Chapter 15 Questions
Questions
The interview room smelled like industrial disinfectant and fear-sweat that no amount of cleaning could erase.
I sat across from Katya, the third woman I'd spoken to today, watching her pick at the bandages where the collar had burned her neck.
I'd done that to her, fried electronics into her skin to free her from worse.
"Can you tell me how they found you?" I kept my voice soft, professional. Nathan had coached me on interview techniques, but nothing prepared you for pulling testimonies from people whose trust had been systematically destroyed.
Katya's English was halting, mixed with Ukrainian when emotion overwhelmed grammar. "Was... dating site. He seem nice. Businessman. Said he travel for work, wanted company."
My pen stilled on the notepad. "Online?"
"Da. We talk... three months? Maybe four. He knew about my mother sick, about my no job. He offered work. Secretary, he said. Good pay. Help with visa." She laughed, bitter and sharp. "I was stupid."
"You weren't stupid. You were targeted."
"He knew things. Personal things. Things I only tell my diary app." Her fingers worried at the bandages again. "How he knew?"
I didn't answer because I couldn't. Not without admitting I'd once asked Gabriel the same question about how he'd found me, chosen me, known exactly which wounds to salt with promises.
"Can you describe him? The man from the dating site?"
She did. Medium height, brown hair, accent that could have been anywhere from Eastern Europe.
Forgettable face, memorable charm. Could have been any of a dozen traffickers.
Could have been none of them. These men were interchangeable in their methods—find the vulnerable, offer salvation, spring the trap once trust was established.
"Thank you, Katya. You've been very helpful."
"The blood woman." She said it suddenly, eyes finding mine. "That was you. Who cut the chains."
I nodded, unsure what she wanted. An apology? An explanation?
"Spasibo," she whispered. Thank you.
The next interview was worse. Mina from Syria, barely eighteen, recruited through a refugee aid organization.
Someone had offered her family passage to Germany, safe transit, help with asylum paperwork.
The same phrases echoed: "He seemed legitimate.
" "He knew about our situation." "He offered exactly what we needed. "
By the time I reached Alina, the Romanian girl from my transport van, patterns were screaming in my head.
Seventeen women, eleven different recruitment methods, but all with the same careful grooming.
The same patient manipulation. The same intimate knowledge of their vulnerabilities that should have been impossible for strangers to possess.
"He knew about my ex," Alina whispered. "About the bruises. Said he could protect me. Get me modeling work in America, far from Dragos."
"How did he know about your ex?"
"I... I wrote about it. Online journal. Private posts." Her eyes welled. "He quoted things. Exact words. Said he understood my pain."
My hand cramped around the pen. Gabriel had quoted things that I had said or done to. Little phrases that proved he'd been listening, watching, caring about the small hurts I'd thought I was whispering into the void.
"Did he seem to know things about your routine? Your schedule?"
"Everything. When I worked, what route I walked home, which café I stopped at on Thursdays." She shuddered. "I thought it was romantic. That he paid attention."
The interview room felt too small, air too thin. I finished with Alina, gathered my notes with hands that wanted to shake, and escaped to the hallway. Nathan was waiting, coffee in hand, reading my unraveling in the set of my shoulders.
"How many more?" I asked.
"Four. But we can finish tomorrow if—"
"No. I need to hear them all."
The next four confirmed what I already knew but couldn't yet articulate. Each woman targeted with surgical precision. Each vulnerability exploited with perfect timing. Each recruitment following patterns I recognized like looking in a warped mirror.
The last interview broke me.
Her name was Elena, and she was twenty-three, my age when Gabriel found me.
Russian literature student, wrote poetry on a small blog, worked in a bookstore to pay for her mother's medication.
She'd been approached by an older man who quoted Pushkin, who understood her writing, who offered her a position cataloging his personal library in America.
"He said I reminded him of someone," she whispered. "Someone special he'd lost. Said I had the same... how do you say... quality?"
"Quality?"
"Like light through water, he said. Delicate but persistent." She met my eyes. "Strange thing to say, yes? But it made me feel seen."
I stood abruptly, chair scraping. "Excuse me. I need—bathroom."
I made it to the stall before my knees gave out. Delicate but persistent. Gabriel had used those exact words, that exact metaphor.
