Thirty Days of Shame

by Ginger Talbot

  Where is Helenka right now? Is she being raped? Cut to pieces?

  “Damn it, Anastasia, how many times do we have to go over this?” I snap. “We are never safe. We can never relax.”

  I can hear Yuri crying in the background. He comes right up to the phone. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s all my fault!”

  Once upon a time, his loving, supportive cousin Willow Toporov would have comforted him. But now I’m Sarah Maynard, and Sarah is a mean, paranoid bitch focused on survival, not hugs and kisses.

  “Yes, it is your fault, you and your mother, because you know what to do and you chose not to! Check her cell phone location. I’ll do the same.”

  We all have cell phones with tracking enabled on them.

  “I’ll hang up and call you back.” Anastasia’s voice is rising in terror. She’s about to completely lose it. If I were there, I’d slap her so hard her ears would ring. We don’t have the luxury of getting hysterical. After all our training for every possible emergency, this is how easily she falls apart?

  We both hang up. My hands are shaking as I stab the screen on the phone with my fingers. I am desperately searching for the “find my phone” app. Damn it, I’m no better than Anastasia. Our first real emergency, and I’m losing it too. Tears burn in my eyes, and I blink frantically. It takes me three tries to get the app working.

  Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead…

  I enter Helenka’s location into the cell phone, and at the same time, my phone rings. Helenka is calling me.

  Relief flows over me like a tidal wave, quickly followed by a prickly red anger.

  “What the hell?” I snap into the phone.

  “I just went to get the mail,” Helenka says miserably. “I just wanted to get out of the house for a minute. I had my phone with me the whole time. I checked around me. I practiced my situational awareness.”

  “You are not allowed to leave the house without your mother, and you know that. You left without even telling her or Yuri? You both screwed up, big time. Why don’t you just hang a big ‘kidnap me’ sign around your neck if you’re so eager to be taken?”

  “I am not eager to be taken.” Now she’s crying.

  “Then act like you want to live another day. We will discuss this when I get home.” My heart rate starts to slow back down again.

  “I hate that our life is like this! I hate it, Willow!” she sobs.

  I stifle a groan. “Helenka, I hate it too. But we know what our choices are. We live like this, or you go back to your father, and he locks you away for a few years, then marries you off to some fat old pig for a lifetime of misery. And if he catches your mother, he’ll kill her. And beat Yuri senseless. Those are our choices. We hide, or we get caught and our life is a living hell. Are we clear?”

  “Yes. We’re clear.” Her voice is sad and resigned, and it cuts into me. Helenka is lonely and bored and isolated, and I just ripped her to shreds for wanting the tiniest bit of freedom.

  I hang up before I give in to my impulse to apologize to her. She can’t think it’s okay to let down her barriers, ever, not even for a single second.

  I head into the restaurant and start taking orders.

  An hour goes by in a blur. I’m so rattled that I’m checking out everyone and everything, looking at them through the dark lens of suspicion.

  I recognize a handsome guy who’s been in before. Phillip. A lawyer. He’s wearing a nice suit, and he smells good. He smiles at me with perfect white teeth.

  “Say…Sarah, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was just wondering, do you ever have any free time after work?”

  I instantly go into what I call “polite retreat” mode. “That is very sweet of you, but I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  Disappointment crinkles around his eyes, and he nods, sounding a little sad. “He’s a lucky man.”

  I hurry off to take orders from another table. Maybe he was genuinely a nice guy. Maybe he could have been ‘the one’.

  Then again, I doubt it. Being with Sergei did things to me.

  When he was being a bastard, he was the meanest, most loathsome son of a bitch I’ve ever met. And I grew up in a family of mobsters. But when he touched me…the sex was something I’ve never experienced before. Terrifying and exhilarating, like the swoop of a roller coaster ride. Insanely orgasmic. I still crave it, with a hunger that can never be slaked. I can’t imagine another man’s hands on me.

