Chapter 9
IVY
It takes me three days to work up the nerve to ask to leave again.
Three days of pacing my room and rehearsing lines in the mirror like I’m auditioning for a role I never wanted, trying to nail it anyway.
Three days of half-eaten meals, fake smiles forced for Yulia, and hours staring at my ceiling at night, listening to every creak outside my door and wondering if it’s Maksim’s people coming back to finish the job of killing me to keep from squealing about what happened at the cafe.
I hate that every time I see Sergei, my mouth just… snaps shut.
Strangely, since the cafe incident, he’s more present than usual.
Being around him is worse than walking on eggshells.
There’s a sterile, clinical dismissiveness to his presence that I can’t help but fear deep down.
He doesn’t need to raise his voice to make a point when he speaks to anyone.
All he needs to do is look and it has his entire staff scrambling to make things happen.
Which is exactly why every time I cross paths with him over the next few days, I revert into some stammering middle schooler asking if I can leave class early to go to the bathroom.
What’s worse is that I can’t outrightly ask to leave the estate without some actual reason because I can’t let him suspect I’m trying to dig up anything about him or his affiliations.
I don’t know how deep this all runs, but I do know Maksim basically admitted to being a part of the Russian Mob and somehow, Sergei is connected in all of this.
Tipping them off that I’m looking into things would not only sign my death warrant, but it would also guarantee for it to be carried out in the most torturous way.
I’ve seen the kind of respect Maksim gives Sergei, even when it’s laced with barely concealed irritation. If there’s a threat toward their bottom line suddenly presenting itself, there’s no doubt in my mind they wouldn’t hesitate in taking it out.
I’m terrified of what will happen once they somehow find out I’m not going to keep my head down like some clueless American girl here to teach English. But I’m also not going to go down without a damn fight, either.
Waking up night after night tossing and turning every day, haunted by flashes of blood and that man who collected us to bring us back to Maksim’s stronghold, has me finally making the decision to put my foot down and just get it over with.
I can’t keep sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop. I need to act before it’s too late and gather as much evidence as I can to make it out of this with both my life and my damn paycheck intact.
The morning of, I dress carefully before heading down for breakfast. I make sure to wear something not too nice, but not sloppy, either, a soft sweater and jeans with my hair brushed back into a neat braid with minimal makeup.
The goal is to appear functional and completely unfazed, nothing that might suggest I’ve been having panic attacks in my bed for the last seventy-two hours.
I catch Sergei in the dining room around midmorning.
He’s alone and Yulia is nowhere in sight, most likely with her tutors.
The staff float around in their usual silent rhythm, placing dishes and refilling glasses without a word.
Classical piano plays softly from a speaker hidden somewhere behind the molding.
He sits at the head of the table, tablet in one hand, coffee cup in the other.
I stand there in the doorway for a beat too long that almost convinces me to back out of this entire plan, but before I can, I force myself into sitting down in the chair two spaces to his right. My heart is beating so hard I swear the vibration is in my teeth, but he doesn’t look up.
One of the waitstaff appears beside me and pours a cup of coffee into the porcelain cup already waiting at my place. Another brings over a small plate of toast, fruit, and what looks like perfectly scrambled eggs stuffed between slices of a croissant.
I’m grateful for the distraction, taking a small sip of the coffee, black and bitter. At least if today goes horribly wrong, I’ll have had one last delicious meal.
Once I’m halfway through my breakfast, I push my plate back and I force myself to speak before I can continue to second-guess myself. “Can I head into the city today?”
His eyes don’t move from the tablet. “For?”
My fork drags a wedge of strawberry across the porcelain, and the pinkish juice leaves a thin, red streak behind. It looks almost like blood.
I blink hard at it, the image flashing too fast through my mind to stop it—the memory of blood spilled all over the floor of the cafe, thick and dark and still wet as I step over it, keeping Yulia’s face pressed against my shoulder so she could remain innocent to all the gore surrounding us.
A shiver snakes through my body. My appetite suddenly evaporates.
“Just… to pick up a few things. Personal products.” I clear my throat, setting down my fork. “Um, if you catch my drift.”
