28. Anton
ANTON
A knock sounds at my office door, and I look up. Maya?
It’s been a day since we last spoke to each other, when she demanded to speak to me and came to my office to tell me that she would not be able to live with the restraints I have placed on her.
Didn’t seem to matter how much I tried to convince her that I was only doing it for her own good, she has gotten it into her head that she wants out of here.
And I don’t know where the fuck that leaves me.
“Come in,” I call, and the door opens to reveal Ilya on the other side alongside a woman it takes me a moment to place.
“You have a visitor,” he tells me, and I eye the woman for a moment. And then, it clicks—she was one of the girls Artem was holding along with Maya, one of the girls I set free.
She looks a little different now, dressed in normal clothes, washed and groomed and clearly far more comfortable in herself than she was the first time I had met her.
I wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing here, or how she had managed to track me down, but I rise to my feet and nod at her to come in.
“Thank you, Ilya,” I reply, raising a hand to dismiss him, and I find him looking at me curiously for a moment—no doubt wondering why I’m so willing to entertain an interruption like this.
But, if she has come to speak with me, there must be good reason, and besides, the more I know about everything my brother was up to, the better.
She glances behind her to make sure he is gone, and I can see now some of the strain still written on her face; her cheeks are hollow, her arms tight as she holds them rigidly at her side.
It must have taken her a whole hell of a lot of bravery to turn up here, and I can’t help but feel a little impressed at her nerve.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” the woman announces, clearly having practiced what she is going to say to me just as soon as she gets me alone. “I understand that you must be very busy, but I wouldn’t have felt right not thanking you for what you did for us the other day.”
“It’s not something you have to thank me for,” I reply, and I gesture for her to take a seat. “Please, sit down...?”
“Luna,” she replies, as she drops herself into the chair opposite mine. I take my seat once more, locking my fingers on the table before me, studying her for a moment as I try to work out what she is doing here.
“How did you find me?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“I asked around. Didn’t take me long to figure out where you were. Some of the other women you released, they talked about you, and I put the pieces together.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Not even the cops have been able to do that,” I remark, and she smirks slightly.
“I’m not the cops.”
I chuckle, and rise to my feet, making my way to the drinks cabinet that sits opposite my desk. “Would you care for a drink?”
She nods, and I pour us both a vodka, pushing one over the table towards her. She takes a long sip and I do the same. I know it should throw me off, that she has been able to track me down, but I suppose I have not exactly been keeping my head down.
And besides, she hardly seems like the type to use it for anything other than what she needs. No doubt she is involved in shit that she wouldn’t want the cops discovering herself, no matter that she is free from Artem’s grasp right now.
“So, what are you doing now?” I ask her, with some interest. My mind flits, briefly, back to what Maya said to me the day before; that I’m not so different from my brother, wanting to keep her under lock and key.
It’s been playing on my mind ever since, and I know that I cannot deny it entirely, even if I have a damn good reason for making sure she does not slip through my fingers.
“Not much,” she admits. “Just trying to get my life back on track. I don’t have anywhere to live, at least, not yet, and there aren’t many places that are willing to rent to someone who doesn’t have a job.”
I frown. I hadn’t given much thought to what came after this, for the women who had been freed, but hearing her talk on it like that, I suppose it makes sense.
To have ended up in that situation in the first place, they must have been bundled around, hardly keeping a job or at least anything they could put on a resume.
And then, she takes a deep breath, obviously taking a run-up at something that has been on her mind since she set foot in here.
“Which is why I want to work for you.”
For a second, I just stare at her. What the fuck is she talking about? She has just walked away from Artem, and now she is sitting here in front of me, telling me she wants to work for me instead?
“I understand that you must take serious measures to vet the people who work for your organization,” she assures me, taking my silence as dismissal.
“But I can bring a lot to the table. I know this world well, and everything Artem did, at least what I was exposed to, I remember. If you’re going to try to make a mission of freeing the women he left behind, then I’m the one you want for the job. ”
“How so?” I let her speak. No harm in hearing her out, no matter how ridiculous this proposal might seem to me.
“These girls, the ones who have been taken like this,” she explains, shifting slightly in her seat as though trying to forget that she was, up until recently, amongst their number.
“It’s hard to understand what they’ve been through.
What it does to them, to be treated that way.
But I know. I experienced it first-hand.
And I can help get them out, get them back on their feet.
It’s the least I can do, after you freed me. ”
Her voice is laced with a sudden, shocking emotion, one that she has obviously been trying to disguise since the moment she walked in here.
I lean forward. “It’s not easy work,” I warn her.
“You saw from the inside out how all of that worked. And if we’re going to dismantle it, we’re going to come up against plenty of people who want to stop us.
Artem might be gone, but that doesn’t mean that the buyers will back off so easily.
And the girls who have already been sold… ”
“I know it isn’t,” she replies, her voice dropping back into that stoic tone she had when she first arrived.
“And I’m ready for that. I think. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I just…
I know I couldn’t go back into the world and just pretend like things are all back to normal when I know what’s happening out there, you know? ”
I pause for a long moment as I consider her offer.
She’s right when she says that she would have a unique insight into all of this, and it would be useful to have someone like her on the ground, there in the midst of it, to make sure that we could provide the appropriate support to these women when they stepped back out into the real world once more.
And besides, my numbers have taken a major hit since the attack on the mansion, and I need to rebuild them any way I can. This woman, I can already tell, would be loyal to me to the ends of the earth, for freeing her from the horrors she had been faced with before.
“I’ll organize a meeting with some of my men,” I tell her, with a nod. “They’ll go over some of the major details with you, and we can take it from there.”
Her face lights up. Of course, I don’t add the fact that the reason I’d have my men talk to her would be to make sure that she didn’t reveal some untrustworthiness down the line, though I find it hard to believe she would ever make that kind of trouble for me down the line.
“Thank you,” she gushes, as she rises to her feet. “I–I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me. I...” She trails off and catches herself before she can go any further. “Thank you,” she repeats again, a little softer now.
“I’ll have Ilya see you out,” I tell her, and I call him back in, shaking hands with Luna before she leaves. I watch as she goes; she must have some nerve, turning up like this out of nowhere, asking for a damn job from a man who most would avoid as though their lives depended on it...
As I step back into my office, my mind drifts to the hurt in Maya’s eyes yesterday. She told me she was trapped here, just like she had been with Artem.
That comparison has been rotting in my brain ever since.
The thought of letting her walk out that door sets my teeth on edge. In here, I can protect her. Out in the real world, my enemies could tear her apart. I’ve told myself keeping her locked down is just about protecting our unborn child, but the dark truth is I just want her where I can see her.
I down a burn of vodka, letting the bitter taste ground me.
I have to loosen my grip. Artem tried to break her, and he failed. She has a fire in her that refuses to go out, and if I keep suffocating her, she’ll only hate me for it. I refuse to raise my child with a woman who looks at me and sees my brother’s darkness.
As much as it kills my instincts, I have to let her taste freedom.
I have to prove I’m nothing like Artem.