The toilet was cold against my forehead as I fought not to vomit. How many? How many women had he practiced on before perfecting his approach with me? How many Elenas and Katyas and Minas had there been, testing responses, refining techniques?
"Bunny?" Nathan's voice, concerned. "You okay?"
"No." The word echoed off porcelain and tile.
"I'm coming in."
I didn't move when the door opened, couldn't find the energy to be embarrassed about being found curled around a toilet like a drunk freshman. He crouched beside me, hand gentle on my back.
"Talk to me."
"Light through water." The words came out cracked. "He told Elena she moved like light through water. Delicate but persistent. Same exact words he used on me."
Understanding dawned in his eyes. "Christ."
"There were others. Before me. He practiced on them, refined his technique, learned what worked.
" I laughed, sharp and ugly. "I thought I was special.
Thought he saw something unique in me. But I was just the successful iteration of a formula he'd been perfecting.
I knew there were others – but for some reason I still thought I was special to him. "
"That doesn't diminish what you survived."
"Doesn't it?" I pushed myself up, back against the stall wall. "Every word he said, every gesture that seemed so perfectly tailored to my specific damage—all rehearsed. All tested on other women who didn't quite fit his needs."
"Or who escaped before he could fully spring the trap."
"Or who died during training." The thought hit like ice water. "Oh god. What if there were others who didn't survive his games? What if I'm only alive because he'd already worked out what broke previous versions?"
Nathan pulled me against him, and I let him, needing the anchor. "You're not a version. You're not an iteration. You're Bunny, and you survived something monstrous."
"By becoming what he wanted. By adapting perfectly to his conditioning." My fingers twisted in his shirt. "Don't you see? Even my survival was part of his design. He kept refining until he found someone who would break just right. Bend without snapping."
"Stop." His voice was firm. "You're spiraling into his narrative again. Yes, he was a predator who perfected his hunting. But your survival? Your choices? Your recovery? Those are yours."
"The compound." I pulled back to look at him. "We need to check the compound. If there were others—"
"Already done. Cadaver dogs went through after the raid. They found remains. Three women, different stages of decomposition. The forensics team is working on identification."
Three women. Three failed experiments before he got it right with me. I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars. "Their families?"
"We're trying to match DNA with missing persons. It's slow work."
"They have names. Had names. He would have kept records, trophies." I stood, legs shaky but functional. "His study, the locked cabinet. I was never allowed near it."
"We'll check." He steadied me, hands careful on my waist. "But right now, you need to get out of here. Process this somewhere that doesn't smell like despair."
I nodded, let him guide me through hallways that blurred together. The other agents we passed looked away, granting the privacy of ignored breakdown. Professional courtesy for someone coming apart at the seams.
The ride to his apartment passed in fragments. City lights. Radio chatter. Nathan's hand finding mine at red lights. I felt hollow, scraped clean by revelation. Everything I'd thought I knew about my captivity, about Gabriel's obsession with me specifically, crumbled like ash.
"Shower," I said when we got inside. "I need to shower."
But I just stood under the spray, water too hot, skin reddening. My mind kept circling back to Elena. Light through water. How many times had he used that line? How many women had felt special, seen, chosen?
I didn't hear Nathan enter the bathroom, but suddenly he was there, fully clothed under the spray, pulling me against him. "Hey. Come back."
"I can't stop hearing their stories. Their voices. So young, so hopeful when they talked about him. Before." I pressed my face into his soaked shirt. "I sounded like that once. Grateful to be noticed."
"You were manipulated by an expert. They all were."
"Fuck." The word tore out raw. "Fuck him. Fuck his games and his poetry and his perfect fucking manipulation." I pulled back, water streaming between us. "I need you to fuck me until I can't hear their voices anymore."
His expression shifted, concern mixing with something darker. "Bunny—"
"Please." I kissed him, desperate, tasting water and need. "Make it stop. Make me stop thinking."
He caught my wrists when I reached for his belt. "No."
"Nathan, please—"
"Look at me." His grip was firm but not painful. "Really look at me."
I forced my eyes to his, hating the tears I saw reflected there.
"Tell me exactly what you want. Not what you think will make the pain stop, not what you're running from. What do you actually want?"