by Nicole Fox
“Enough,” Declan whispers, trembling in anger. It’s clear he came down here to lord it over me. I suppose he waited because he thought I’d be broken by now. He thought wrong. “Stop it! That’s enough fucking Russian drivel! Speak English!”
I look at him like he’s just walked into the room. “Declan, my friend. How can I help you today?”
He bares his teeth, sucking in breath. Behind him, Jerry bristles.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve on you,” Declan snarls. His flinty eyes are watery. He looks pathetic. “Maybe I’ll just have at you now, eh? What’re you gonna do then? Beat you like the bitch you are. Beat you like a fucking woman.”
“Beat you like a woman,” I repeat. “This is your hero, Jerry. The man who wants to beat me like a woman.”
But Jerry isn’t like Rafferty, I realize. He likes how sadistic Declan is. “That’s right,” he grunts. “And I’ll be right behind him. You ain’t got any friends here, Russian.”
“You could line up your ten best fighters and have at me all at once,” I mock. “You still wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Declan’s fist catches me in the gut. I don’t make a sound. I just tense up my belly, taking it. We used to do this in boxing practice when we were teenagers. Hit each other as hard as we could. Condition ourselves. It’s not so different. Declan looks at me in disbelief, swings, hits me again.
“Fucking robot,” he snaps. He spins on Jerry. Laughing wildly, he says, “You know what? That’s a fine idea. Let’s do it. Go get some men, Jerry. Let’s have ourselves an old-fashioned beatdown.”
“Don’t forget the blindfold,” I goad. “You wouldn’t want it to be a fair fight, would you?”
“I mean it,” Declan growls, still looking at Jerry. Jerry is clearly less drunk than Declan. He looks warily between us. I can tell he’s thinking he needs to get permission from Cormac.
Which pisses me off, because I’m ready for a fight. “What’s the matter, Jerry?” I ask. “Scared I won’t go easy on you this time?”
His eyes widen in anger. He grimaces. “All right, let’s do this,” he growls.
“Let’s fucking do this,” I agree.
This is exactly the sort of thing Garret was talking about when he said not to give them a reason to kill me. But there’s only so much a man can take. If they’re stupid enough to untie me, then of course I’m going to fight.
Osip taught me never to back down. So, when around six men walk into the room, I’m ready. Two are Jerry and Declan. I don’t recognize the other four. But they all have serious looks in their eyes. They’re all young, too, I notice. The sort of foolish, eager men who think that a man like Declan has any real power.
“You probably think I’ll let you fight them one on one,” Declan growls, smirking over at me. He’s drunk more since he left, I can tell. He’s having trouble standing up straight. His eyes are a murky red. “But I’m not letting you get away with that cowardly shit. You think you’re tough? Then take all of us.”
I clench my fists, sharp anger moving through me. My body feels primed, ready for violence. The atmosphere in the room is one of murder. I’ve felt this before. With or without Cormac’s permission, I know these men are going to get carried away. If I let them, they will beat me to death. I have to stay alive.
For Jamie.
For our child.
For a chance at the life I’ve been dreaming about.
Because now, threatened with the very real possibility that I could die here, I realize how much I care about her. Anything can happen in a fight. These men could rush me, overpower me. Tackle me to the ground so that my skull bounces and cracks on the concrete.
People can die far quicker than most civilians think. Far slower, too, but it’s not that that I’m worried about right now.
“That’s fine by me.”
Declan waves a drunken hand. “Untie the dog.”
The men exchange wary glances. They’re all armed, which is a big mistake, since I could steal one of their weapons. Jerry catches me studying their guns and frowns. He leans close to Declan and whispers something in his ear.
“You’re right,” he mutters. “Okay. Men, if this bastard tries anything, kill him where he stands. Jerry, cut him loose. Then three of us will keep our guns on the son of a bitch. The rest, it’s bare-knuckled war.”