  Unfortunately, Sergei is a stone-cold psychopath. Not only that, I broke an agreement that I’d made with him; I was supposed to stay with him for thirty days, and I left on the twenty-seventh. When I tried to go back, he threatened me.

  Even if I wanted to go back, I couldn’t. Not that it matters; I don’t want to go back – I think.

  Sergei has split me in two. My brain tells me I never want to see him again, but my body wants to fly back into his arms. I feel like a junkie going through withdrawal; when I lie in bed, I literally ache for him. He’s my beautiful, savage fever dream, he’s a phantom who haunts my waking and sleeping moments.

  Unwelcome images flash through my brain as I move from one table to the next on autopilot.

  Me, tied down, legs spread wide, vulnerable and exposed. Sergei’s tongue stroking me until I’m weeping and begging for release. His hard hand smacking on my ass while his finger strokes the tiny pink pearl between my legs. I force the thoughts from my head; they make me ache with longing, and it disgusts me. Why don't I have more self-respect? Why does my heart pound faster for a man who insulted and rejected me?

  As I’m heading to the cook’s window to put in my orders, the day manager, Harold, comes over to me. He’s short and fat and always has an apologetic look on his face when he asks for anything. He’s about as scary as a teddy bear with the stuffing leaking out, but in my heightened state of paranoia, I feel like he looks shifty and out of sorts.

  “Hey, Sarah, how you doing today?”

  I smile and nod my head, like one of those bobblehead toys that people put on their dashboards. “Just great, thanks.”

  “Do you mind taking out the trash?”

  I frown in puzzlement. Odd request. That’s the busboy’s job, and it’s really busy right now. “I’ve got to put in two orders.”

  He snatches my order pad from my hand. “I’ll do it. Please take out the trash.”

  I see his eyes shuttle to the side, and I know. Damn it. I’m not being paranoid; I’m right.

  Somebody’s gotten to him.

  My heart pounds faster.

  I refuse to budge. “Why aren’t you asking the busboy to do it?”

  A frown creases Harold’s forehead. He huffs out an exasperated sigh. “He’s busy.”

  I glance at the busboy. He’s flirting with one of the waitresses. “No he isn’t.”

  “Look, do your job or get fired.” His voice is unnaturally high. And he never speaks to me like this.

  Anger floods through me. He’s trying to send me out into the back alley; I can just imagine what fun things are waiting for me.

  We were safe. We were just starting to rebuild our lives. Why the hell can’t people just leave us alone?

  “How much?” I snapped.

  His eyes widen, and he takes a step back.

  I move towards him. “How much money did it cost to sell me out, asshole?” I grind the words out. I’m taking off my apron as we speak. My job is done here. I’m unemployed, just like that.

  He takes another step backwards, eyes like saucers. I’ve backed him against a wall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  I keep staring at him, and he goes pale. He’s almost crying. “Please. He said he’d cut up my wife and baby girl. He knows their names. He knows where we live.”

  Now would that be Sergei, or my uncle Vilyat, or my Uncle Edik? Because it could be literally anyone from my former social circle.

  How messed up is my life?

  I head for the front door. I pull my cell pho
ne out of my pocket and Harold tries to grab it from me.

  “Get your hands off me!” I shriek at the top of my lungs. The din dies down. People are staring at us.

  “Get back here! You…you stole my phone!” he tries to bluster.

  “This phone?” I wave it over my head. It’s pink and has flowers on it.

  He gives up and hurries towards the back door.

  I quickly dial Anastasia.

  “We’re burned,” I say. “I don’t know who it is. Grab your go-bags. You guys meet me at the location, you know when. Remember plan B. And if I don’t show, you run, and you keep running.” I don’t say specifics in case somehow someone has hacked into our phones.

  We also have a plan C, D, E… I drill our plans into their skulls every night.

  “Willow! No!” Anastasia cries. “We won’t leave without you.”

  “I did all of this for you and the kids,” I insist. “Especially the kids. As long as you guys are safe, everything will be all right. If you’re taken, this was all for nothing.”

