6. Cara #2
I lift two fingers, as if requesting permission in class. “Does breathing require written permission, or can I freestyle?”
“Don’t test the house.” His voice hardens.
“The house seems very emotionally fragile.” I keep mine light.
“The house has survived worse than your sarcasm.” He turns to leave.
“So have I.”
That cuts somewhere. I see it, one faint lifting of his shoulder, and my anger surges. He has no right to react as if I have wounded him. He left. He walked out of my life without a number, a note, or the common decency to be less memorable in bed.
I found out I was pregnant seven weeks later in a pharmacy bathroom because I couldn’t wait until I got home.
The test sat on the sink while some stranger’s toddler banged on the stall door and sang about fish.
I remember staring at those two lines and thinking, with insane clarity, that I knew exactly who the father was.
Dmitri Antonov. A Volkov man. Dangerous and gone.
I could have reached him through Patrick. Patrick had contacts, or claimed he did. I could have swallowed my pride, my fear, my rage, and sent word to the man who left my bed before dawn and told him that I was pregnant with his child.
I didn’t. Maybe Dmitri had shown me what he did with women after touching them.
Abandonment scared me, but losing control of my life and my child scared me more.
If he came back, he wouldn’t come alone.
Men like him didn’t learn they had sons and then ask how a woman felt about it.
Cars would arrive first, then lawyers, guards, names on paper, and rules older than mercy.
Blood, protection, family, they’d call it whatever made the taking sound noble.
I would call it losing my child.
Now here he stands, five years late, making rules in a suite with locked windows. Life has a sick sense of timing.
“You look angry.” He faces me.
“I’m in a foreign country under armed custody.” I throw my arms out so hard, my shoulders hurt. “My brother apparently used me as a coupon for organized crime, remember?” I step closer, and the room tilts for a second from hunger, lack of sleep, and pure rage. I keep standing anyway.
“Patrick placed you in danger.” Dmitri chews through every word, but his face stays calm enough to make me want to throw something.
“No, Patrick betrayed me. You placed me here.”
“To keep you alive.”
“You say that like a broken record with a gun.” I step closer before caution can catch me. “That smug little moral loophole. You men love it. You build a cage, throw a soft blanket over the bars, call it protection, and expect the woman inside to admire the craftsmanship.”
His expression darkens. “Careful.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
The guards outside the door don’t move. Russian walls are probably trained in discretion.
I turn toward the door, and Dmitri catches my wrist before I take a second step.
“You’re frightened,” he says.
“You’re hurting me.”
His fingers release at once. I hate him more for noticing fear without mocking it.
Dmitri’s eyes narrow. “You want to call someone? Your mother?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
I swallow. “Kathryn. She’s my friend.”
His gaze stays on me for another second. “You want to call her?”
“When?”
“Now. Under supervision.”
My throat closes so fast, I almost sway. “Give me the phone.”
He takes a device from his coat. Not mine. It’s a prison phone with better branding.
“The call will be routed through estate security,” he says. “You won’t say where you are. You won’t mention names. You won’t ask for location details. The other person will confirm they’re safe.”
He dials. My hand is damp when I take the phone. Dmitri stays in front of me, close enough to stop anything.
Kathryn answers on the second ring. “Cara?”
My knees nearly give. I grab the back of the chair and make my voice work. “Hey. I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay. Where the hell are you?” Her voice comes through thin and far away, but I’d know it anywhere.
“Work trip.”
“Bullshit.”
God, I love her.
I close my eyes. “Emergency trip. It got complicated.”
A pause follows, and then Kathryn’s voice changes. Panic steps back. Control takes its place. “The mechanic ate pancakes, Cara.”
My heart breaks clean in half.
Mikhail is safe.
I press my hand to my mouth for one second, then force it down. “Good. Good, that’s good.”
“He asked if you forgot breakfast rules,” Kathryn says.
A laugh tears out of me, half sob, half animal. “I would never.”
Dmitri watches me closely, and I remember him standing there only after the words leave my mouth.
“Cara, I need to know what to do,” Kathryn says.
“Keep the routine. No visitors. No calls from family. Especially family.”
“I know.”
I cup the phone closer. “Tell him I’m handling a very boring adult problem.”
“You and boring don’t make a rendezvous.”
“That’s fair.”
Kathryn breathes through her nose. “Can he talk to you?”
Hope comes so fast, it hurts. I look at Dmitri. He shakes his head once. The suite narrows to him, the phone. My child is safe, but I can’t hear his voice because the man who left me is deciding which pieces of my life I get to touch.
“Cara?” Kathryn says.
Dmitri’s face stays set.
I cover the phone. “There's a child on the line,” I tell Dmitri. “He’s four.”
“No.” His voice stays flat. “A child’s voice gives men a target. Age, routine, attachment. One wrong word, and someone knows where to press.”
“You don’t get to decide this.”
“I do.”
He’s right. The cruelty almost drops me. I hate him so much, I can feel it in my teeth.
I uncover the phone. “Not now.”
Kathryn goes silent.
“I’m sorry,” I add, and the words are for her, for Mikhail, and for the mother in me who should have outrun this before it reached his bed.
“I’ve got him,” Kathryn says. “You hear me? I’ve got him.”
“I know.”
“Come back.”