I don’t fight as Jerry unties me. I’m worried by how suddenly and desperately my hands drop, though. And the thumping in my shoulder joints. My ankles feel raw. My body stings with tiredness and hunger and dehydration.
I back up against the wall, watching. Jerry, Declan, and another man aim their guns into the rooms. The other three drop their guns in the hallway, behind them. They walk into the cell looking nowhere near as confident as they had when they thought it was going to be six on one.
“Do you really need three guns on me, Declan?” I laugh. “It seems like you’re giving yourself an excuse not to fight.”
He glances angrily at Jerry. I’m guessing it was his idea, then. He knows that I’d have half a chance at disarming two men. Grab one—shoot the other. But three of them? That’s a trickier thing.
“Just get on with it!” he orders. “Now!”
The men are young, but not identical. Two are stocky and look like they work out. But they move awkwardly, hands raised like they’ve never fought before. One bald, the other black-haired—neither is a threat. The third is tall and skinnier. But he has a good stance. His knuckles are grazed and red. KILL is tattooed on one fist. DEAD on the other.
“A little redundant, no?” I grin, nodding at his hands.
He doesn’t blink. “I’ve been told that before, yeah.” He bobs and weaves casually as he talks. “But are we fighting, or talking?”
I step forward, hands lowered slightly. Baiting them. “I suppose that’s up to you, gentlemen.”
And they pounce.
Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the tattooed man pounces. The other two lumber forward unskillfully. I step back, sizing them up. I know that I have to deal with the dangerous man first.
So I let the slow men get their shots in, ignoring them as they slap pathetically at my back. The man with the KILL tattoo throws a right hook. I make to duck. But then he grins. I realize he was just feinting. Before I can dodge, he throws a left jab instead.
It hits me in the stomach. And the first thing I think is, Jamie. Our child.
In the middle of a fight, that’s what I’m thinking. I grunt, taking the blow. He follows with an overhand right that’d leave me bruised and cut if it connected.
But my wits are sharp now.
I grab the black-haired man by the shoulders before his punch can land and throw him at the wall. He lands with a crunching noise, whimpering.
Tsk-tsk. Mr. KILL-DEAD lets out puffs of air as he strikes. The other gasps and grunts laboriously. I spin away from him and fall to one knee, pretending to fall. He backs off, seeing I’m faking. But the bald one isn’t so perceptive. He really thinks I’ve fallen.
“No!” his colleague roars.
But it’s too late.
He’s already leapt at me, aiming a clumsy kick at my face. I catch his ankle and dive to my feet at the same time. I wrench his leg way up, his foot ending above his head. His pants tear. And then something else tears—tendon, muscle, flesh.
“Ahhhhh!” he cries, melting to the floor. “Ah-ah-ahhhhhh!”
I let out a wheezing gasp when the final man jumps at me, hands flaring. He’s fighting well. He catches me twice in the chest, kicks me three times in the leg. He knows what he’s doing. But, when I finally get a hold of his shoulders, I can tell he’s a kickboxer. He’s never wrestled before.
I shove him up against the wall and hold him there. Growling in Russian, I headbutt him in the nose, hard. Blood sprays.
It’s so gory that even Jerry looks away, wincing. When I step back, KILL-DEAD springs at me again, fighting through the injury. We go at each other again. He almost shatters my jaw, he h
its me with such a hard right hook.
But then he tries to follow up and I catch his wrist. With a vicious wrench upward, his wrist snaps.
“Enough,” I tell him. “Don’t come at me one-handed. It will not end well for you.”
He bares his bloody teeth. “Fucking Russian!” But I can tell he harbors some respect for me, too. “Let’s go. I ain’t quitting now.”
“I’ll break your other wrist and snap your neck,” I tell him coldly. “You fought well. But you have a lot to learn.”
“Didn’t realize you were gonna pull that wrestling shit,” he scowls. “Come on!”