  “I can’t do this myself.” Her voice is shaking with terror. Anastasia’s never been a strong woman. She’s nine years older than me, but I’m the one who runs the show, the one who makes all the decisions. I’ve tried to get her to be more independent, but every time I insist that she make a decision about anything, she has panic attacks and her chest starts heaving, and it freaks out the kids.

  “Fucking man up, Anastasia. You will pack up and run for it, unless you want Helenka to be married to a sixty-year-old who will pump her full of babies,” I snap. “Unless you want Vilyat to beat your son until he breaks him.”

  I’m playing dirty pool.

  That’s what I am now. Dirty.

  She’s crying as I hang up.

  I elbow my way through a crowd of customers lining up to be seated, and make it out of the front door. I step out into the bright, hot daylight, and there he is. His eyes are trained on me like lasers, powered by hate and vengeance.

  This is bad. This is worse than bad. “Hello,” I say, my voice steady, as my insides turn to water. Run, Anastasia, run. And never look back. “Have you come to kill me?”

  Chapter Two

  The world seems to swim and shimmer in front of me, in a haze of terror.

  The man before me is not who I expected.

  He’s the worst of all possibilities. He’s an outcome I hadn’t even considered.

  It’s Feodyr, who used to be Sergei’s right-hand man, until he betrayed Sergei.

  Feodyr looks even worse than the last time I saw him – the night Sergei pounded his face in.

  His hair, once clipped close to his skull, is growing out, stringy and greasy. His nose is skewed to the right, and the left side of his face sags a little, forcing his lip into a permanent sneer. Nerve damage from the beating, I’d imagine. And I can actually see a dent in his skull; that’s how hard Sergei punches.

  When I was being held prisoner in Sergei’s mansion by the sea, Feodyr was clean and immaculately dressed. He did seem to drink a lot, but he handled it just fine. Not anymore. From the looks of him, and the smell, he’s been drinking non-stop since he evaded his police guard and fled the hospital a couple of months ago. That and sleeping rough. He moves in a sour fog of body odor, whiskey fumes, and reeking breath, his T-shirt and jeans are stained, and his face is puffy.

  And he’s carrying a newspaper…which is wrapped around the pistol that he’s pointing at my stomach.

  People are streaming around us on the sidewalk, talking on their phones, talking to each other. They brush by him; they’re inches away from a tightly coiled bundle of rage shaped like a human. Nobody but me notices the gun.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him.

  The right half his mouth twitches up a hideous mockery of a grin. “Sergei sent me. He wants me to rape, torture and murder you. Personally, I couldn’t get it up for an ugly whore like you, Willow, so you’ll have to settle for just the torture and murder part. I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

  “No he didn’t,” I say, keeping my voice and my expression calm. “First of all, if he wanted that done, he’d do it himself. And more importantly, there’s no way you’re still working for him. Looking like that? Smelling like that? He’s a professional. He only hires professionals. You look like you should be in line at a soup kitchen.”

  Rage twists his bloated face. “You little cunt!”

  He storms towards me. I quickly back up, into an iron railing. He moves so he’s standing two feet away from me. I force myself not to look down at the gun that’s ready to punch holes in my flesh.

  “We’re surrounded by people, in the middle of the day,” I point out to him. “You think I’m just going to let you kidnap me?”

  “Yes, I do, actually.” He glances at a playground across the street, where mothers are pushing toddlers on swings. My heart stutters in my chest. Is he threatening to do what I think he is?

  His furious gaze lights on me again. “You’re right that Sergei won’t let me work for him anymore. He’d kill me if he saw me. Because of you.” He chokes on a sob. Sergei was everything to him. Sergei and his gang of fanatical followers, and the campaign of revenge against my family. It was all Feodyr lived for. “You ruined him. I tried to save him from you, but he was too far gone.”

  He thought Sergei was falling for me, to the point where he might falter in their mission. He thought wrong. But he was so afraid of Sergei developing any chink in his armor that he tried to “save” Sergei by getting rid of me. He kidnapped me and took me to a party where a gang of mobster scum were molesting women who were victims of human trafficking.

