Prologue
Jack
(Five Years Previously)
“Get up, Englishman,” a harsh voice barks at the same time the butt of an AK47 jams into my solar plexus.
My eyes fly open as I jack- knife upwards, winded and stunned. My hands flail wildly as I attempt to grab the thing that slammed into me, but the man has withdrawn it. He is looking down at me contemptuously, his smooth face gleaming with sweat. I get up on my elbows and take gasping breaths of air, but the air is so thick and hot it’s like sucking lava into your lungs. Malevolent.
“Get up,” the man yells again, and roughly pushes the barrel of his semi-automatic into my chest, driving me onto my back.
“What the fuck,” I swear, furious now. “If you want me to get up, quit fucking pushing me back on the bed.”
He moves back and I swing my legs down, my booted feet hitting the mud floor with a thud. I went to bed drunk, and my head is banging like some prick on crack is working an industrial sledgehammer inside it. I wince with the pain. Damn, they had to pick tonight of all nights.
Gritting my teeth, I force my head up.
The tent flap has been left open and the outside camp light seeps in allowing me a good look at the men. There are two of them and they are dressed in army gear, but it is clear they are rebels.
The one standing closest to me is of medium height, muscular, and as dark as the African night. Sweat is running down his temple in rivulets. He is wearing his ammunition belt as if it is a glinting scarf around his shoulders. His eyes tell me he is battle hardened and trigger-happy.
This is one man you don’t want to piss off.
The other man is standing by the tent flap with his gun held loosely at his side. He is tall and lean and wearing a maroon cap with badges on it. His army jacket is unbuttoned and underneath he is wearing a badly stained white T-shirt. There is something infinitely more dangerous about him than the jacked up, muscle shirt in front of me.
“You get up now. Come with us,” Beefy commands.
“Fuck you,” I tell him.
He raises his gun and points it directly at me.
I start laughing. At first lightly, then more raucously.
“Shut up, Englishman, or I kill you,” he shouts, bringing the black hole of his weapon closer to my face, but already, I can see that I have confused him. He has never encountered a man laughing at the thought of his own violent death.
It infuriates him that I am not afraid of him. “Stop laughing,” he screams.
I stop laughing, grab the barrel of his semi with both hands and pull it tight against my forehead. They say your whole life, everything you’ve ever done, all the people you’ve hurt and loved, flash before your eyes as you exit this cruel earth. Well, not for me.
I feel nothing.
Just numbness.
“Fucking do it! Shoot me,” I dare, staring him in the eye. “You’d be doing me a favor.’
“This man is crazy,” he pronounces, turning dumbfounded to his comrade. The dangerous one steps closer. His hat was covering his eyes so I couldn’t see them before. Now I do. They’re chillingly empty. Without a hint of humanity. He comes right up to my bed and stares down at me curiously.
Well, fuck you too. If he’s looking to see ter
ror in my face, he won’t. Only darkness.
“You have a death wish, Englishman? How ironic then that you have come here to save people from death,’ he says in perfect English.
Obviously, he didn’t pick up that upper-class accent in Africa. He must have been educated in England. He’s right though. Even I can see the unintended irony.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
‘Our leader has been shot. You are a doctor. You can save him.’
‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll pass. Your leader is a fucking mass murderer.’
He smiles. ‘We are reasonable people, Englishman. We will give you a choice. Come with us or we will behead every man, woman, and child in this village and you can stay and bury them.”
A bead of sweat trickles down my spine. That’s the problem with this oppressive heat. You go to sleep sweaty, you wake up sweaty, and you get out of the shower sweaty. I look at the doorway to my tent. Through the open flap hordes of mosquitoes are flying in. There’ll be no sleep tonight.
“Where was he shot?”
Beefy points to his abdomen. “Here.”
“When did it happen?’
“Yesterday, at noon.”
That’s a long time to be injured in this climate. Mud, dirt, bacteria, and little insects love an open wound: all safe and warm and filled with delicious food. “How far away are you?”
“Three hour’s drive.”
‘It’s been more than twenty-four hours. Even if I treat him he may not survive, I tell them.’
‘No, our leader is strong and you will save him,’ Mr. Muscle declares confidently.
I sigh. “Yeah, I’ll come, but I’ll need a drink first.”
One
Sofia
“Do roses know their thorns can hurt?” – a quote attributed to JonBenét Ramsey from Lawrence Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town
“But you promised,” my sister accuses, eyeing me with frustration.
I bend my head to hide my face with my hair. “I know I promised, but I can’t, Lena. Not just yet. Not this Christmas. Maybe next year.” My voice is low, ashamed, and guilty.
“Look at me, Sofia,” Lena demands.
I raise my head. She is staring at me with tears in her beautiful eyes. My sister used to be a world famous model until she gave it all up to get married and have little Irina. If you meet her on the street, you’ll never imagine that we are sisters. She is tall with long blonde hair and piercingly blue eyes, and I am small, with sandy brown hair and chocolate eyes. She inherited her height and coloring from my father, and I got mine from my mother.
I lift my hand and wipe away the solitary tear rolling down her lovely cheek. “Please don’t cry, Lena,” I plead. “I’m just not ready. I can’t do it yet. One day I will, but not right now.”
“It’s been a year,” she whispers. “You have to make an effort, Sofia. At some point you’re going to have to climb out of this dull, solitary existence you have crawled into and start living again. There is beauty out there.”
I sigh sadly. My sister wants me to forget. To move on. To be happy. She doesn’t know what I have been through. I have not even told her a third of what happened to me.
“I am living and there is beauty around me,” I murmur. “I love you, and Irina, and Guy, and the dogs. I go for walks. I paint. I play the piano. Just because I don’t want to go to this party doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.”
