Page 113 of Lethal Abduction

From out of nowhere, I see my mother’s face, blurred by time and my unwillingness to remember the many days I saw her with bruises like these. The memory is both sickening and infuriating, imbued with the helpless frustration I felt as a child, unable to protect her.

I shift restlessly, and Abby’s breath halts, then changes. The somnolence of her sleeping body gives way slowly to a light tension that tells me she’s awake. Her hand curls against my chest, and I know that any moment she will pull away, retreat behind our familiar walls of banter or secrecy.

Not this time. Not anymore.

I capture her hand, holding it against my body, and start to speak.

“When I was very young,” I say quietly, “my mother and I fled Russia. I don’t remember leaving, or at least, not clearly. All I remember are the days and nights that came afterward, a hundred beds in the homes of people I didn’t know, each a temporary shelter before we were pushed on to the next destination.”

Abby doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak. But I can feel her listening.

“I don’t know how long we ran for, whether it was weeks or months or years. I just know that it felt endless. And the entire time, we were running toward one goal: a man called Yakov, who, my mother whispered to me every night, was going to bring us to America, where we’d be safe.

“He was a friend of my father’s, I think. Or at least, I believed he was. Right up until the day I finally met him. He wanted my mother; she didn’t want him.

“After he raped her and beat her senseless when she fought back, then turned his fists on me, I knew he was no friend. After that first day there were a lot of locked rooms, and a lot more beatings, before my mother and I managed to escape.”

Abby’s hand drifts to the smooth circles on my ribs, her touch a silent question.

“Some of those burns come from that time.” I shiver slightly as her hand pauses on them. “Some come from later, when Yakov found me again. My mother took me to an orphanage in Miami the night we escaped. I don’t know if she meant to abandon me there, or if she thought she’d come back. I don’t know what happened to her. I just know that in the end, it was Yakov, instead of my mother, who came for me. I was barely six, certainly not old enough to fight back, and the nuns were all too happy to exchange me for the pile of cash he gave them.

“I wasn’t the only child Yakov took. There were many of us. Yakov was rarely there in person, but he didn’t need to be. He used the older kids to control the younger. Some, both boys and girls, were sold to men for sex. Others, the fortunate ones like me, were used to run packets of drugs. Anyone who disobeyed an order was simply killed, while the rest of us were made to watch. Yakov had the older children do the murdering, often through torture. He would put a camera in the room, lock the door with us all inside, then sit in another room and watch on a television screen.”

Despite my determination to maintain control, sweat beads on my forehead, my heart thudding with remembered terror.

“But for some reason I never understood, Yakov chose totorture me personally. He liked to keep me in the room with him when he watched.”

This is the hardest, speaking aloud the moments that have haunted my nightmares my whole life.

“Every time the on-screen victim screamed, he tried to make me scream. He used his fists, cigarettes, anything he could find. It became like a game to him, trying to make me cry out. The only way I could fight back was by keeping my silence. I used to smile, no matter what he did to me. He hated that.”

I take a hard breath.

“When I was nine, the police caught me delivering a package of drugs. Yakov never came for me, of course. I wound up in juvenile detention for a year. Ironically, juvie was the safest I’d felt since the orphanage.”

Abby’s fingers trace the rose tattoo entwined with barbed wire, the mark I’d once told her is given in the bratva to those who’ve done time.

“That’s why I got that tattoo,” I say, capturing her hand in mine. “It wasn’t a badge of pride to me. It was just the only place I’d found, up until then, where Yakov couldn’t reach me.” I squeeze her hand then let it go, afraid I will crush it as I talk. “I was released into a halfway house afterward. The boys were almost as bad as those who’d been forced to kill for Yakov, but I’d seen far worse. It was only Yakov I was truly afraid of. I knew he’d come for me, and eventually, he did.”

I feel Abby stiffen beside me.

“I saw him across the road from the halfway house. He’d paid some boys to beat me, worse than usual, and bring me to him. Then Roman saw what they were doing.” I smile in the darkness. This is the good part of the memory. “He got between them and me. He was barely older than me, certainly no match for the other boys, but he went at them with this blind fury that took them all by surprise, meincluded. After we managed to get away, he offered me a choice: go back and trust the system or stay on the streets with him and try to survive as best we could. I chose Roman.”

I press my lips to the top of Abby’s head, holding them there for a long time.

“Back in Spain, you accused me of being Roman’s puppet, of jumping whenever he snaps his fingers. Don’t,” I say as she stiffens against me. “Please, Abby. Just let me finish.”

After a moment she stills again, but I can still feel her tension.

“You said that night that Ibelongedto Roman. Above everything else. Even above myself.” I inhale deeply, then exhale. “And the truth is you were right. I just didn’t want to admit it. Not then, and not for a long time after. I chose to be at Roman’s side when I was a terrified ten-year-old kid. And I didn’t stay with him out of loyalty, or because of some bratva oath, or even because after he becamepakhanof the Stevanovsky clan he was technically my boss. I stayed with him because he was my family. Myonlyfamily. The only person I knew would never leave me or let me down.”

I stroke Abby’s hair, turning my lips into it again, inhaling her sweet familiarity. “Right up until the day I met you.” My voice is rough, but I have to get this out. “And I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until I woke up alone in that Madrid penthouse that I realized how wrong I was. That you’re my family too, in ways not even Roman ever could be. You’re the future I never dared believe in, Abby. The chance I never thought could be mine. I just wish I’d been fucking smart enough to realize that earlier.

“I certainly wish I’d had the fucking balls to choose you back in Madrid, or even to realize you were asking me to choose. I’ll regret that mistake forever. But I want you to know this much, at least.” I tilt her chin upward, though in thepale moonlight, her eyes are dark pools of mystery that are impossible to read.

“I didn’t tell you about my past to make excuses for my choices. But I do want you to understand them. And that means I’m done with secrets, even the ones that I’ve never told a fucking soul until tonight. I want you to know there isn’t anything you can tell me that will make me turn away from you.

“I’ve seen darkness, Abby. I’ve lived in it until the darkness was all I was, and all I thought I’d ever be. I can’t make you tell me about your own past, or even about what is chasing you now. But I need you to understand that if, or when, you do, you’re not telling your story to the Stevanovsky clan. You’re telling it to me alone. Roman is no longer a factor in the decisions I make. So whatever choices we make from this moment on belong to you and me, and nobody else.”

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