19. Katya

I lay in bed for a while feeling nauseous, replaying the grisly scene from the day before in my head. Yuri fucked me and made me forget for a while but there’s no forgetting now. We can only use that distraction for so many hours of the day. I jump up and run to throw up in the bathroom. When I’m finished, I feel mildly better, but puking sapped all my strength. I can barely pull myself up off the bathroom floor. I have just enough energy to wash my mouth and flush before I sink down onto the cool tile again.

I need to get my brain back on track. These thoughts of Tasha and Dmitry do nothing to help change my situation. My situation. I can’t believe I slept with Yuri again. Worse, I told him so much, so easily. It honestly felt like we had some sort of emotional connection, the way he held me and the way I told him about love and marriage and everything else. Then when I ask a simple question, you know reciprocation, part of how conversations go, he freezes up and leaves. I don’t understand my reaction to him at all. Stockholm syndrome, maybe?

I should escape again. At least try. I’m sure to fail, but I need to try, for me.

For my sanity.

Still, I don’t have that desire to leave like I did before, especially since Yuri held me and started to share his thoughts. I’m going insane, clearly.

I can’t help but wonder what happened to him to make him the way he is. Normal men don’t kidnap women like this, especially when they can have any woman they want.

Am I distracting him? Weakening him? Just like I did with Dmitry. And Tasha?

Tasha’s body on the concrete merges with Dmitry in his car wreck. They’re all tangled up for me, I can’t focus on just one death, they’re intertwined. I’m certain I never grieved for Dmitry four years ago. I thought I did— I wore black, I got depressed, I cried a lot— but I never confronted death.

Nausea rolls through me, the more I try not to think about her death, the more I see it.

“Oh God,” I sit up and fling open the toilet lid.

This can’t go on, feeling like this, trapped in the visual memories of these grisly deaths. What can I do?

I could visit Dmitry’s grave – at least he has one, unlike Tasha I bet. I haven’t been since the funeral.

The relief that came from throwing up starts receding slowly, and I feel nauseous all over again.

Oh God, make this stop, I think desperately as I dry heave.

“Are you sick?” Yuri asks, he’s standing behind me, a confused look on his face.

My eyes find him and stop there. He was stunningly handsome, dressed in a dark, tailored suit. The informal cut of the suit did nothing to soften the hard lines of his body. For a moment I couldn’t help remembering the feel of his arms around me, his solid chest beneath my cheek. He gave me exactly what I needed yesterday but that Yuri is gone, now. I know that.

I cringe away from him. I hate that I’m shallow enough to care what I look like right now, but I do care.

Before I can figure out a way to melt into the floor or flush myself away, so Yuri doesn’t see me like this, another spell of nausea seizes me. I bend over the open toilet again as the spasm rack through my body.

I could feel him looking at me, his eyes are like sunlight on my skin.

“Better now?”

I wipe my chin. “Not even close.” I shoved past him, back into the bedroom. The room swims in my vision and I plop down on the bed, as weak and small as I’ve ever been.

Yuri either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

His face was inscrutable, as always. His manner was nonchalant, unconcerned, totally relaxed. But his voice gave him away, “Want me to call a doctor?” he asks quietly, gently. With more subtle concern than I’ve ever heard from him. Or I’m just going insane. Really, how could I tell such fine variations in his voice to know concern from not giving a shit? But still, I could tell.

“No, it’s in my head. Unless you have the number for a shrink, I’m not sure a doctor can do anything.”

“No shrink. Regular doctors have sleeping pills or Xanax or something to take the edge off,” he says helpfully. “Wait here,” he leaves and goes to an office, I hear drawers opening and the scratching of pen on paper.

“Here, Dr. Milan Zemlin. He’s trustworthy and discreet and sends bills to me.”

He handed the paper with the Dr’s number on it to me. “You want me to call? I thought you preferred to do everything and make me totally dependent on you?’

He sits down, smiling and an chuckle escaped him, “Even helpless, you’ve never been dependent on me. To that end, I’ve been thinking of giving you more freedom, what do you think about that?”

“Freedom to make my own Doctor’s appointment? Yippee.”

“Freedom like your own place. Your own home to let your nesting instinct run wild and free. “I’ll visit, protect you, fuck you but it’ll be your place where you can even have your own rules.”

“Would that be safe?”

“Not as safe as locking you away in a vault but you won’t escape from your own place? You’d have a full security team outside the walls around the clock. You’ll be safe.” He stands up, “I’ll visit frequently, and check on you.”

“Why now?”

“Petya made his move and failed. He won’t try again for a while, we killed too many of his people, and you’ve wanted this, so …”

“No school but a place of my own to keep me occupied?”

“Pretty much. Think of it as a wedding present.”

“What? You’re still want to go through with that?”

“Now more than ever. Sooner the better, Petya might give up looking for you if he hears you’re married.”

“You’re really going to make me marry you?” I whisper. “Even though you don’t care about me?”

His expression remains impassive. “The moment you become my wife, you become Bratva. You become mine. You’ll be entitled to all the privileges and protections due to a Bratva wife. I’m doing you a favor, Katya.”

“I don’t know how to be a Bratva wife.”

“You’ll learn.”

I don’t want to learn how to live without love. I don’t want to learn how to be useful to Yuri without ever meaning anything to him.

I want so badly to tell him all of that, instead I ask the obvious: “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

“There’s always a catch with you.”

“No catch.”

I don’t believe him but can’t argue with him. A sudden wave of nausea hit me and I run to the bathroom to vomit again.