She looks at me steadily. “You never go out, or meet people. You are as silent as a shadow, and if no one addresses you directly you would never talk to anyone, would you?”
I drop my eyes. It’s true. I don’t want to go out, meet people, or even speak to anyone. My experiences with people have taught me that they are immeasurably cruel, deceitful, and disloyal. I don’t trust them. If at all possible I want to live here quietly with my sister and never venture outside the vast grounds of this remote and wonderful castle.
“I talk to the dogs,” I say with a smile, but my attempt to lighten the mood has no effect on her.
“Please come,” she begs. “For me.”
I frown. I’d give up my life for my sister, I hate to let her down, but even the thought of going to a party makes my body tremble. “I’d only spoil the party for everyone else,” I tell her.
It’s the wrong thing to say. Her back grows ramrod straight and her eyes sparkle with steely determination. I am older than her, but anybody looking at us will think that I am the younger one. She seems so much stronger and more powerful.
“No, you won’t,” she says firmly. “You’ll never leave my side. Guy and I will take care of you the whole time.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “Oh, Lena. It’s a Christmas Eve party. You don’t want to be worrying about me the whole time. You should go out and have fun with Guy.” I smile brightly. “I’ll stay here and take care of Irina. Make sure she doesn’t get into any mischief.”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest. Oh, God! I hate it when she does that. It means it will be impossible to sway her from her purpose.
“Thank you. That is very kind of you, but Irina already has a babysitter lined up.”
“Surely she’ll prefer me to take care of her.”
“Irina will be asleep by eight-thirty. You’re getting into your new red dress and coming with me,” she says firmly.
‘I can’t wear the red dress. It’s too obvious.”
“Fine. Wear the black velvet one. You look stunning in it.”
Cornered, I try to find other avenues of escape. “I don’t even know the people who are throwing the party.”
She senses victory and grins. “The Barringtons? You’ll love them. Well, at least you’ll love Lana. Her husband, Blake, is a bit reserved and hard to know, but underneath the unapproachable exterior he has a heart of gold.” Her eyes light up. “Besides, if we go early you can meet their kids. They’re gorgeous. The boy is so cute you’ll want to pop him between two slices of bread and eat him.”
I smile. I know she is talking about the children because she knows they are the only humans I can bear to talk to. “What’s his name?”
“Sorab.”
“That’s an unusual name.”
“Yeah. Apparently it’s an old Persian name. His mother is a quarter Persian.”
“It sounds almost Russian.”
She smiles broadly. “A bit. So you’ll come?”
“All right, but I don’t want to stay long. Maybe the driver can bring me back early.”
She shakes her head decisively. “Guy and me don’t plan to stay long either. You’ll go with us and you’ll come back with us.”
I nod reluctantly. “Okay.”
She stands and, pulling me up, whirls me around the way we used to when we were children living in a tiny wooden house at the edge of a Russian forest.
“Thank you, my darling sister,” she says and kisses my cheek. “You’re the only family I have left and I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” I say automatically, but the truth is I don’t know what happiness means.
When we were young we were always terrified of my father. After he sold me to those men I stopped being a person, I became a piece of meat with a name. Open your legs, Sofia. Wider, Sofia. Wider still, Sofia. Until I began to hate the sound of my name. I shudder at the painful memories.
My sister puts the palms of her hands on either side of my cheeks. “One day …” she lets the whisper filled with promise and hope trail away.
Two
Sofia
As it happens we don’t go early, and by the time we get into London it is already 9.30pm. We walk up the black and white stone path to the doorway of a large white house.
Flakes of snow swirl down from a black sky and land on my nose and cheeks. My stomach is in a tight knot and my hands are clammy with sweat. I run them nervously down my cream coat. As we arrive at the front door, Lena turns her head and looks at me.
“Are yo
u alright?”
I nod stiffly.
“Just relax. It’s only a small group of really nice people. We’re just going to have a couple of drinks then we’ll leave. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”
I nod again.
Guy touches my arm and I turn blindly towards him. I love Guy almost as deeply as I love my sister. I think I’ve loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him. He is the kindest man on earth.
What he did for me I will never be able to repay. Until today only Guy knows what I was when he found me in that godforsaken brothel. You cannot imagine the darkness of my existence, how low and degraded I was. I had been repeatedly raped, beaten, locked up, forced to have sex with so many men that I no longer had a will of my own. I was so traumatized I was barely human. I cowered in fear. My will was Valdislav’s. If he asked me to do something I would have done it no matter how depraved or disgusting.
I stared blankly at Guy when I heard him tell Valdislav he wanted to buy me not just for the night, or for the week, but actually take me away from there. I could see that he was in awe of Guy. I could see instantly that Guy was different. He radiated power and the confidence that comes from immense wealth.
Valdislav sniggered. “I’m going to do you a favor. She’s lazy. Pick another girl.”
“I don’t want another. This is the one I want,” Guy replied.
The men stared at each other until Valdislav frowned. He wanted to make a sale to the rich man, but he didn’t want to let me go. Even though he had a whole harem of women, most of them far better looking than me, I was his favorite. No matter how many women he slept with, the sadist always came back to torture me. His greatest pleasure came from making me submit to his sick desires.
“No, not this one,” Valdislav said, his eyes flashing. “This one is mine.”
However, that day Guy put so much cash on the table, more than Valdislav had ever seen, more than he could ever hope to earn in his lifetime, that he couldn’t refuse. Not for a piece of meat, anyway. Guy walked over to me. While he was negotiating with Valdislav his eyes had been so cold and hard I was terrified of my new owner, but bending his head, he whispered, “I’m taking you back to Lena.”
The shock was unbelievable. I never thought. I did not even dare to dream such a thing. My legs gave way beneath me and the world went black. Later I found out that he had to carry me to the car waiting outside.