He throws himself at me again, swinging wildly with his one good hand. I catch him under the armpit and spin him around, tossing him to the ground. I put my knee on his back and wrench his hand up, disabling him.
“Are we done?” I drawl, meeting Declan’s eye. He looks terrified. “Or would you like to step in here yourself?”
“J-Jerry,” Declan whispers. His gaze flits between the three men in disbelief. “Get him. Get him now!”
Jerry’s face wrinkles. He scratches at his teardrop tattoo absentmindedly. Almost like he doesn’t trust what it represents anymore. Like he’s meant to be a cold-blooded killer. But he’s not. He’s just a pretender.
“I don’t think …” He deflates. “Look at them, Declan. What do you expect me to do?”
“What do I—” He bites down. “I expect you to … to fucking humiliate him!”
“Do it yourself, Declan,” I say. “If you really think it can be done.”
Declan commands, “Get the guns. The ones with the rubber bullets.”
I sigh, nodding. “I wondered how long it was going to be until you resorted to that. Well, look at your men. Three against one, and look at what I did to them. So I’ll tell you again. Kill me now. Or I will make you pay.”
I could use one of the men I beat as a human shield, but there’s no point. That might push Declan to lose his temper and try to execute me again, like he did in the garden. And, really, I’ve already beaten him.
When he shoots me with the rubber bullets, he looks sad. He doesn’t even enjoy it. I can tell he wants me to scream out. To show some sign that he has power over me. But I don’t. I just retreat into my mind. I think about Jamie and our baby.
I am at peace.
Later, when I’m strung up again, I close my eyes and smile through the pain. Because the strangest fantasy has come to me. One that would normally chill me to my core. But now, I wish I was really there.
Our child has his back to us, a big woolly cap over his head. He is piling snow onto a snowman. Jamie smiles at me, and then leans into her camera. Snapping photos.
And I stand way back, watching the whole thing.
Our house is in the background.
It isn’t burning.
24
Jamie
I don’t really know how to describe the feeling that basically enslaves me while I wait for the exhibition. I want the day to hurry up but also wish it would never happen. I hate that it has to happen. I guess a therapist might call it depression, and yeah, maybe that’s what it feels like: a black cloud not just hanging over my head but infusing me.
Everything is just horrible.
I recognize that this is very self-pitying. I really don’t want to be like this. But Dad won’t let me see Andrei and, even though Garret delivered Andrei’s message—“he said he’d be there for your child”—it’s not much consolation.
I try to lose myself in my work, spending long hours in the studio, tinkering with photos. But often I’ll find my hand straying to my belly, just holding it there, wondering how I ever could’ve been the sort of person who bought a man just for a prop.
Andrei isn’t a prop or a slave.
I sit in the studio staring down at the ruined photo in the fluid, the contrast all messed up, overdeveloped. Just like me, I guess. All my colors are wrong. Everything has changed now, all my frames of reference completely wrecked.
I laugh at myself. Out of necessity, I think.
Because if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.
It’s the day of the exhibition and, instead of rushing around getting everything ready like I should be, I’m staring down at a ruined photograph, letting it get more ruined.
I’ve only seen Dad once since our argument, and it didn’t go well. We were crossing paths in the hallway. Garret was walking behind me, since he’s been pretty much everywhere with me lately. Even now, he’s waiting outside. He wants to keep me safe, he says.
I didn’t plan to, but when I saw that Dad was just going to ignore me, I walked right up to him, stopping him in his tracks.
“Just let him go,” I whispered, looking him directly in the eye. I wanted to see the man who had, a few times in my childhood, actually shown me some love and affection. “Please. For me. For our …”
I almost said for our baby. But I couldn’t. I knew what Dad would do.
But there was no pity in his expression. He sneered. When he leaned in, I could smell the whiskey on his breath.
“You’re lucky you’re not going the same way as him, Jamie,” he snarls. “To think that a daughter of mine—” He cut himself off. A strange look came into his eyes. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but then he just sighed. “Just stay out of trouble until I can find you a good husband, all right?”
