Yury casually stood from the chair and got between us. “Kirill, this is not the time.”
I yelled, “There will never be a time!”
With undeniable expertise, Yury had me by the nape of my neck and my hair and yanked me up to my knees on top of the mattress. With my head tilted back, he towered over me, putting us face to face with incredible speed. His anger tasted as if I had disrespected him. “There is a time to fight, and there is a time to know your place.” He snapped his teeth in front of my mouth then stared at me intently for a short moment. When he regained control, he delivered an award-winning smile. “Understood?”
I wish I could say I spit in his face, or at least smacked him, but I had never been manhandled with such a lack of care. His strength stunned me and reminded me how small I truly was.
His smile evaporated, and his hand tightened on my hair before giving me a shake. “Under. Stood?”
Knock, knock, knock. My back was to the exit I wanted to run to. I tried to pull free, but Yury refused to let go, his grip on my hair carrying such knowledge of how to induce immediate pain.
As the dark-haired Russian made his way toward the hotel room door, Yury wrapped one arm around my waist and one around my neck in a pretend hug. I tried to push away as the door was opened, but Yury held tight, trapping my arms against his stomach, all the while cheering, “Of course, we will give you a ride to the airport.” My mouth was pressed firmly to his chest, I could barely breathe, and my body was forcibly held still. There was no calling out for help. Yury continued the charade, speaking to the person I couldn’t see behind me. “Will you please cancel her shuttle to the airport?”
“Of course!” happily replied the oblivious hotel employee.
The door shutting rang in my ears like the alarm bells going off in my head. Yury was covering his tracks. He wasn’t trying to scare me. He was kidnapping me.
Still in his embrace, and comprehending defeat, I asked, “Why?”
He inhaled the scent of my hair. “A decision had been made.” He released me while telling one of his minions, “Adrian, bring her the food.”
Feeling lifeless, I sat on the bed watching dark-haired Aidan roll the cart in front of me. “Why bother feeding me if you’re only going to kill me?”
Yury sat in my chair again. “No. Your death was not the decision. Profit was. Now eat.”
Profit? Learning about what Marina endured while being a sex slave, it didn’t take much thought to understand his meaning. I pushed the cart away. The sight of the food was making me ill, or maybe it was my fate. Either way, I was far too upset to consume anything.
“At least drink the water.”
I was parched, so I took a huge sip until the taste had me pulling the glass from my mouth. “It tastes odd.”
Yury shrugged. “It is not American filtered water. Finish it and I will tell you more about your mother.” The man in his late twenties already knew a weakness of mine. I watched him as he watched me drink the unfiltered water. “Good girl.”
I wiped my mouth, waiting for anything about the woman who brought me into the world. As soon as I’d learned I was adopted, I wanted to learn every detail about her. Now that I had been told she was gone, I knew Yury would be one of the only ones with the knowledge needed to fill the gaping hole in my heart.
Yury, all smiles, leaned back in the chair and stretched. “She loved children.” He said it as though to love a child were a mystery that escaped all reasoning.
On the mattress, I turned to face him, desperate for more and sad I would never know her.
Another touch of regret was present in his voice and distant expression. “That misfortune was her downfall.”
“Misfortune? To love someone?”
I think my voice snapped him from a thought. He slightly jolted. “You even sound like her.” I covered my mouth, wanting to deny him again, but didn’t dare close my eyes. “She already loved you when only in her womb.”
I had to know. “Who was my father?”
“Is,” Yury grumbled. “A gambling junky.”
“You don’t like him? There is nothing good about him?” I had just learned my biological mother had passed; I was desperate for my other parent to have some value.
Pity crossed his face. “There is so much for Little Treasure to learn.”
His face blurred for a second so I rubbed at my eyes.
“But learn you will.”
“How did my mother die?” The room started to spin. “Do you know who—” I slumped over then slowly started falling toward the mattress. “She loved me?” My face hit the blanket.
They drugged my water. Here it was. The moment my free will was stripped away and not to be mine again for some time.
Thievery and Threats
Every time I started to shake off the foggy tendrils of my drug-induced stupor, I was in different surroundings. The first time, I was stumbling down the hotel hallway, Yury holding me to his side. For bystanders’ benefits, he chuckled about me having too much to drink. I guess carrying me out would have drawn too much attention to my abductors. I was escorted out through an emergency exit that seemed to be at the back of a kitchen. I remember because I attempted to grab onto a shiny metal table, but my fingers were simply too numb. Just before my drooping eyes insisted on closing again, I saw a stack of cash being placed in the hands of a man wearing a dirty white apron.
The next time I slipped from the hands of the drug I had been tricked into, I was in the back of a car slumped against Yury’s chest, buttons chaffing my cheek. There was sunshine past the darkly tinted windows hiding this abduction. Had I known how long it would be before seeing such rays again, I would have begged Yury to roll down the window and let it touch my skin. Numbly, I’d try to push off him because he disgusted me.
All three men carelessly laughed at my predicament.
Instantly hating the sound of their relaxed state while I was anything but had me trying to say, “Stop touching me, asshole,” but only incoherent mumbles passed my lips.
As if pleased with my grit, Yury held me to him. “Yes, burn, little fire. Burn for me.”
Jerking with Yury’s moving body, I woke to him yelling in his native language. With no control over my body, I was now cradled in his arms studying the veins in his neck about to blow.
I tried so hard to wake up fully and see where I was, but all I could gather was being in a concrete hallway with another man with greying hair and deep-set wrinkles around his eyes. In an outrage, spit flew as he screamed at Yury. Most of the words were in Russian, but some were in English. The words I gathered were, “You shouldn’t have brought the curse,” as he pointed to me.
When the older man saw me watching him, he recoiled as if I were the dangerous one. “Never look at me, you…!” I don’t know what he called me because he had reverted back to Russian, but whatever history there was behind my presence, he hated it with a passion. That fact, unfortunately, never changed. The older man would one day see to my misery.
Having no ally except for Crash and Timothy’s murderer—Yury, who appeared to be trying to protect me—I faced away and pressed my nose to his chest as the elderly man continued with his rage. Slipping from consciousness again, I begged myself not to recognize the man’s eyes to be identical to Yury’s. To make a horrifying connection meant this man was most likely Yury’s father… and most likely my biological mother’s abductor.