Chapter 24
Nadya
THE GALLERY WAS EMPTY on Mondays, except for the hum of the climate system and the echoes of my own questionable choices.
I came in on my day off to frame the painting, the one with the whiskey bottle decanting itself into Chinese takeout cartons and pooling into blood.
Now it sat propped against the wall in Lara’s office.
Hopefully, she’d like it enough to display it.
I pressed my palm flat to the glass pane, watching my reflection superimposed over the painting. I’d spent the train ride convincing myself I didn’t need a drink to function, only to find that I wanted something strong enough to cut through the memories.
Damn, it wasn’t even one in the afternoon. Too early to drink, unless I fully committed to being a lost cause. I wasn’t there yet. Almost, but not quite.
I slid the office chair back and pawed through my backpack for the business card Nick had given me. Just coping mechanisms. That was all I wanted. Couldn’t be that bad if I only asked for that instead of baring my soul to a stranger, right?
Yeah. I would just ask for that. No reason to make a big deal out of it.
I hit call.
Three rings, then a receptionist picked up. I tried to sound casual as I said I was a new client. There was absolutely no reason to be nervous. I was just making an appointment, for fuck’s sake.
“Are you located in Philly?” she asked.
“Brooklyn,” I answered. “But I can do it remotely. Is that allowed?”
“Oh, yes. But I do want to make sure you understand your insurance isn’t likely to cover it, so we require payment up front.”
“How much?” I asked, feeling my stomach tighten. I had some money saved up, but it wasn’t much. This better be as I hoped, just asking for help with coping. One session. Two, tops.
She quoted a number that would have bought a week’s worth of groceries. Sounded awful, but booze wasn’t cheap, either, and it clearly wasn’t working. Painting at least paid for itself and then some.
“That’s fine,” I said.
My latest painting had better sell.
“The earliest opening is Wednesday, ten in the morning. Does that work?”
I said yes. There was a clicking of keys. “I’ll text you the Zoom link before your appointment. Anything else I can help with?”
“No.”
When I hung up, my skin was damp with sweat.
I wiped my palms on my jeans, then started pacing the length of the office, a tight loop from the desk to the credenza and back.
My eyes kept drifting to the painting, the way the red bled out from the bottle, saturating the takeout boxes. Would anyone actually buy it?
Sure, I’d sold plenty of my work before, but every time it shocked me someone would want to look at all the ugliness living inside me.
I was three circuits into my pacing when Lara came in, carrying a clipboard and wearing her “no time for nonsense” face. She stopped cold when she saw me.
“Isn’t this your day off?” she asked, arching a brow.
“Couldn’t stay away.” I turned to face her, and a fresh wave of nerves hit me. Would Lara like the painting? She usually did, and it had been one of the reasons I got this job, but still, this one was a lot.
She set the clipboard on the desk and came over, arms folded. Her gaze was clinical as she checked my work, lips pursed, tapping her bottom lip in thought.
“There’s something in the way you layered the red, almost metallic. It looks alive.”
“That was the point,” I said.
She stared at me a second longer than felt comfortable, then said, “This will sell. Especially if you have more like it.”
“I don’t,” I said. “It was a one-off. A bad day.”
Lara squinted an eye and looked at the ceiling as if the answer for whatever problem she had was written up there. “With the pieces you already have displayed and this one, plus a few we hadn’t hung yet, you almost have enough for a solo show. You’ll need at least seven more. Preferably twelve.”
My breath hitched. “That’s a lot of bad days.”
She allowed herself a micro-smile. “People pay good money for honest suffering.” She started scribbling something on the clipboard, then looked up. “How soon can you get me the next piece?”
I shrugged. “Depends on how often I spiral.”
Lara paused, her pen hovering. “Are you okay, Nadya? You look tired and a lot like you’re gearing up for a bender.”
“I’m fine, just didn’t sleep much on the train ride.”
She didn’t push. Instead, she set the clipboard down and started talking logistics—sizing, price points, framing, all the ways a gallery owner could break down a painting into its marketable parts. I listened, nodding at intervals, trying to keep my eyes from drifting back to the painting.
