20. Demi
DEMI
I don’t crawl out from under the sheet even when someone brings food. I try to empty my head, but all I can see is Enzo walking away from a burning house where innocent children are sleeping in their beds.
I thought I knew him.
I believed he was a decent guy underneath the designer suits and the mafia legacy.
I compromised my beliefs, my future, my heart, because he convinced me that his mafia history didn’t make him a monster.
And now I have the proof, and I don’t know what to do with it.
I’m still in love with him. Brian could turn out to be a living breathing sex-god with a heart of pure gold, but he will never be Enzo, and my heart is breaking all over again.
Not only for the love I can’t have, but for future-me destined to a lifetime of playing cops and robbers and going home to an empty apartment and a vibrator in the top drawer of my nightstand.
I doze on and off.
I’ve stopped fighting it. I’ve stopped caring what the assholes dress me in or what photographs they take of me.
Every sick fucker who gets off on those images will be on my hitlist when the DI busts me out of here, and I’ll make sure the whole world knows their names.
I don’t know how; that’s for the universe to take care of.
All I need to remember is why: because people like snake-guy don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us.
“Demi?” The voice is so faint, I think I imagined it.
I lie perfectly still beneath the sheet and breathe deeply like I’m asleep.
“Demi?” Still a whisper, but this time I know it’s real.
I push the sheet away from my head and find a young woman standing by the bed. Her raven-black hair is tucked behind her ears, her brown eyes so dark they look almost completely black, and she’s skinny, her collarbones protruding above the neck of her tank.
“You haven’t eaten,” she whispers, eyes darting to the covered plate on the nightstand.
I sit up, holding the sheet to my chest. I’m in underwear; I’ve forgotten how it feels to have real clothes against my skin, to tug the sleeves of a sweater over my hands to keep them warm, or to slide my feet into fluffy socks.
What I wouldn’t give right now for cozy pajamas and a cup of hot chocolate.
“I’m not hungry.” She’s working for the Bratva; I can’t forget that she isn’t on my side.
“Please.” She pleads with her wide eyes.
Her legs are bare beneath pajama shorts, and the outfit makes her look like she’s here for a slumber party, although the lines across her forehead and around her mouth tell a different story.
“The food is drugged,” I say. “Did they forget to tell you that part when they sent you in here?”
She lowers her gaze to the covered plate and tugs on the string belt inside her shorts. “Yes. I mean, no, it can’t be drugged, I prepared it myself.”
Her accent is American, and I can only guess how she ended up working for the Bratva.
I’ve seen it too many times: the kids who grow up believing that violence is an acceptable part of their life with no one to teach them otherwise, they get into trouble, get offered a way out that sucks them deeper into the worm hole, until eventually they forget they once had other options.
“Did you leave the room at any point?” I hear the resignation in my own voice and wish I had the energy to do something about it. Her silence is all the answer I need. “Take it. Tell them I’d rather starve to death.”
“I-I can’t.” She refuses to look at me.
I sit forward. “Did they threaten you?”
“Shh, please.” She glances at the bright lights behind the bed. “They will hear.”
“What is your name?”
After what happened to Michael Douglas, I’m frightened to make this young woman complicit, but I can’t ignore a plea for help, even if my situation is worse than hers. If we stick together, we might find a way out of here, and I can’t ignore the glimmer of hope blooming inside my chest.
“Zara.”
“Zara, have they hurt you?”
She holds her left arm close to her side and rubs it as if she is cold. “A little. Not much.”
Fucking assholes.
I force a small smile. “Can you tell me who they are?”
She moves closer to the bed and angles her body, shielding me with her back from the light and camera directly behind her. “They are Bratva.”
I nod, reluctant to tell her this much was obvious. “Who is the pakhan?”
“Dmitri Malevsky.”
This must be snake-guy.
Now that I’ve got her talking, I need to get as much information from her as I can without putting her in danger. “Where am I, Zara? I can’t even look out of the window.”
Her eyes swivel to the window, but she doesn’t turn around. “Manhattan. New York,” she adds in case it isn’t obvious.
“Am I being guarded twenty-four-seven?” It’s a dumb question, but I need to be armed with all the facts if I stand a chance of getting away from Dmitri Malevsky.
“Yes.”
