Sweet Collateral

So I help Bella. I vacuum carpets while she polishes and dusts, and there’s something strangely soothing in the mundane tasks. When we’re done, I take her out into the gardens.

“Have you been out here?” I ask.

“No.” She pads along behind me, her sandals brushing over the emerald green grass.

“It’s prettier at night.”

“How can it be prettier when you can’t see it?”

“The stars.”

She says nothing more as she follows me through the gardens to the pond. I take a seat on the low wall that surrounds the water, and she joins me, glancing out over the tranquility.

“It’s beautiful.”

“When I first came here, I wouldn’t leave my room. I thought their promises of freedom were a trick.” I smile when I remember how little I trusted Rafael. “So, Rafael ordered me to leave my room. I would come out here every night when it was quiet.” I look at her, and she drops her gaze.

“You were in the Sinaloa too?”

“For six years, yes.”

“You were taken?”

“No, I was sold to them. From another owner.”

Her eyes flick over me. “But…you’re so young.”

“I was first sold when I was thirteen.”

Her face pales. “I’m sorry.”

“You were taken?”

“Yes, from a nightclub in my hometown in Chile.”

“We all have our stories. None of them pretty.”

She nods towards the gun strapped to my thigh. “Yours is very different now.”

I follow her gaze to the weapon that Rafael gave me all those months ago. “It is, and yours will be too.”

“I hope so.” She trails her fingers through the water. “What will happen to the other women?”

“They’ll be looked after,” I promise. “Rafael would never let anything happen to them.”

“Because of you. He saves them for you. He told me.”

“No. He’s a good man. He would do it anyway.”

“Well, thank you, anyway.”

“Don’t you want to go home, Bella?”

She inhales a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the action. “I do, but they’ll never understand.”

“I get it.” Una would understand to a degree, but not truly. What would it be like to go home to a normal family? I can barely recall a time when I ever had one, so I wouldn’t know, but I can see why that might be daunting. To live your old life, when you’ve been so fundamentally changed. Once you’ve lived in the darkness, the light can be disorientating.

“One day you’ll wake up and realize that you aren’t that scared girl anymore.” I did. Maybe I can help her the way Rafe helped me. I hope so.

76

Rafael

Dimitri Patrov is young, maybe early thirties, but as his eyes narrow at me, there’s a shrewdness in them. He’s like a self appointed king up here in his Moscow penthouse office.

“Rafael D’Cruze,” he says, placing the papers down on the desk in front of him. “Your call was…unexpected.” He drags a hand over his neatly combed dark hair and straightens his already straight tie.

“Not entirely, surely?”

He gestures for me to take a seat. I do and Sam shifts, placing his back to the wall behind me. Dimitri pays him no attention. “I had heard that Anna Ivanov was firmly in Nero Verdi’s care.” He taps his bottom lip with his index finger. “His call was expected. As is a possible visit from Una Ivanov.” He grins.

“Vasiliev,” I correct. “Her name is Una Vasiliev.”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t come back for the child yet.”

“So you could capture her?”

“I wouldn’t dream of aggravating the Italian.”

“Wise. I’m hoping you show me some of that deference.”

He leans forward, propping his elbows on the table and steepling his fingers in front of him. “Well, you’ve requested a meeting, and I’d like to think we could…do business.”

Business? We’re talking about a child, but I know that to him it is nothing more than a commodity, a weapon—a soldier.

“I want the child,” I say.

He smiles like he’s already won. “And what are you offering in return?”

“Cocaine? Guns? Money? Take your pick.”

“Tsk, tsk. I can get such things anywhere, Mr. D’Cruze.”

“If you were not willing to trade anything, then why invite me here?”

“I didn’t say I was not willing to trade anything. You do have one thing I need.”

“Oh?”

His eyes light up with this feral kind of hankering. “Women.”

“Women?”

“Nicholai lacked finesse. You see, he got too attached to his assassins. But, through his madness, he was onto something. To breed a child, to train them from birth with the sole purpose of being a killer… Imagine the soldiers you could produce.” I swallow back bile. “In order to breed children, I need women who can bear them.” He might be even more insane than Nicholai.

“I don’t deal in women.”

He tilts his head to the side. “But you have some, don’t you?” I say nothing, trying to keep my expression smooth. “I hear you have…procured the Sinaloa stock.”

My fists clench, and my jaw aches as I grind my teeth together. “I freed them. They’re not for sale.”