by Kendall Duke
“Of course I like it.” The breeze ruffled my hair, and I sighed with true contentment. “This is perfect,” I told him. I knew he could hear the tears in my voice, but I just hoped he understood they were happy tears—tears of pure joy. “This is… Words can’t even do it justice, Ivan.”
I couldn’t believe how much money he’d spent, how many people he tasked with this job, how much work he’d done just to have this moment with me. Just for this.
I felt loved. I felt it in my bones.
“You are my heart, Julie,” he said simply, and when we went back to the giant four-poster bed, he tenderly undressed me with his calloused hands, kissing my entire body before laying me down and covering me with the fluffy blankets. The last thing I saw before my eyes succumbed to exhaustion was Ivan’s tender gaze as he looked down on me. I dreamed sweet dreams all night.
~~~
Ivan wasn’t there when I woke up, but the minute I did my cell phone blinked and I looked down at a text message telling me breakfast would be ready whenever I wanted, just to open the door and tell the man there what I liked. I threw on a robe and padded over to the entrance, looking through the peephole; a tall man with blonde hair was standing right outside, obediently waiting. I opened the door and smiled shyly at him through the crack. “Petyr?”
He was with Ivan when they first broke in to my father’s house, expecting to see him with the stash he’d stolen and instead greeting me when I came home from my classes. It was a bigger surprise for me than for them, but when Ivan was unexpectedly tasked with staying behind to be my bodyguard things really began. Petyr smiled and raised his hand in a small wave. I asked him if I could have a yogurt parfait, something I noticed on the menu tucked under my phone, and he nodded and texted someone immediately. I said thank you and went back in the room to bathe.
The wall of orchids was enchanting. It made me feel like I was showering in a greenhouse. The tropical breeze blew through the room, carrying with it the laughter of children on the beach and the sounds of crashing waves. I couldn’t wait to see it, suddenly, so I threw on a sundress I’d chosen just yesterday from a stack of clothes Ivan brought for me to pick through before our flight and went out to the balcony. The day was electrically bright, the equatorial sun glaring down on white sand and shining water, and I had to shield my eyes even though I was in the shade. We were only four stories up—Ivan refused to be on the ground floor, for obvious reasons, and the resort was only four stories high—but I felt like I could see for miles. The whole world was out there. I heard a knock at the door and rushed back to eat my parfait, not wanting to wait another second before I saw the beauty below me up close.
I thanked Petyr, took the parfait out to the veranda, and sat down at the small table there to eat. I watched the people below, walking, playing beach ball, dragging snorkel gear and splashing in the shallow surf; my yogurt was delicious, and I relished the mango, strawberry and papaya stacked on top. My stomach was cooperating for now, so I took out my phone while I nibbled and texted Ivan. He immediately called back.
“I did not want to wake you,” he explained. “I kiss you before I say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” My heart raced illogically at his words. What did he mean by good-bye?
“I do not want to see you on wedding day, milaya,” he said. I could hear the sound of the ocean behind him. “Is old tradition in your country, da?”
“Da,” I said, and smiled down at the phone before I took another bite. “Thank you for this, Ivan… For all of it. It still doesn’t seem real.”
“Is real,” he said softly, and I could just picture the way he looked right now, the softness lighting his dark eyes from within, the edges of his full mouth. “Is real, and is all for you. I love you, my Julie.”
“I love you too,” I said, and smiled again. My stomach lurched and for a second I worried I would have to hang up, but then it settled. I took a sip of water.
“Julie, you are alright?”
“Yes, yes, just my stomach, Vanya, promise,” I said, trying to reassure him. I realized suddenly we hadn’t been apart… Truly apart… I couldn’t remember the last time I was away from him. He’d always been in the house with me, or patrolling outside; we ran almost all of our errands together, or he would have things delivered or go out when I was asleep. But the sensation of being away from him was oddly discomfiting, even if we would be together that evening.
My stomach lurched again.
