“Nothing.” I plaster a tight smile onto my face. “I’m just thinking of how much I’ll enjoy biting your dick off.”
“I’ll pull every one of your teeth out, you little bitch.” Art’s lips pull back as he speaks, the words coming out in sharp, staccato bursts. “You have no idea what pain is. Fight me, and I’ll show you.”
I was never good at hiding my fear, and I’ve never been good with pain. I gave in to the guard in the warehouse, because I was afraid of how he’d hurt me if I didn’t, even though I knew the punishment for ‘letting’ him might be dire. I’d confessed to Max my greatest shame, that I’d begged Caterina to give in to Alexei so that he’d stop the beating. But at this moment, I summon every bit of courage I have in me, because I don’t want Art to know how terrified I am. I don’t wanteitherof them to know. I want to be brave because it’s all I have. It’s all I can do to make Max’s sacrifice worth it, to not let them know what they’re doing to me.
I hope, if Art follows through on his threats, that I’ll be strong enough not to beg him to stop, that I’ll be able to take it all and spit it back in his face.
“Enough!” Edo slaps his hands down onto the table, sloshing some of my still-full bowl of soup. “We’ll make this decision after our dinner. We will sit here–allof us–and have a civilized meal. And then we will go to my study, and I will decide what we’re going to do with the Obelesnsky girl.”
It feels strange to be referred to that way, with a name that doesn’t feel like mine. All my life, I’ve been Sasha Federova, and I’ve never known anything else. Nothing about this feels like my identity, likeme, and yet it’s going to determine my fate.
It also feels impossible to sit and eat a normal dinner with two men next to me who will decide that same fate. I’m powerless here, and for every escape attempt or plan that I roll over in my mind as I take small bites of the food to manage some facsimile of eating, I know it’s pointless. I’d never make it out of the house, and even if I did, I don’t know where I am. Max is gone, and I have no means of getting help.
Whatever happens next, I’m going to have to see it through.
Edo forces me to sit through the entire mockery of dinner, all the way through a dessert course of flourless chocolate cake and berries. I don’t taste any of it, not the soup, or the cheese plate, or lamb course, or the dessert. It all tastes like cardboard in my mouth, the small bites sticking in my throat, though I’m sure it’s all delectable. I’m amazed I can choke any of it down at all, but I don’t want to make Edo angrier than he already is, so I do my best.
Art eats, but I can tell from his sharp, jerky movements that he’s angry, his mouth set in a hard, petulant line like a child who’s been warned that he might have his toy taken away. Edo seems completely unruffled, eating his dinner with the same calm gusto of a man who has had nothing unusual happen to him. He lets out a satisfied grunt when he finishes the last bite of cake, picks his napkin off of his lap and tosses it onto the table, and pushes himself away to stand up.
“Come with me,” he says gruffly, and turns to leave the dining room.
Art shoves himself away from the table, too, his hand closing roughly around my elbow. “Come on,” he snaps, dragging me up and along with him. We’re a few paces behind Edo, and he leans down, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “Don’t try anything fucking stupid,” he hisses against my chilled flesh. “I’m the only way you’re getting out of this alive.”
“I’d rather die,” I hiss through gritted teeth, and Art laughs coldly, a low rumbling sound.
“You say that now.”
We follow Edo down a long hallway to a door flanked by guards. They step aside as he unlocks the door, striding in and turning on lights as he does so. It still doesn’t do much to light the room beyond a dim glow, and the rich dark coloring and furnishings of the room give it a somber feeling that makes my heart sink even further into my stomach.
The door is still open, and Edo crooks a finger at one of his guards. When the black-garbed man steps inside, Edo nods at me.
“Cuff her, gag her, and sit her down in one of those chairs.”
Art opens his mouth to protest, but the look Edo gives him is withering. It gives me a moment’s hope, and then a macabre sense of horror settles over me when I realize, in a sudden, bone-chilling rush, that my death is the best I can hope for in this situation.
The guard grabs me, none too gently, wrenching my wrists behind my back and pulling them taut with what feels like a thin plastic zip-tie. I yelp despite myself at the force of it, and he takes that opportunity to push a thick rubbery strap into my mouth, wrapping it around the back of my head. It pinches my hair, pulling at the scalp as the guard manhandles me into the chair in front of Edo’s desk, shoving me hard down into the seat.
“Thank you.” Edo nods to the guard. “You can go.”
When the three of us are alone in the room again, Art sprawled in the seat next to me as if in direct contrast to my being wrenched into a position that aches more and more by the moment, Edo turns a tablet screen so that all of us can see it.
He taps a number, bringing up a call screen, and there’s a momentary hush in the room. I’m not sure who he’s calling at first, and then a severe-looking man’s face fills the screen, with a squared jaw, harsh blue eyes, and light-colored hair that’s buzzed short.
“Tell Obelensky that it’s Don Casciani,” Edo says sharply to the man. “I’ve got the girl here.”
The man’s eyes flick towards me, a hint of curiosity in them as he nods. “I’ll see if he can talk.”
The wall behind the camera on the other end is a dingy cream cinderblock. Something about it twists my stomach with a cold, unsettling fear as we stare at it, waiting for someone to come back.
A few minutes later, the screen goes black as if we’ve been hung up on, and I see Edo’s face harden. My heart flips as I wonder if this is it–if this man, who is apparently my father, has decided that he doesn’t care about what happens to me after all, and I’m just going to be given to Art.
Then, just as Edo is about to click off the tablet, a low, gravelly, Russian-accented voice fills the room, the screen still dark.
“Edo Casciani?”
“Yes?” Edo answers gruffly, his brows knitted together with suspicion. “Who is this?”
“Konstantin Obelensky. You have the girl?”