9. Cara
CARA
Iwake in silk sheets I have no interest in, under a roof I didn’t choose, in a country where my status seems to sit somewhere between guest, debt, and regrettable paperwork.
I keep my eyes closed. The mattress is soft.
The blanket is warm. I pretend for three seconds that this is a hotel with room service and a possible checkout time.
Then I jerk upright and sit hunched on the bed, my heart beating so fast I think I’m having a panic attack.
Order has ruined the lie.
The silence is controlled and expensive, and it eats into my bones.
For four years, my mornings have been Mikhail’s socks on the floor, toy cars under my feet, cartoon noise from the living room, water boiling over on the stove, Mikhail’s silly shrieks, and coffee reheated twice.
Small domestic chaos that proved my life belonged to me.
Here, I hear none of it.
Memory comes back with devilish force, dragging the night behind it. Moscow. Dmitri. Patrick. Mikhail across an ocean. I sit up before grief can choke me.
I curl into a tight ball and refuse to cry.
Crying will make me weak, and I’m not weak. I want to be ferocious. I hug myself hard enough to hurt and tell myself the same thing over and over.
This will also pass.
Panic is useless unless it comes with a checklist, so I start with the windows.
I’ve checked them already. More than once. More than sanity would recommend. I check them again anyway. My mind needs a job, and escape is a better assignment than falling apart.
No seam is wide enough for a nail file, even if I had a nail file, which I don’t. The curtains give me nothing. The rods don’t shift. The wall brackets stay fixed.
The bathroom offers a mounted mirror, smooth fixtures, no loose screws, no detachable shower rod.
Not even all those helpful little hotel freebies except soap wrapped in paper thick enough to insult me.
The vent sits narrow and high. The outlet plates don’t move.
The towel rack has been installed by someone who clearly hates female ingenuity.
I move to the wardrobe.
Internal hinges. Padded wooden hangers. Empty drawers, except for a few folded clothes Mrs. Wentworth must have chosen. Or Elena.
Her name stops me again.
Did she wake up somewhere like this once?
Did she count window seams and towel racks while men outside called it protection?
Or was she born into this world, some Russian aristocracy with better jewelry and worse exits?
Mafia princess, maybe. That would explain the careful, careless aloofness this house has around her name.
Soft sweaters. Black pants. Socks. Underwear still in packaging. Everything expensive. Everything chosen. Nothing is mine.
The bedside lamp has a heavy base, but the cord is short and fixed behind the table. I try it anyway, tugging once, then harder. It gives me nothing.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Five stars for hostage-proofing.”
Whoever prepared this suite expected me to look. That’s almost flattering.
A knock comes.
I have already checked every surface twice and found exactly one possible weapon, a porcelain toothbrush cup. Thrown hard enough, it would break and give me ceramic justice.
“Come in,” I say and hide the cup behind my back.
The pose almost makes me laugh. Apparently, I now live in a world where I’m expected to receive staff while illegally detained and armed with bathroom ceramics.
A young woman enters with a tray. She’s in her twenties, maybe. Brown hair pinned back, black dress, flat shoes, face composed the way all service staff learn to look when wealthy criminals pay their salaries.
She sets the tray on the small table without looking around.
“Breakfast,” she says in careful English. “Mrs. Wentworth sent me.”
“Mrs. Wentworth has minions. That tracks.”
Her eyes flick to me, then away. “My name is Lidiya.”
“Cara,” I say. “Although I assume everyone here got the trading card.”
A corner of her mouth almost moves.
She lifts the covers from the plates. The tray holds dark bread, butter, sliced fruit, and a bowl of something white and grainy that looks like cottage cheese that went to finishing school and came back with secrets.
A spoonful of dark cherry jam sits beside it in a tiny glass dish. Tea the color of old furniture.
My stomach turns itself into a fist.
“Wow,” I say. “Very… committed.”
Lidiya folds her hands. “You do not like?”
“I’m sure it’s great if you farm through winter. I usually do coffee. Toast. Maybe a banana, if Moscow hasn’t declared fruits suspicious.”
This time, the mouth does move. “I can ask.”
“Ask whom? The breakfast committee? Criminal concierge? Is there a guest feedback form, or do I carve complaints into the windows with despair?”
Lidiya glances toward the door, where the guards are almost certainly listening.
“Mrs. Wentworth handles the household,” she says. “Food requests are permitted.”
Permitted.