Then he just walked away, muttering something under his breath I couldn’t hear.
Now, in the darkroom, my gaze snaps to the counter, to my buzzing cell phone. The screen lights up with Molly’s name. With a sigh, I walk over and pick it up, but I don’t answer it right away. I know she’s going to want to know where I’ve gotten to. She’s been rushing around these past couple of days, getting everything ready for the exhibition. But I’ve hardly spoken to her.
I’ve been too… Urgh. But I can’t hold her off forever.
“Hey,” I say, answering. The tone I go for is perky. I’m pretty sure I fail drastically.
“Hey,” Molly replies, sounding, somehow, even more down than me. “Where are you?”
“Uh, at the studio.” I’m caught off-guard by how jittery she sounds. I’ve known her for so long, I can sense that something’s up straightaway. “Everything going okay?” I ask, thinking maybe it’s the stress of the event. But Molly’s a pro, and this is, relatively speaking, a low-key event.
“Fine,” she says breezily. “Just—when you get here, come find me right away, okay? Promise me that?”
“Um, sure,” I answer. “Whatever you want, Mols.” I leave the room, feeling disoriented. The last time I heard Molly like that was in junior high when our other best friend at the time, Sarah, was killed in a horrible freak car accident. That’s how thunderstruck she sounded, how out of it.
I walk down the hallway. Garret stands at the entrance. Lately, he’s been acting sort of weird around me, looking at me like he did when I was a little girl, all protective.
“Ready, Jamie?” he asks.
“Yeah. Ready.”
We go out to the car. I lay my head against the glass, looking out at the city, wondering what life would’ve been like if I was just born a normal girl and Andrei was just a normal boy. What would’ve happened if, I dunno, an accountant version of Andrei had met a bartender version of Jamie? Would they have hit it off?
Would I still have been his printsessa, and he my Beast?
I ache for him; that’s the unbelievable truth. I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t know him. I want to be with him again so badly, and yet I know being with him has already left me cracked open emotionally. Not in the same way Declan did, but devastating all the same.
When I get to the mansion, I go and find Molly like she asked. She’s in the kitchen, glugging from a bottle of wine. Clutching it by the neck, all she’s missing is the brown paper bag and she’d make one hell of a street drunk.
I go over to her, annoyed. “What the hell are you doing?” I take the bottle from he
r and place it on the counter. “I thought you didn’t drink at events?”
Molly reaches for the wine again before she even replies. When she sees I’m not going to give it to her, she shakes her head, trembling. “Can I trust you?” she says.
“Of course.” I’m confused. “Mols, it’s me. What on earth is going on?”
“I can’t tell you,” she whispers. “It could ruin it. I know you wouldn’t, ever, but I’m not the one who thought of the plan, am I?” She talks fast, in a rush. It’s hard to keep up. “I told him … how many times did I tell him? But I don’t want you to get hurt. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if that happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
She grabs me by the wrist. She normally walks like she was born into six-inch heels, but, tonight, she wobbles. I find myself steadying her with a hand on her arm as she leads me over to the corner of the room. She grips my wrist hard, and I realize that she’s not just nervous.
She’s terrified.
“I don’t know if you’ll even believe me,” she whispers. “But you have to promise, okay? You have to promise me.”
“Promise what?” I ask, getting annoyed now. “You’re not making any sense!”
“You won’t tell anybody. Not your dad, not Declan, not Rafferty, not even Garret. Nobody. Okay?”
“I promise,” I tell her. “You know I’d never betray your trust like that. Now, what is it?”
You have to get June 12 for the date of the exhibition.
That’s what Andrei told me, but he wouldn’t say why.
And Molly was the one who proposed the date.
Is Molly working with the Russians?
I remember how bitterly she took the attacks on the Irish. I remember, briefly, her lover with the name that began with an E. Didn’t Andrei mention a Russian whose name began with—
