She might not continue to breathe at all.
We finally stopped in a formal dining room, the space occupied by Faye and two men I didn’t recognize. Dima wasn’t present, but I was sure he would come looking for me soon enough. I didn’t get the impression that he wanted to leave me with his father for long, not after he’d tied me in barbed wire on the plane. It would seem that, in Dima’s eyes, the only abuse I was allowed to suffer would come from his hands.
Pavel led me to the chair to his left, dropping me unceremoniously into the seat and taking his own at the head of the table. Long and rectangular, there were places set for the three people who sat across the table, as well as one unoccupied on my other side where I presumed Dima would join us. The rest of the long piece of furniture was empty, and I imagined the vacancies reminded Pavel of all the sons he’d lost to Rafe.
“You have no daughters?” I asked, perhaps stupidly as I glanced over at Pavel. I didn’t remind him of his sons directly, leaving the words unspoken.
“I do not tolerate imperfections. When my wife began to bear me daughters instead of sons, I disposed of her,” he said, leveling me with a cold stare that made my blood turn to ice. “As to my daughter, she was married off as is to be expected in families of our stature. She ceased to be my family the moment she served her purpose.”
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if she would be better off dead as part of Rafael’s kill list and mission to eradicate the world of the Kuznetsovs. I had no response to the dark words or the implications they held. Dima’s daughter would be married off in the same fashion.
“I believe you’ve already met Faye,” one of the men on the other side of the table said. His dark brown hair was artfully arranged, the thick slash of eyebrows across his brow ruthless and unyielding despite the formal and polite words. “This is her brother, Sacha.” The man on Faye’s other side was older than I’d expected. Her brother had to be in his late twenties, but I’d mistakenly assumed he was a child given his vulnerability to Pavel and his men. He nodded, his face looking too thin in contrast to Faye’s rounded heart shape. His clothes fit him well, so I didn’t suspect they’d starved him while they’d held him captive, and there were no signs of brutality. The bruises on my cheeks and wounds on my wrists and ankles were far more prominent than any damage he’d suffered.
“And you are?” I asked, studying the man who’d made the introductions with a quirked eyebrow. He seemed unconcerned that he might step on Pavel’s toes by taking charge of the conversation, completely at ease when he leaned back in his seat with a relaxed, but not slumpy, posture. His face was clean shaven, deep brown eyes studying me with something that felt too knowing.
As if he could see right through the shell of me, and understood what he would find when he looked inside.
“Dimitry Turgenev,” he said, leaning forward and steepling his hands on the edge of the table. “It is nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Ibarra.”
“Don’t let Dima hear you call her that,” Pavel inserted with a laugh. “He seems to be quite territorial over his latest plaything.”
“I mean your son no disrespect,Pakhan, but for the time being, that is her name. I will call her as is proper, and should he like to change her name then I will address her otherwise,” he said, smiling at the elder man. Pavel gave him an indulgent grin, the likes of which I had yet to see him give his own son.
“Dimitry is my most trusted advisor,” Pavel explained.
“Bully for you,” I said, placing my hand on the table as a staff member brought in trays of food and set them in the center of the table. The sheer number of covered trays was astounding, and totally unnecessary to feed a grand total of six people.
I was so busy watching the staff member remove the lids from the trays that I never noticed Pavel picking up his steak knife. The movement caught my attention from the corner of my eye, the swift downward swipe driving toward my hand at the exact moment his hand caught my wrist. Burning pain erupted through the wounds his barbed wire ties had given me, and he pinned me still for the stab that came just between my ring and pinky finger.
The knife wedged itself into the wood of the table beneath my hand, my breath coming in sharp pants as I tried to wrap my head around how close I’d come to losing a finger. The staff member gasped, a squeak escaping her as she finished her duties and hurried the cart she’d wheeled food in on out of the room. “What is wrong with you?” I asked, tugging at my hand and trying desperately to get free of the edge of the blade that was so close to my hand. Pavel lifted the tip out of the wood ever so slightly, angling it so that it came closer to my hand and pressed against the skin without cutting.
“You will not disrespect me at my own table, girl,” he ordered.
“Technically, she disrespected Dimitry,” Sacha said, his lips curving up into an arrogant smirk as he drew the attention away from me.
“Quiet,” Dimitry said, the order cold and monotone and lacking all traces of humanity. “Pavel, I appreciate the efforts to correct her behavior. Given it is her first night in Russia, I believe we can allow her some time to adjust to our ways. Clearly, her husband has indulged her far too much and allowed her leniency where it was not deserved. That is no fault of hers, but of her weak husband. I’ll forgive it this time as she truly does not know any better.”
As tempted as I might have been to tell him I didn’t need his kindness, the reality of having a knife pressed to my hand and threatening to carve my finger from my body stifled my snarky response. My need to have a voice was not greater than my need to have a finger.
“Her punishments will remain my domain,” Dima said, stepping into the room with a thunderous expression on his face. He glared at his father in challenge, and I tried to wrench my hand away while the two men had their stare down. Dima had cleaned up, washed the blood from his mouth and clothes. While his nose was mostly straight once more, there was a slight crook in it that hadn’t been there before.
It filled me with a sense of pride to know that I’d done that. He’d always bear a sign of my defiance, and I would do everything I could to make sure that he had more of them by the time I was done with him.
“Keep her in line, Dima,” Pavel said, withdrawing the knife and setting it beside his plate. Dima took the seat next to me, dropping an invading hand to the bare skin of my thigh. His fingers dug into the flesh, kneading it in warning and silently telling me to keep my mouth shut as he reached forward and filled my plate with the food from the platters in front of him.
“Of course. She’ll be suitably punished when we retire to bed later tonight,” Dima said, lifting his fork and knife. He cut through a green bean, stabbing it with his fork and guiding it to my lips. “Eat, ??? ?????. You’ll need your strength.”
Despite my misgivings about potential poisons, I watched as everyone else loaded their plates with the food from the platters and parted my lips.
Dinner continued in the same fashion, Dima alternating between feeding himself and me and refusing to allow me to feed myself. He treated me like the kitten he called me, a pet to be cared for and disciplined.
It would only be a matter of time before he discovered that even the most innocuous kitten had claws.