When my phone buzzed, I was almost happy for the interruption until I glanced at the screen. Vera. I loved my sister to death, but I had a bad feeling about this call.
“Sorry, I have to take this, or Vera will beat me with a celery stick,” I joked as I answered the phone and walked into the showroom.
When I answered the call, Vera didn’t waste time with a hello. “Why does Sean think you’re in trouble?”
I blinked. “What?”
“And I got a call from an FBI agent who wants to talk to me about our adoption.”
Ugh. Nick wasn’t wasting any time. He must’ve already passed all the information to his coworker.
“They probably just want to know if there was anything weird about it,” I said, keeping my voice steady.
“Weird, like how?”
I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. “They’re just checking if there were more cases like ours.”
She stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “Are you telling me everything?”
I was not, but there was no way I’d let her see the full picture. If she ever found out what happened during those trips, it would destroy her. Vera had spent her whole life making sure the world didn’t hurt us any more than it already had. I couldn’t pile my shit onto hers.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘everything,’” I said, stalling. The acoustics in the showroom made every syllable hang in the air too long. “There’s more going on than we thought. Nick thinks it’s not just a one-off creep doing shady adoptions. He thinks it’s a whole... something. Network? Ring?”
Vera made a noise—somewhere between a groan and a cough. “You mean trafficking.” It wasn’t a question, not really.
“Yeah,” I said, a fraction above a whisper. “That’s what it looks like.”
There was a long pause while she chewed through the implications. Was she blaming herself? The crown of martyrdom never fit her well, but she wore it anyway.
“Did they ever contact you?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “Nick thinks maybe they forgot about us, but with Ljuba, and...” I didn’t want to say his name. Stupid, because it wasn’t like avoiding it would erase anything that had happened, but I really fucking hated that name.
“Have you told her?” Vera sounded frighteningly old all of a sudden.
“Fuck no. After what happened, I’m pretty sure Dan will be glued to her side, anyway, so she’ll be fine.”
“But not you.” Vera said it like an accusation.
The raw nerves in Vera’s voice made me wince; I could feel her pacing in the hospital breakroom, probably glaring at a vending machine for daring to exist. When the silence dragged, I let the next thing fall out of my mouth before I could chicken out.
“I might have seen some of the others. That’s why Nick is worried about my safety. ”
She didn’t ask what I meant—she was too smart for that. Just a fresh new flavor of guilt for her to add to the existing buffet. I heard her exhale, like a balloon letting out air.
“I should have protected you both better,” she said. “I should have—”
“Don’t,” I cut her off, voice rougher than I meant. “We were all locked in there. You did what you could.”
“But I didn’t stop it.” It was a statement, like she was just reporting the news: Sun rises in the East. Rain falls down. Vera failed her sisters.
“You got us out. First chance you had, you did it. Remember?”
Our adoptive mother had hated us. She had this whole thing going in her head where she thought we were seducing her husband and that was why he was more interested in us than in her. The moment Vera turned eighteen, the woman had thrown her out.
Best day of our lives. Because Vera was an amazing older sister, and she risked getting caught by him to get Ljuba and me out.
I swallowed hard, the familiar taste of battery acid rising in my throat. If I didn’t cut this short, I was going to say something I’d regret, or worse, something that would make Vera worry even more.
“I really am tired,” I said, and it wasn’t even a lie. “Can we do this later?”
“Fine. But you should come over for sister night. I’ll cook, or if you want, I’ll get takeout. We can paint our nails, and you can tell me all the things you’re not telling me right now.” There was a weight to her words, like she was daring me to refuse.
And takeout? That was as unlike Vera as it got. She was clearly luring me in.
“I’ll come,” I said, “but don’t do anything fancy. I just want to eat and maybe watch garbage TV.”
She made a skeptical sound. “No promises.”
There was a beat, then a shift in her voice, softer but less guarded than before. “Take care of yourself. And if you need me to move back in, just say the word.”
“Thanks.” But there was no way I’d ask her to move back in with me. She had her own life now, and she actually seemed happy with Sean. I wouldn’t be the one to ruin it.