“Julie?”
“I’m alright—it’s just, you know, my stomach and…” I felt ridiculous, but decided to be honest. “And I miss you, as dumb as that sounds.”
“That does not sound dumb,” he said. “I am glad you miss me.”
I laughed. “You would be.”
“I am,” he said, defiance in his voice. “I want you want me like I want you. This only time I think I can be away from you, Julie, for this long. I am thinking how I can be driver-that-is-not-driver for you when you go school.” It made me giggle. “Yes, I can do this,” he said, half to himself.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get there,” I said, and my laugh was interrupted by yet another lurch of my stomach. “Ivan, I think I have to go—my stomach is really bothering me. Do I have things to do today, anything I need to plan for?”
“Milaya, you should rest—the baby—”
“I know,” I said, realizing he was right. “But what about the wedding? Do I need to… I don’t know, taste cakes or something? Pick out flowers?”
“I have done these things, milaya, please forgive me—I had to hurry for wedding happen fast. I think, first anniversary, then you can pick everything, we do it again.” I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to do any work, even if it was as pleasant as eating cake, and the idea of planning a second lovely anniversary like this one made me smile. Only Ivan would be so thoughtful.
“Sounds great,” I said, and this time, my stomach didn’t lurch—my heart did. “Ivan—Ivan I have to go—” I put my hand over my chest and deepened my breathing. I could hear his voice saying good-bye, but I suddenly couldn’t respond.
Everything was slowing down. The sunlight seemed far too bright, like the entire world was suddenly painted a blinding white. My spoon hit the table with a clatter that echoed through my brain as I fell down, down, down, and just as everything had burned white a second before, the whole world turned black. Just like that.
~~~
I awoke crumpled on the ground, the world dark and loud and painful around me.
It took me a minute to realize I wasn’t on the ground at all, but the floor of a car--a limousine, in fact. The sound of thunder all around me was the rushing wind barreling through the open windows as we drove at high speeds, the scenery rushing by in a blur; the ground sounded too close with my ear pressed to the floor, a terrifying roar less than a foot away. The darkness vanished when I forced myself on to my elbows and saw the brightness of the world outside, the tropical blue sky and palm trees, just barely visible as they whipped by the window. I sat upright, blinking, my whole body angry. I clutched my abdomen and prayed that the baby was alright, and luckily there were no distress signals coming from the tiny person-to-be. Instead, it was my head and my stomach that were upset, throbbing and insistent that something was very wrong.
“He did a good job,” a familiar voice said, and to my shock I looked up at my father’s face. He was studying me, sitting in the backseat of the limo, far enough away from me that we weren’t touching even though I’d been sprawled on the floor. He took a drink from the glass in his hand, and I could just hear the ice tinkling against the glass. “I told him, I do not want to sit in the backseat of this car with vomit. Do not make her sick. And he put right amount in your breakfast—just right. You are not sick, your baby is fine.” My father smiled down at me, an unctuous smile that I somehow understood to mean that our relationship was forever altered, that I was now being treated like one of his enemies. This was the smile men would’ve seen before my fa
ther killed them, I realized; this might even be the smile he gave my mother before she died. I had never entertained the thought until my conversations with Alexei and Ivan, but now I could see it plainly: my father was a brutal man. A horrible man. A villain. “Was too easy—your fiancé is slipping, Jules. He is not as good at his job now.” His eyes were suddenly cold. “A man in love is a foolish man.”
“He’ll find me,” I said, no doubt in my heart. I knew he would. He would never let me go, he would always protect me.
“No, he will not,” my father said, and I hated the smug look on his face. “You will be with me until the baby is born, and then I will sell you like a pig in the market.” His eyes were frozen, absolutely arctic. “You betray me, Jules. You broke a deal I made—you put me in a bad position.”
“You sold me to save your own ass,” I snarled, not believing what I was hearing. “You sold your own daughter.”
