tongue thick and dark and warm enough to hurt.
My throat tightened.
Sal slid the toast plate closer.
“No.”
“You may punish me however you like, Yelena Lvovna.” His voice stayed low. “You may insult me. You may leave when you decide where to go. You may put another hole in my face if it improves your morning.”
“Tempting.”
“But starving yourself only punishes your body. It does nothing to me.”
The tenderness of it was worse than a command.
He had no right to say it like that. No right to make my refusal look like harm I was doing to myself instead of the only weapon I had left. No right to see through it.
I took one piece of toast.
“Happy?” I asked.
“No. Not happy. Not by a long shot.” He went back to the stove. “Relieved.”
I bit into the toast solely because I could not stand him being right.
The hot chocolate had barely cooled before I went looking for the edge of the cage.
I left the mug on the counter. Sal did not ask where I was going.
That was almost insulting.
The service door stood off the hallway, plain white and unremarkable. I opened it. Beyond was a narrow stairwell, concrete steps, steel rail, a keypad beside another locked door at the bottom.
Four-nine-one-one.
He had told me once in the dark, when I was struggling to breathe. I entered it.
The lock clicked.
I went down two flights before I heard him behind me.
Not close. Not rushing. His shoes struck each step with infuriating calm.
“You’re following me,” I said without turning.
“Yes.”
“So much for freedom.”
“I’m free, too. Free to go where I please. And right now it pleases me to be behind you.”
I reached the garage door and faced him. “Fine. You’re free to follow me. I’m free to leave. So, let’s make a list, then. I need my passport. Money. A phone that doesn’t report my position to your little office upstairs. Transport.”
Sal stood one step above me, tall enough that I had to tilt my chin back. The cut on his cheek made him look rougher this morning. More dangerous. His dark hair was still slightly damp from a shower, combed back from his forehead. The shirt stretched across his shoulders when he moved.
He reached into his inside pocket and took out a slim envelope.
“Temporary passport.” He handed it to me.
I opened it. The photograph was mine. The name was not.
“Ana Sokolova?” I said.
“You want something different? Might have to wait a day or two.”
“How did you get this.”
“Our financial analyst, Angela. She is very good.”
There was another envelope. Five hundred dollars in cash. Then a clean phone in a sealed box. Then keys.
“The car is in the garage,” he said. “Full tank. No tracker. You can verify it if you like.”
I stared at the things in my hands.
He went on. “I’ll send you to a hotel. The airport.
A police station. Any address you name. But I won’t send you to New York.
And I will know if you go near Gianni. And I will stop you.
Other than that, go, have a good life. I can put you on a flight under that passport, or give you enough space to disappear without me knowing where. ”
“You expect me to trust that?”
“No.”
“You expect me to accept help from the man who dragged me off a road at gunpoint?”
“No.”
His answers made my anger stumble.
I recovered it quickly. “Mill Basin.”
His face changed. Not much. The line of his mouth hardened.
“No.”
There it was.
I laughed once. “There it is.”
“I will not take you to Mill Basin.”
“One forbidden road. Very generous. Is that how freedom works in Sicily? Every direction is open except the one a woman wants?”
“You know what is in that house.”
“Kiryl.”