Chapter 2
MILA
“Ya ne proshu tvoey lyubvi.” I don’t ask for your love.
He reads the words low, his Russian gravelly through the dense oak.
He doesn’t have a goddamn clue that I speak his translation right back to him inside my head.
He doesn’t know I have been on this side of the door every night for weeks, sitting flat on the cold hardwood with the meat of my palm pressed against the grain, matching the rhythm of his breathing.
On his side, the leather book snaps shut. He stands, his boots shifting weight, and I catch the uneven hitch in his stride right where the corridor turns.
It’s a hitch he hides from everyone downstairs, one he doesn’t bother to smooth out for a closed door.
He walks away. He always does.
Don’t.
The thought slips through before I can choke it back. My hand stays glued to the oak, my fingers twitching against the wood.
Take it back. He’s gone. Take the wanting back.
You don’t get to want him. You don’t get to be chosen. You were the thing in the room. Never the person in it.
I lean my forehead against the grain, my skin finding the faint warmth where his back was against the wood.
Gone now. Empty space. Just the thick smell of New Orleans jasmine creeping through the floor gap.
I count to thirty breaths before my hand drops into my lap.
Eventually, I make myself move.
The small tactical folding knife is the only thing on this side of the room that didn’t feel like an interrogation.
Renzo gave it to me during my second week in the house. He’d walked into the room without knocking, set the matte-black casing quietly on the nightstand, and said two words.
In case.
Then he turned on his heel and left before the weight of it had even landed.
I haven’t let go of it since. It stays tucked into the deep pocket of my oversized sweater, my thumb constantly tracking the ridge of the release switch.
Before I let my eyes close, I map the room.
The main door. The high window above the dresser if I can clear the frame. The narrow gap behind the wardrobe if I need to flatten my spine and disappear into the dark. The small window in the bathroom that unlatches onto the sloped porch roof if the perimeter falls.
Four exits. Same as last night. Same as the night before that.
The counting doesn’t stop just because the numbers stay identical. The counting is the only thing keeping my blood cool.
I lie down on top of the linen covers, fully dressed in my layers, my right hand locked around the knife in my pocket. My left thumb tracks the empty, rusted metal chain resting against my collarbone.
The chain Alexei left behind when he ripped the locket from my chest.
Sleep comes late and keeps dropping me back on the floor.
Yob tvoyu mat’. Fuck it.
I am so goddamn tired of being tired.
When the soft thud hits the wood in the morning, I hear her before my eyes are open.
Two knocks. Short. Quiet. Her knuckles are small and light against the paneling.
“Good morning, ma fille.”
The French endearment laid soft over the vowels. She uses this for me.
I stay perfectly still and offer nothing.
The lock clicks, the door opening barely an inch, and the wooden tray slides across the floorboards into the room. The oak slams shut instantly, the deadbolt rolling back into place.
“Coffee, too, ma fille.”
A second ceramic click hits the floor. The cup.
I wait until the slow, small rhythm of her footsteps fades down the grand staircase before I drop onto my hands and knees.
I crawl across the floorboards toward the threshold.
I don’t have to. No one is watching. My body doesn’t care.
The tray holds a thick slice of crusty bread, two soft-boiled eggs, a clean glass of water, a tiny porcelain dish of salted butter, and a ceramic mug.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, lifting the ceramic with both hands.
The scent hits my lungs before the heat touches my lips, and my chest tightens so fast I lose a breath.
Chicory. Dark, bitter, and rich enough to chew.
My father drank his coffee exactly like this every Sunday morning before the Bratva calls started.
Papa, something in me says.
No.
Then Papa again, stubborn and aching.
My fingers tighten around the ceramic until the chipped edge digs into my palm, the sharp sting pulling me back into the room. My father is dead. The coffee is here. I am on a floor in New Orleans.
It has been five years since the transport vans took me from the compound, five years since I sat at the head of my family’s table, and my nose still knows exactly what his coffee smelled like.
I close my eyes, letting the bitter steam hit my face.
Sestra moya, ya zhiva. Ya zhdu. My sister, I am alive. I am waiting.
Something in my chest goes quiet. I drink.
The taste is a brutal replica of the before. Russian-strong. Harsh. Alive.
I drain the mug until the dregs coat the bottom, then I eat half of the bread, chewing slowly to make the calories last.