That gets his attention.
His head lifts, eyes narrowing. For a moment, I think I’ve overplayed it. That he’s seen straight through the excuse and knows exactly why I want out of the house and not because I’ve suddenly run out of tampons.
I hold my breath as my stomach clenches uncomfortably, forcing myself not to reveal too much despite every nerve within me firing off, begging and pleading for me to get up from the table and run.
What are the chances this man has a secret torture chamber in his basement?
“Is there something you’re lacking?” he asks, his voice still perfectly even.
“I just… uh, didn’t pack as much as I thought I did when I left the U.S. I wasn’t really thinking ahead,” I mumble.
His stare holds mine a beat too long. His eyes are unreadable, cold in that particular way he’s perfected, watching me with the kind of precision that makes me feel like prey trying to walk calmly past a predator who hasn’t decided yet whether to kill me or let me live.
When he gives the smallest nod, he sets his tablet down and takes another sip of his coffee like nothing about this interaction has struck him as unusual. I don’t exhale until he goes back to scrolling.
“I’ll have my driver take you,” he says simply.
And that’s it.
I clench my hands in my lap to stop them from trembling. The relief is sudden and overwhelming, but it doesn’t settle like it should. It just coils tighter in my stomach like some vague warning I don’t exactly understand.
I know lying to him is probably the worst decision I can make right now, but it’s the only thing I can use as a weapon to protect myself.
“Thank you,” I say quickly, trying not to sound too eager.
He doesn’t reply.
We eat in silence after that. Or, rather, he eats in a weirdly methodical way. I, on the other hand, push the fruit around my plate and shred my croissant into a pile of crumbs that probably says more about my mental state than I’d like.
It’s ironic, really, that he barely cares.
Hilarious, if I weren’t seconds from dry heaving into my lap.
He’s not even considering sending someone with me despite my almost dying a few days ago.
No guard, no security detail. Not even a hovering member of his eerily silent staff to trail behind me with arms full of shopping bags and a dead-eyed stare.
Just a casual wave of his hand and a driver to drop me off to whatever destination I want to go.
Then again, why would he care? It’s not like I’m one of them, a member of his family.
I’m just some American tutor. I’m completely expendable. Replaceable. The type of person who dies in a city like Moscow and ends up as a cautionary tale on some Reddit forum for young travelers years later.
And if I did die? If some stray bullet found its way into my skull or a body bag zipped over my face because I got caught up in another turf war?
Sergei would make one call and then his Mob, or whatever connections he had, would stage something so elaborate to cover the whole thing up that no one would be the wiser. A car crash, a mugging gone wrong, some tragic, accidental overdose in a nightclub.
I’d be scrubbed clean off their ledgers without leaving a trace.
“Unfortunate, but unavoidable,” they’d say. “Nothing could have been done. Our condolences.”
I wouldn’t even have family back home to mourn me or ask questions outside of my friends. And what power would they have against a Mafia group who clearly had their hands entangled in some serious shit?
God, that thought pisses me off more than it should.
I don’t bring much when I finally get up from the table and head up to my room to grab my things.
Just a small wad of cash inside one of the pockets of a small crossbody bag I throw over my shoulder and my phone, tucked into the front pouch and already set to record with an app on the off-chance I stumble across anything that could help me convince Miss Dori I’m not losing my fucking mind.
The driver Sergei assigned to bring me into the city hums along to the radio as I climb into the back of the sedan.
He doesn’t ask where we’re going, just starts driving and turns the station up.
I watch the city blur past the window, every building suddenly feeling more menacing than the first day I arrived.
It’s funny how less than three weeks ago, I’d felt like my future had been so promising.
Now look at me. Heading back to a fucking crime scene like some amateur detective trying to plead my case because I’m desperate to get the hell out of here.
When we get close to the area I remember, I lean forward and point toward a corner near a small intersection, keeping my voice light and innocent so it doesn’t become obvious what I’m doing. “Could you drop me here? I can text you when I’m ready to go.”
He glances at me in the mirror but doesn’t say anything, just nods once and slows the car down until it stops before unlocking the doors to let me out.