With This Secret

“I have a solution,” he said softly.

I stilled, a tender shoot of hope sprouting in my heart.

“Take whatever money you’ve saved and run away right now. Go somewhere far away, change your name, your history, start again, and never try to come back or contact anybody from this life again … or he will find you.”

“And you?” I whispered.

“I’ll buy a bottle of sleeping pills and drink it down with a bottle of vodka tonight. I already know exactly what Bogdan has in store for me if I don’t give you to him. I’ve had a good life. It is not a cowardly act to die with dignity. Samurais, the bravest warriors used to do it to avoid shame or betrayal.”

The hope inside me died. “That is not a solution.”

“It is the only one left, little button …”

At the use of that old childish pet name for me that I hadn’t heard for years, I turned away from him and tried to think. I felt numb and detached from everything. My gaze fell on the assortment of freshly baked cakes and buns I’d just pulled out of the oven. How important it had seemed to me to get them exactly right.

“This might be your last chance to escape,” he said to me. “To be free of him. Go now. Before it’s too late.”

I glanced at the clock. It was five in the morning. The bakery was supposed to be opening in two hours. I thought of our regulars. How they would come for their breakfast and find the closed sign on the door. Except for Sundays, the bakery had never closed once in the last twenty years. Every day without fail, my mother opened it. Even when she was sick, even when she was dying. I had carried on her tradition.

I turned back to face my father. My eyes ran over him, as if he was a stranger. He had taken his hand out of his pocket and for the first time I noticed the thick bandage around his left hand.

“What happened to your hand?’ I asked, my voice strangely calm.

“He took off three of my fingers,” he said with a shrug, as if he was telling me he’d cut himself while shaving.

A sharp pain hit me so hard I had to clutch my chest. It felt like I’d been stabbed. All I could work up was a whisper, “What?”

He lifted his hand and looked at it emotionlessly. “They’re wrapped up in some moist gauze inside a plastic bag and on ice. He’ll give them back when I agree to give you to him.”

I almost couldn’t form the words. The world of ruthless Russian mobsters was so foreign to me I almost couldn’t comprehend it. I lived in a world of butter, eggs, flour, and icing sugar. “How does it work? Will you have to go to hospital with your … fingers?”

He shook his head. “Nah, he has a doctor on standby. He’ll attach them for me. After all, I’m still of use to him.”

“How much time do you have before …”

“Don’t worry about that,” he dismissed this worry. “I’m not going to need them just to wash down some sleeping pills with vodka.”

“How much time do you have before those fingers can’t be re-attached?” I repeated, my voice hard.

“Six hours.”

“Call him now. Tell that monster yes, he can have me. Then go get your damn fingers sewn back on your damn hand.”

“But—”

“Do it, Dad,” I shouted harshly.

3

Bianca

We exited the restaurant and there was a glittering ash Maserati awaiting us at the canopied entrance. When one of his men exited the car and came over to hand him the keys, I was instantly on guard. We had arrived in the back of a tinted SUV. I turned to him. “What’s going on?” I asked quietly.

“Tonight, it’s just the two of us baby,” he explained. A low laugh accompanied his words.

The geoduck sashimi and baked lobster I’d forced into me threatened to come up. This was it? The foreplay was over. I had no say in the matter. I wanted to make an excuse. Delay the moment, but what was the point? Today or tomorrow, nothing would change.

He would always be fucking hideous to me.

More than his bloated, sweaty body; large domed forehead, or colorless, thin lips, it was his lashless, dead eyes. There was something inhuman about them. As if he was a different species from me. Like looking into the eyes of a reptile. There was no emotion behind them. Everything warm and alive was prey. When he looked at me, I felt the same way I did when I looked at a black mamba inside a glass enclosure. Instinctive, pure fear.

“Hop in,” he said.

I did as I was told. As he rounded the vehicle towards the driver’s seat, I was softly tapping the table knife I’d stolen from our table and hidden inside my jeans.