“You are an asset,” he said simply, and took another drink, the ice dancing merrily in his glass as we whipped along the highway. The one highway leading back to the airport, the same road Ivan drove me on last night, so happily, so blissfully unaware that I was still being hunted. “I made deal with man that does not like your Ivan so much—ex-husband of his sister, a man with many political connections. Very powerful man.” My father sighed as if the conversation were boring him. “Ivan did not kill him when he should’ve—this is his own weakness. He listen to his sister; she plead for the life of her children’s father.” My own father rolled his eyes. “So sentimental. But this works for me.”
“You stole from them,” I said, staring at him. “From your own people. Knowing what it would mean—for you and for me.”
“I make a decision, think I am taken care of for life—but it does not end like I imagine,” he said, shrugging in a way that suddenly, awfully, reminded me of Ivan. Were all Russian gangsters so indifferent to horror? “The package was not as valuable as I thought. And yes,” he said, his voice still bored, “I expect my daughter to make this easier on me. Good business. That,” he said, suddenly glaring at me, “is what daughter is for.” He sighed once more, looking out the window as if I disgusted him. “But you fail me.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“You fail me!” He pointed at my face, his finger suddenly inches away from my nose. “You seduce this Ivan, you fool this Sergei into thinking you are a whore—you are not a whore,” he snarled, and waved his hand in the air as if imagining the argument with Sergei himself. “I tell him this. I make sure you are a virgin—alone, will be happy with any man. Good price. But he does not believe me.” My father narrowed his eyes at me. “And then… And then you marry second in command? A whore cannot do this.” He pointed at me again. “You fail me, daughter.”
“I’m not your daughter, not any more,” I growled, but he waved my words away.
“I make you. You belong to me.”
“I belong to Ivan!” I never in a million years thought these words—the words that brought me so much shame to hear, but he had been so adamant about—these words would be my greatest defense. “The whole organization knows I belong to him! You’ll never get away with this,” I hissed, and for the first time he looked unsettled. “Never. He’ll hunt you down and kill you for it.”
“Nyet,” my father said, and I knew I was getting to him when he spoke Russian—when he spoke the language he’d made sure I would never understand, so I could never understand that I was just an insurance policy for him. “I kill you for it. I take your baby and sell it back to him, and then they will all understand that I am the one they should not have let go. I am the one in charge.”
“You’re nothing,” I said, and all of a sudden I felt pity for him. What a horrible life. “You’re nothing now. You’re grasping at straws. And you’re going to die for this, very soon. And no one will be sorry. Not even your own daughter.” I knew this wasn’t completely true; I wasn’t as hard as my father. I would be sorry, deep down, that he hadn’t been able to love me like he should’ve. But I wasn’t going to mourn him beyond what I already had.
I don’t remember the rest of the ride.
He reached out, quick as lightning, and struck my face. The last thing I remember was the dark creeping in as the roar of the floorboards rattled under my cheek, and praying for my baby to be alright. Just that.
~~~
We didn’t go to the airport, as I’d suspected; instead, we were at a dock somewhere, a very small one, the sun still bright overhead. It gleamed on the still pools of water a fresh rain left on the wooden slats, and there were only five boats moored there. There was no one at the harbor master’s building, and I hoped that they hadn’t hurt whoever might have worked there. Hopefully my father’s operation was small enough not to require a ton of man-power, and no one on the boat I was sure he’d already commissioned would be hurt either. I felt a gun nudging my back as I stood up, crawling my way out of the cab, and knew my father was behind me. To my surprise, Petyr stepped out of the front. He’d driven us there, and must have been the conspirator that poisoned my breakfast. He didn’t look at me even once, and it was hard to remember his smiling face as he thanked me for dinner those many months ago. I never would have guessed that he’d betray Ivan, but I had to hope my fiancé would. Otherwise, I was about to disappear into the ocean on a tiny yacht, never to be seen again.
My heart hurt.