The word lands in the tray between us.
“Charming,” I say.
Lidiya lowers her gaze, and for one second, I feel bad. She is not the cage. She only carries the tray inside it.
“Coffee,” I say more gently. “Black. Toast. Butter. Banana, if possible.”
“I will ask.”
She leaves with the tray untouched. Twenty minutes later, coffee arrives with toast, butter, and a banana sliced on a small plate. No note comes with it. The delivery girl isn’t Lidiya and she doesn’t smile. Nobody explains a thing, which tells me plenty.
I sit at the table and stare at the food. They’ll give me toast, but not the same face twice. I drink the coffee anyway. Principles are lovely, but without caffeine, they tend to crash.
After breakfast, I open the suite door.
Two guards stand outside. Different men from last night. Older than the airport pair. One has a square face. The other has pale eyes and a scar near his chin.
“Morning,” I say. “Can I walk outside?”
Square Face looks straight ahead. Scar Chin looks at me.
“You may walk the wing,” Scar Chin says.
“Does movement under guard earn loyalty points?” I ask.
Square Face stays carved out of soldier discipline. Scar Chin almost smiles. Good to know. Square Face is stone. Scar Chin has seams.
I step into the corridor. Both men move with me, one behind and one ahead, leaving enough space to pretend I’m choosing the direction.
The north wing is warmer than the suite. Thick carpet hides the sound of our steps. Expensive art lines the walls. Doors sit in even spaces. Some have guards. Some have keypad panels. One has a small camera near the ceiling.
The house looks comfortable. The security is everywhere.
At the end of the corridor, the floor opens onto an upper landing, and I slow before either guard can tell me whether slowing is allowed.
The rail beneath my hand is carved smooth. The formal reception hall stretches below in gold-veined white marble and dark wood, so vast, my steps slow before I can stop them. Everything has been chosen, placed, and polished into elegance.
I look up, and the chandelier above steals one stupid breath from me.
Even the distance between the guards looks designed.
One man stands near the main doors. Another waits by the inner arch.
Both are positioned where the sightlines matter most. I hate that I notice the beauty before I notice the exits.
Staff move along the edges of the hall with trays, folded linens, and lowered voices. No one hurries. No one lingers. The house doesn’t bustle. Everyone knows the rules, and no one here expects to be asked twice.
Through a set of wide doors, I see the dining room being prepared for breakfast. Staff pull white linens across the tables, set glassware in neat rows, and carry silver trays past one another without a word.
The chandelier light catches on every glass and polished fork.
Somewhere in this house, men are about to sit down to coffee and buttered toast while they discuss missing shipments, bribed clerks, and what can legally be done with me.
Past another archway, three men cross toward the legal wing with folders tucked under their arms, their pace measured enough to pass for boredom. Two women in dark dresses carry fresh linens through a side passage, turn at the far wall, and disappear behind a flush panel I almost miss.
My attention snaps to it.
The panel sits between two strips of carved wood, seamless unless someone uses it. Service access. Staff route. Maybe kitchen to laundry, maybe laundry to residential wing, maybe one more way through the house that doesn’t belong to guests or prisoners. I look back across the hall.
Main doors with two guards. Inner arch with one. Legal wing to the left. Dining room ahead. Service panel on the far wall. Upper corridor behind me. Cameras tucked into trim where the chandelier glare makes them harder to spot. The house shows me beauty, and I turn it into a map.
I reach for the stair rail.
Square Face steps in front of me.
“No stairs,” Scar Chin says.
“I was admiring the craftsmanship.”
“No stairs.” His mouth is set. There’s no crossing that boundary.
Fine. If down is forbidden, I can still look.
I move to the rail and look down before either guard can decide that looking is also forbidden.
Below, a maid adjusts flowers in the reception hall.
White roses. Dark ranunculus. Elena’s choice, probably.
Another woman appears from the eastern hall, older, with a clipboard in one hand, glasses hanging from a chain.
Mrs. Wentworth. She speaks to a staff member, points once toward the dining room, then toward the eastern hall. Everyone obeys without fuss.
Past her, on a console table, fresh white flowers sit beside a framed photograph turned slightly toward the inner hall.
A tiny wooden rattle rests beside the vase, polished clean and completely out of place among the marble, wood, and glass.
The photograph shows a dark-haired woman, a severe, handsome man, and a newborn bundled in pale wool.
Family, displayed where armed men have to walk past it.
Elena.