—
I’m cuffed again before they take me out to the car. The clothes I’d been givenarecomfortable, black joggers only slightly too big for me and a loose t-shirt, but it wasn’t the same guard who came to cuff me, and my wrists are pulled too tight. I can already feel my fingers losing circulation as I’m pushed into the back of the car like I’m being arrested, but this is so much worse.
I don’t see Edo or Art. There’s nothing but the black car and the black-garbed guards in the gathering darkness, hardly even any stars to be seen in the cloudy night. I can feel the darkness crowding around me, all the more frightening when I think of my impending demise. I have to force myself to take long, slow breaths to keep from panicking as the car starts down the driveway, away from the estate.
Leaning my head against the glass, I try to summon memories of Max, anything to keep me calm. I try to think of what he would do in this situation, with no way to escape, no way to fight back. I think he’d be strong, that he wouldn’t beg or plead or show fear, and I resolve to try to do the same. When I meet my father, I don’t want it to be with tears and pleas. I want to show him that I care as little about him as he does for me, and that includes whatever he plans to do to me.
The world is silent as I’m walked across the tarmac to the waiting plane. It’s a cargo plane, not a passenger plane, and a feeling of panic spikes in my gut as I’m dragged back to the memory of my flight here to the States a little over a year ago, in a similar plane full of frightened, drugged women.
Now I’m going back to Russia in a similar state to how I left it.
I have some hope that they might not drug me if I don’t struggle–there’s no point in fighting that I can see, anyway–but that hope is quickly squandered too. Once they’ve gotten me onto the plane and into a seat and buckled in, one of the guards produces a syringe, and it’s all I can do not to shrink away.
Don’t move,I tell myself firmly.Don’t flinch, don’t show fear.
The needle sinks into my neck as I grit my teeth.At least I won’t feel my hands going numb from the cuffs,is the last thing I think before I sink into oblivion.
—
The world is still hazy when I start to come back to consciousness, halfway across the tarmac as I’m being dragged from the plane to another waiting car. The men holding me don’t seem to realize I’m waking up, so they keep dragging me, and I stay limp. If I’m being honest, I’d rather they didn’t know. I don’t want another dose of the drug, or any of the attention that might come with them knowing I’m awake.
It’s not even dawn yet; the sky is still speckled with stars, and it’s chillier here. The air cuts through my thin t-shirt, raising gooseflesh on my skin, and I repress the shiver that would give me away. It works, because I’m tossed into the backseat of the waiting car like luggage, the door slams behind me as I lay there on my side, still coming back fully to consciousness.
I’m back here. Back in Russia–in Moscow.“Home” feels like the wrong word for a place that never felt like home to me, even if it was technically where I grew up. I had a dozen “homes” at least over the years I lived here, probably more. Not a single one of them ever gave me the feeling that I had when I lived with Viktor, Caterina, and the children.
My chest aches at the thought of them, at the sudden realization that I’ll never see them again. Somehow, in the shock of everything and the grief over Max, I’d managed not to think of it. Still, it’s all I can do to choke back the sob that wells up as I realize that the day I left with Max will be the last time I ever see Caterina, Anika, Yelena, or the babies.
Caterina will have to choose between telling them the truth one day, or letting them believe that I abandoned them, that I just never came back or contacted them again, that I forgot about them. I’d loved them like they were my own, told them over and over, and I wonder if they’d believe that, or if they’d spend the rest of their childhoods wondering what really happened to me. Anika, especially, who understood some of what happened at Alexei’s house of horrors, would pick up that something was wrong.
They’ll all find out that Max is gone, too. I wonder if Viktor will find out the truth, and how. I wonder if he’ll find out the truth aboutme, or if he’ll look for a little while, find nothing, and give it up as a lost cause. It’s not as if I was really a part of his family.
At the end of the day, no matter how close I felt to them, I was the nanny. He couldn’t stick his neck out to save me, not without putting hisactualfamily in danger, and he won’t do so to find out what happened to me either, I’m sure. He’ll check into it discreetly, make assumptions, and close the case.
Nothing has ever made me feel as intensely lonely as that realization does. The grief piles up in my chest, all of it, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut as a few tears drip onto the black leather of the seats beneath me.
Might as well get them all out now, while no one can see.
The car ride lasts for a long time. I might have even dozed for a little while, the aftereffects of the stress, drugs, and exhaustion winning out over the fear and sorrow swamping me. I’m woken up when the car comes to a stop, and the door opens, a bulky man in a coat standing on the other side of it.
“Wake up, girlie,” he says in a nasally voice, reaching for me. He unceremoniously drags me out, and I twitch in his grasp, trying to find my footing.
“She’s a pretty one,” a rough voice comes from behind him, and I shrink back despite myself, refusing to look for the source of the voice. I don’t want to see who’s speaking.
I can’t imagine I look all that good. My hair is a tangled rat’s nest, my eyes glassy and bleary from lack of sleep and the sedatives, and I’m flushed from the cold. I don’t think that matters all that much to men who like exerting their power over women, though, and I silently plead with anyone or anything listening to spare me that, at least.
Here, there’s no one to protect me, for any reason. I’m on my own, with my wits and my nerve, and I don’t know how long either will hold out.
“Get her inside,” another voice says, and the man holding me nods.
“Come on, girl,” he says, his nasal voice deepening as he turns me towards our destination.
It’s a nondescript concrete building with all flat walls, sharp edges, and scattered windows. It looks as dreary as the greying sky above it, and everything in me recoils against the idea of going in there, but I force myself not to drag my feet or fight back. It won’t help me, and it could very much hurt. I don’t know what these men are inclined to, or what sort of treatment they’re supposed to give me, or what regulations there might be around what they can do to me–but I’m in no hurry to test the boundaries.
I could fight back against Art, because he was cruel for the sake of it. He would have hurt me if I was silent as soon as if I was defiant, regardless of what he claimed. I don’t yet know if that’s true of these men.
They march me down a cold grey hall, and it’s then that I see my destination–a row of cells, all of them empty. Everything in me balks at the idea of going inside of one, at being well and truly caged for the first time in my life. Despite all my resolve, my heels dig in as I pull back against the hands holding me.
“None of that, now.” The man leading me is twice my size, tall and thick with bulky muscle, and there’s no chance of my getting free. “You’re going in there one way or another,devochka,so don’t do it the hard way, eh?”