My Vanya, I thought, remembering his handsome face, and then the gun pushed me forward again. I stumbled towards the dock, wondering what I could do to escape without endangering the baby. We were just at three months, now, and Dr. Landau had explained that if we made it past the first trimester our chances were better… But that meant just ordinary, every day survival, not jumping off a dock into the frothing ocean and trying to outswim two men intent on kidnapping me. Or getting shot. I felt the tears start to come as the hopelessness of my situation sank in.
We were almost at the end of the dock, and sure enough, a small yacht awaited us. There didn’t appear to be anyone inside, and I guessed that my father had traded all his remaining wealth to Petyr for his help. This would be a very small operation indeed… And if something went wrong—if I got sick, if the baby was in danger—that meant there was no one to assist us, no medical personnel at all. I would die, and they would just throw me overboard and start their lives again in Argentina or Pakistan or wherever. This was it for me.
My feet stopped working as I thought about it. The gun grew more insistent in my back. The tears were trailing down my cheeks, now, my sadness too much to bear.
Was there any way my child could survive if this was where they planned to keep me for the remaining six months?
If I could barely keep enough food down with the best possible care on dry land, how would I be able to survive life on a rocking ship?
The gun pushed again, harder.
And then…
CRACK! The sound of a loud gunshot made me scream, drop to the ground, and throw my hands over my head. I heard a heavy thump beside me, and when I allowed myself to look I could only scream louder—Petyr was laying next to me, stone dead. His bright eyes looked at nothing. I stood up and started to scramble towards the yacht, convinced my father had betrayed him, when a familiar voice halted my steps.
“This is very rude,” Ivan said. “If you want to come to wedding, you must ask Julie.” I turned, very slowly, and saw Ivan at the end of the dock, Alexei standing next to him. I could tell that he’d shot Petyr as he moved the gun a fraction of an inch to the left, now pointing it at my father. Ivan was unarmed, his palms open in a placating gesture as he slowly walked towards us. Alexei followed behind, his face glacial. Ivan looked as he had the very first time I saw him: arrogant, collected, assessing. Indifferent.
“Perhaps there was a misunderstanding,” my father said, and then I felt the gun against my temple, his arm wrapping around my neck as he spoke. I held very still. Ivan continued to come towards us until I heard the click of
the safety, and then everyone stopped moving. “I hear you bought her, Ivan. But not from me—from Sergei, for next to nothing.”
“Da,” Ivan said, nodding as if this was common knowledge. “I pay what she is worth.”
“Your bride was worth only a trifle?”
“To Sergei,” Alexei said sharply.
“To me, of course, she is priceless,” Ivan said, even though he hadn’t looked at me even once. “But this is business, da?”
“She is my business,” my father snarled, and pressed the gun harder against my temple. I felt my eyes closing and began to pray for my child, hoping he wouldn’t hurt us, somehow. There had to be a way out of this. “How did you find us?”
“Does not matter,” Ivan said, shrugging. “Now we are here.” He gave my father a direct look, some of his indifference fading as his eyes flashed. “Now you tell me what you want. Now we do business, you and I.” He took a tiny step closer.
“I want to start over. As pakhan. I want a unit.”
“You are not bargaining with right man—Sergei is who you must ask,” Ivan said, still moving ever closer, inch by inch. “You know this.”
“You ask him. For me.” My father snarled something else in Russian that Ivan didn’t react to, but Alexei, close behind him, exhaled slowly.
“I do not think I like the way you do business,” Alexei said. His voice was calm and cold, which bothered me—Alexei was the one that appeared congenial, even if he was clever and very cunning. He didn’t bother with the disguise he usually wore right now, and his eyes hard. “I think I speak for my father when I say that he will not give you this position.”
“I heard you had something to do with this,” my father snarled, and his grip on my neck tightened. “I heard you ruined my daughter.”
“Clearly not,” Alexei said, some of his charm returning as he glanced at me with a smile. “If she is still marrying second in command, she must be very good girl.” I gulped.