The remaining half of the loaf goes directly into the coarse woolen sock hidden beneath the bedframe before I’ve decided to.
My hand freezes mid-air under the mattress.
Stop. There will be another tray tomorrow. You are not in Bucharest.
I don’t pull the bread back out. The crust stays jammed into the toe of the sock.
My body won’t believe the house yet. Not yet. Weeks in this compound, weeks of fresh trays sliding through the gap, and my hands still hoard food like the kitchen is going to vanish by nightfall.
Chert voz’mi. Damn it.
My own skin is a traitor.
This is what they made you. A body that steals bread and hides in corners. You don’t get more than this.
Later, when the deep bass notes of the household begin to rumble through the floorboards, I turn the lock, crack my door an inch, and stand just inside the dark shadow of the frame.
Cassia comes down the wide corridor first, her bare feet silent against the runner.
She walks slowly, one palm pressed flat against the small of her back, the linen of her dress shifting over her stomach in a way it didn’t when I first arrived.
She isn’t showing yet, not enough for a man to notice, but women in the black-site basements became pregnant overnight, and the shape of their bodies always told the truth before their mouths did.
Cassia’s body is telling the story now.
Dante is a half-step behind her shadow.
His massive hand rests at the small of her spine without him needing to look down, his stride slowing to match hers, never interrupting her pace.
Husband, my head notes. Muzh.
The Russian term sticks to him, domestic and solid. I don’t know what to do with a powerful man who uses his hands to steady a woman instead of breaking her.
They pass my doorway without pausing, their eyes fixed ahead.
Cassia speaks, her voice clear and distinct, deliberately not lowering the volume for privacy. “He didn’t sleep.”
Dante’s response is a low baritone. “He never does. Not before.”
“Talk to him?”
“I will.”
Their footsteps fade down the eastern hall, and the silence returns until a floorboard shifts by the stairs.
Instead of walking past, Renzo stops just out of my direct line of sight. He is guiding the woman with the faded purple hair up from the kitchen.
She’s wearing one of his button-downs, the hem swallowing her shorts, her hair growing out in untamed streaks because she’s clearly had more dangerous things to handle than dye.
His hand is wrapped around the back of her neck, his thumb tracing her jawline, and her fingers are locked around his wrist.
He mutters something too low for me to catch, and she lets out a sudden, sharp laugh against his palm.
I haven’t heard a woman laugh inside a man’s hand since I was sixteen years old.
Renzo’s dark eyes cut toward my doorway as they clear the threshold. He doesn’t look at my face. He looks at the angle of the open gap, checking the line of sight.
He keeps walking.
The girl doesn’t look, because she’s been trained to give me space. Isabella. Izzy, when Renzo’s voice goes soft. The one who went back into the smoke and the fire to drag Sofia out of the Benedetti black-site.
They live like this inside these walls. I haven’t been inside a house that felt like a family since before I was taken.
I pull the door shut, slide down the wood, and sit with my spine pinned to the panels.
Nico. The household calls him that. Nonna Rosa calls him Niccolò when she wants him to drop the performance and listen.
I don’t say his name. Not out loud. Not even inside the privacy of my own skull where no one can track the language.
He reads Akhmatova in low, unhurried Russian through my door frame, and his family talks about him in the hall like he’s a weapon that won’t turn off.
He didn’t sleep. He never does. Not before.
Before what?
The only men I have ever known who spoke Russian were the men who used the language to strip my skin off. They always smiled first. They always moved into my space with their hands open, pretending to want a deal before the violence started.
He hasn’t done a single one of those things.
He dragged me out of that basement in the rain. I don’t remember most of it — gray light and screaming — but I remember the weight of his hand on my shoulder blades, the glare of a New Orleans streetlight, and the rough register of his voice saying tishe. Quiet now. Easy.
I didn’t claw at him. I didn’t fight his grip.
I don’t know why.
He works a room without trying. He pours other people’s drinks to control the pace of the table. He speaks six languages and his mouth moves into a soft smile a half-second before his eyes follow it.
My stomach drops and pulls at the same time, a hot-cold wrench below my navel that I have not felt in years and do not have permission for.
Every man in my past who moved like that was a monster. Nico moves like that down to the tailoring.
My old way of reading men doesn’t work on him.
The first night, he set a glass of water on my basement floor. Turned his back. Walked out. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t ask for anything.