Chapter 13 #2
Olimpo lay nearby with Gianni-the-wolf under one paw. The dog had decided the ugly toy belonged to him now. Yelena normally would have made a comment about hostage negotiations.
Tonight, she only watched the fire.
I set aside the report I had been pretending to read.
“What’s wrong, little one?”
“Nothing.”
I waited.
Her shoulders rose with a slow breath. Then fell.
“I keep thinking,” she said, “that maybe I should go back.”
Every muscle in my body went still.
Not because I was angry. Not because I intended to stop her. Because I knew what those words cost her to say.
She stared at the uncolored page.
“Not because I want Lev,” she continued. “Or Gianni. I would rather throw myself into the lake than marry that smug little parasite.”
“That would be inconvenient,” I said.
A thin sound left her. Not quite a laugh.
“I know.”
“Have you contacted anyone?”
Her head came up fast.
“No.”
“Has anyone contacted you?”
“No.”
“Have you sent a message? Made a call? Drafted anything? Set up a secret meeting?”
Her eyes flickered.
Not enough for proof. Enough for concern.
“No,” she said again.
I did not press the lie yet. I had asked whether she had acted. She had not.
Yelena looked down at her hands.
“Every time someone gets hurt, I think maybe he is right,” she said. “Maybe the people around me pay for keeping me. Maybe I am just too expensive.”
I leaned forward and placed both hands over her shoulders. She went quiet beneath my palms.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Thoughts are not disobedience.”
Her breath caught.
“Fear is not betrayal. Wanting to protect people is not a sin. It is one of the things I love about you.”
She tipped her head back just enough to look at me.
“But?”
“But Gianni wants to turn that love into a leash.”
I brushed my thumb along the side of her neck.
“You don’t have to pretend you never think about leaving. You only have to tell me when you do.”
Her eyes shone in the firelight.
“I hate that I think it.”
“I know.”
“I hate that part of me thinks it would work.”
“I know that too.”
The clock on the mantel moved toward eleven-thirty.
I looked at her coloring book again. The page remained blank.
“Are you overwhelmed?” I asked.
She stiffened.
There was the question. The simple door I had held open for her all day.
I watched her face move through the answer she knew I needed.
Then the old reflex arrived first.
“I’m fine, Daddy.”
My chest tightened. Not rage. Never rage. Sadness, perhaps. Because she wanted so badly to be good that she still believed being fine was the requirement.
My hands remained gentle on her shoulders.
“Try again,” I said.
She swallowed. Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. I waited.
The silence stretched until she pulled her knees closer to her chest.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“All right.”
She turned quickly, fear flaring in her eyes.
“All right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No.Of course not, baby.”
I stood and held out my hand.
“But, it’s bedtime.”
Her face fell.
“Sal—”
“We will continue tomorrow. You need sleep more than you need another hour of fighting yourself.”
“I can work it out.”
“No. Not tonight.”
She looked toward the library door. Toward the reports. Toward every place she could turn herself into a useful instrument.
Then she put her hand in mine.
I took her upstairs. I tucked her into bed. I read three pages of The Firebird in a Russian accent so bad that she managed to smile at me through exhaustion.
When I kissed her forehead, she caught my wrist.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I covered her hand with mine.
Pietro called me downstairs ten minutes later.
A vehicle had been seen twice on the county road. Nothing conclusive. Enough to check.
I stood in the security room with him while the camera feeds rolled across the monitors. The same dark sedan. Different angles. A plate obscured by road salt.
“Could be nothing,” Pietro said.
“Nothing doesn’t repeat itself twice.”
He nodded.
We worked through the routes for nearly half an hour. When I returned upstairs, Yelena’s bedroom door stood open.
The bed was empty.
The scratchy blanket had been folded back with care, and her slippers were gone from beside the chair.
And downstairs, at the far end of the silent house, a narrow strip of light shone beneath the office door.
I opened the office door without knocking.
Yelena sat at the desk in soft grey pajamas and bare feet. Her hair had been tied up badly, loose pieces falling around her face. The laptop screen lit her pale eyes from below.
A dinner plate sat beside the keyboard.
Bread untouched.
Soup gone cold.
She looked at me, then at the screen, then back at me.
The document was open between us.
TRANSFER AND PERSONAL APPEARANCE TERMS.
I did not need to read every clause. I read enough.
Her shares moved to a trust under conditions Gianni could accept. A meeting location. A condition that no Caruso or Scordato personnel would be present. A promise of access to her signature if he released the payroll account and ceased action against Tonio’s employees.
She had written herself into a bargain.
She had made her body and freedom a currency again.
My first feeling was not anger. It was terror. But I kept it out of my voice.
“Did you send it?”
Her lips parted.
“No.”
“Did you contact Gianni?”
“No.”
“Lev?”
“No.”
“Anyone working for either of them?”
“No, Daddy.”
I moved behind the desk, closed the laptop, and turned the screen black.
“You promise me?”
“I swear it.”
I crouched in front of her chair.
“You are not in trouble for having this thought,” I said.
Her eyes fixed on mine.
“You are not going to be punished for an idea. Or fear. Or for wanting to protect people.”
Her throat moved.
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Because I hate that you believed this was the only way to save them.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away too fast.
“I didn’t believe it was the only way.”
“No?”
“I believed it might be the fastest. The most effecient.”
“Ah.”
There it was. The Sokolov lesson.
Do not ask whether the price is right. Ask whether payment clears.
I took her hands. They were cold.
“You are being corrected tonight,” I said, “because you skipped a meal. You lied when I asked if you had eaten. You lied when I asked if you were overwhelmed. And you ignored your bedtime.”
Her expression folded inward.
“All rules you chose with me,” I continued. “Rules you chose because you know what happens when pressure makes you forget you have a body.”
“I know.”
“I am not correcting your fear. I am correcting the way you tried to disappear into usefulness.”
Her eyes filled again. I squeezed her hands once.
“The agreement gives us a low-key consequence for deliberate self-neglect. Ten minutes in the corner. Then an honest conversation.”
She stared at our joined hands.
“You can refuse. If you refuse, we still have the conversation. I still feed you. I still put you to bed. There is no punishment for saying no.”
Her lips trembled.
“I want the corner.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to feel that you mean it.”
The answer was raw enough to leave no room for anything but care.
“All right,” I said.