“How many?” I’m aware of the seconds ticking by when her eyes drift back to the covered plate. “I’ll eat if you’ll answer my questions.”
I remove the cover to reveal chicken casserole with baby broccoli. I fork vegetables into my mouth and chew, dissecting the taste for a hint of whatever drugs it might be laced with. It’s hard to swallow when you already know the outcome, but I figure it’s worth it to keep her talking.
“Four. Sometimes more.”
My stomach clenches. “Is there a private elevator?” She nods in response, and I scoop casserole onto my fork next. “Does anyone else come and go?”
“No.”
So, no chance of yelling for help when the cleaner arrives or the delivery guy comes with pizza.
“Thank you.” I set the fork down on the plate and replace the cover. I could devour the rest of it and ask for seconds, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for a drug-induced hangover. “I hope you won’t get into any trouble for talking to me, but I can’t eat any more.”
She hesitates. “There is one more thing. The clothes.”
“The clothes?” I frown. “You mean the clothes I’ve been wearing?”
“Yes. Someone brings them. A woman. I don’t know her name, but they let her into the room while you are sleeping.”
Someone else knows I’m here. Malevsky will pay her to keep silent, but if I could stay awake and give her a message for DI Goss…
“Thank you, Zara.” I want to hug her, but that would end badly for both of us. “Please go before they get suspicious.”
She doesn’t look at me as she takes the plate, goes to the door, and knocks three times. It opens as if by magic. I don’t see anyone else outside the room, and she doesn’t look behind her as she leaves, but it doesn’t matter.
Hope is growing wings inside my chest even as my eyelids grow heavy.
I drag myself out of bed, cross the room, and go to the bathroom.
I never paid much attention before but there’s a lock on the door, of course there is.
I slide it shut and look around. There’s no lipstick for me to write on the mirror above the basin.
There are no paper or pens, magazines or books in the room for me to tear out words and arrange into a message that I could leave where the woman would surely find it.
I open the cabinet on the wall and the cupboard underneath the sink, and there are no scissors, nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Then I peer at the shower cubicle.
The walls are clean right now, but when the hot water is running, they get steamed up.
I don’t wait around. I turn the shower onto the hottest temperature and wait for the steam to work its magic. When the door is misted up, I step inside and use my fingertip to write a message in reverse so that it can be read from the other side.
HELP!
DI GOSS
NYPD.
I know Malevsky will see it too, but I only need the woman to read the words before they’re erased. She won’t forget them, even if she is a member of the Bratva; I only hope they eat away at her until she has to act on what she saw.
Then I leave the hot water running, sit down with my back against the door, and wait.
“Unlock the door now!” A fist thumps against the door, jolting me awake.
I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but the shower is still on, and my message is still there if a little distorted with dripping condensation. I drag myself onto my feet, legs shaking, and move away from the door.
“No. I want some clean clothes.”
I reverse to the window and turn around to peer through the beveled glass at the dark sky outside.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.
The window is in two parts, one large pane, and a smaller one that opens.
I’m desperate to open it and gulp fresh air, but it will allow the steam to escape, and I need my message to stick around a while longer.
“Come out and we’ll give you clothes.”
“And let you fuckers see me naked. Break down the door and I’ll open the window and scream for help.”
There’s a pause. I know they’ll call my bluff, but I get some small satisfaction from showing them that I’m not going down without a fight now that I know Zara and this other woman is out there.
“Fine. Stand back. We wouldn’t want to damage that pretty face.” It’s Malevsky.
I dash across the room and bang on the door. “I’m not going anywhere until you bring me some clothes.”
“I suggest that if you want to see Zara alive, you unlock the door now, Demi, and come out.”
“Please, Demi…” It’s Zara. “Do as they say…” Her pleas end with a small gasp.
Fuck! The psychos will kill anyone who stands in the way of them and their fucking power trip. I should never have made her talk. I can’t live with her death on my conscience too.
A sob builds inside my chest, making my throat ache. “If I come out, do you promise not to hurt her?”
“You have my word.” And I’m supposed to trust that? “Despite what you might think of me, I am a man of my word, Ms. Payne.”
The glimmer of hope inside my chest flickers and dies as I turn off the shower and erase the message with the palm of my hand.