  When Sergei and his men came to rescue me, they killed every last one of the mobsters and freed the women. I knew how close Sergei had been to Feodyr, so I stopped him from beating the bastard to death with his bare hands. I told him to leave Feodyr to the cops, to let him rot in prison. That was a mistake.

  A mistake that will cost me my life. I probably have only hours to live, and those hours will be a nightmare.

  And he’s going to kill me for nothing. I didn’t affect Sergei in the slightest. If I had, he wouldn’t have refused me when I begged to go back.

  I meet Feodyr’s crazed, bloodshot gaze. “You’re wrong. Sergei never cared about me. He’d have to be capable of normal human emotion to do that, and he’s not. He’s a psychopath. He’s just better at being a psychopath than you are.”

  Rage twists Feodyr’s features. “Shut the hell up, you…” He rattles off a stream of Russian words that I assume are an exceptionally colorful way to tell me I’m a whore. My Russian is decent, but not great, and I only know the basic swear-words.

  It’s ironic. Feodyr can’t stand me saying a single bad thing about Sergei, even though Sergei tried to kill him.

  Feodyr’s face is flushing an ugly red. Sweat beads on his forehead and runs down the sides of his face. Can I reason with him? Is there any hope for me?

  “I asked him if I could go back to him, and he said no!” There’s an edge of pleading to my voice. “He doesn’t care if I live or die! If you hurt me, he won’t blink an eye. I’m nothing to him.”

  “You going to go down on your knees and beg?” Feodyr sneers. “Offer to suck my cock if I just let you live?”

  Never.

  “If you shoot me, you will be hunted down by the police and killed,” I say. My heart is beating a mile a minute.

  He barks out a hideous sound that I think might be a laugh. “You think I fucking care about that? About anything? This is the end for me. Today.”

  My heart sinks, and tears of panic prick my eyes. He’s here on a suicide mission. There’s no reasoning, no begging, no hope. He’s staggered far, far away from the land of the sane and the rational. He’s in a place where reality can’t reach him.

  He’s swaying, and a few people glance at him because he’s raised his voice, but nobody stops to help me. I can’t say I blame them; Feodyr is big and scary-looking, an
d menace rolls off him like a stinking toxic fog.

  He glances at the playground again. Then his gaze returns to me. He shakes the gun, and the newspaper rattles. “You can come with me right now, or I will shoot the children in the playground, and then shoot you in the gut. Either way you’ll die in agony, but if you stay here, you’ll be taking a bunch of innocent children with you.” He grimaces. I think he’s trying to sneer at me.

  I want to scream with frustration. Because I was born into the wrong family, my only life choices are to pick a horrible nightmare scenario, or an even worse nightmare scenario.

  It would be my fault if Feodyr murdered a bunch of preschoolers? It was my fault that Sergei held me as collateral for my uncle’s five-million-dollar debt, and treated me like a slave because of crimes that my family committed against him?

  But trying to point that out to him would be a waste of breath – and I know I don’t have many breaths left.

  “Fine,” I spit. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Drop your cell phone on the ground.”

  I obey him, pulling the cell phone from my pocket and dropping it.

  It’s okay. Anastasia and the kids are safe. That’s all that matters.

  But I don’t want to die. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.

  I let him lead me around a corner, down an alleyway, and to a parking lot. He drags me over to a car. The parking lot attendant is sitting in the booth, ignoring us so hard that I know that Feodyr paid him off. He glances around, then pops open the trunk.

  My breakfast rises in my throat. Tears blur my vision. This is the end. If I run and scream, he’ll kill other people, then kill me anyway.

  The last decent thing I can do with my life is save a bunch of strangers who will never know what I did for them.

  I can’t help myself. I let out a single, hiccupping sob. I hate myself for it, because I hear Feodyr snicker in response.

  Helenka. Yuri. Anastasia. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry to leave you.

  He spins me around, quickly binds my hand behind me with a zip tie, and scoops me up in his arms. I try not to retch at his stinking body. He drops me into the trunk with a rough thud.