For the first time, the man smiled.
“That goes against type. I like it.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I just nodded.
“Their love of American literature explains a lot about you—your excellent English, and probably the fact that I saw you reading earlier today. Do you have the book you were reading in your bag?”
I swallowed. “No, I don’t have it with me.” I didn’t want him to take it. I’d rather he take my body than my books.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. You need to be better at lying if you’re going to survive.”
He stood up, and fear shut down everything inside me. Now I would get a beating as well as being forced to do whatever he wanted.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I flinched as he walked past me, but he didn’t stop, didn’t grab me, didn’t pull me my hair. Instead, he walked over to the fridge in the corner of the room and opened it. He took out a bottle of water and handed it to me.
“Don’t be sorry. Be better at lying.” I still waited for the blow, but nothing came. “Drink it.” A moment later, a chocolate bar fell in my lap. “And eat that.”
I tore open the wrapper immediately. It might end up costing me later, but I didn’t care. When was the last time I’d had something like candy? I only got treats like that if I stole them, and usually, they weren’t worth the risk.
I had barely finished the last bite when a package of peanuts dropped next to my leg. “Eat that too.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I hadn’t eaten anything since this morning, and the money I would normally set aside to buy food I had given to Nikolai in hopes that I wouldn’t be in the position I was currently in.
The man took his seat back on the other side of the bed, and I relaxed a little bit.
“The book you were reading earlier, was it in English?”
I nodded, taking another handful of the nuts.
“I like to read too. Will you tell me what book it is? Maybe I’ve heard of it. I promise I’m not going to take your book. Let me guess. It was one you got from your parents?”
I slowly lowered my arm and looked over at him. He was the only one who had ever figured out why my book was so precious to me even though it was falling apart.
“Yes. My parents brought their favorite book when we had to flee Ukraine. But the book is for children. Teenagers. That is what Mother taught—adolescent literature. Not books a man would read.”
“Try me.”
“It is called The Outsiders.”
He smiled.
Everything about his face changed when he smiled. He was still dangerous and big—someone who could hurt me just because he wanted to, but he looked almost kind when he smiled.
“Stay gold, Ponyboy.”
My eyes grew big. “You know it.”
“Of course. S.E. Hinton. It was one of my favorites growing up. I read it in high school, but I read it again a couple of years ago. I’ve seen the movie too.”
I gave him a slight smile. “I read other books. Sometimes people leave them, and I find them and read them, but I always come back to that one as my favorite.”
“It’s a good one to have as a favorite, Pony Girl.”
The corners of my mouth pulled up in a smile, although I didn’t let him see it. I’d never been called a nickname before, unless you counted what Nikolai and his men called all women they didn’t like. Pony Girl was much better.
He pointed to the food in my lap. “Finish eating. I don’t think this hotel has room service and it sure as hell doesn’t have Uber Eats, but I can try to have some food delivered if you want. I have some friends who wouldn’t mind dropping something by.”
I shook my head quickly. The last thing I wanted was his friends joining us. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
He nodded. “Then we’ll clear out the mini bar. Whatever you don’t want tonight, you can take with you in the morning.”
I looked over at the small bags of food on the refrigerator. I would gladly take them with me. That would be meals for a couple of days.
“My name is Harrison McEwan, but people call me Sarge. They’ve called me that as long as I can remember.”
Because he seemed to expect it, I repeated after him. “Sarge.”
Sarge got up and walked to the other side of the room, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall.
“Let’s call this situation what it is, since you seem to be pretty level-headed. We can both agree that I’m bigger and stronger than you, and you don’t have anyone coming to help you if I decide to do something to you that you don’t want.”
I swallowed, my throat dry, but nodded. That was exactly the situation. I’d known it from the first minute.
“And because I can do whatever I want, it’s not going to do you any good to resist, is it?”
The food he’d given me soured in my stomach. This was it. This was what I should have been expecting from the beginning, but I’d let myself think the circumstances were different because we’d been talking about books and he’d smiled.
I was an idiot. He was reminding me. I nodded again.
“What I want you to do is to go into the bathroom and take a shower. As long and as hot as you want. I’m not going to come in there. Nobody’s going to come in there, but there’s nothing I can say to make you believe that right now. The only thing I can do is prove it to you.”
Again, I’d be an idiot to believe him.
“And then once you come back out here, with all your clothes on, you are going to sleep in the bed. I’m going to sleep on the floor. And you’re going to get a few hours of rest without having to worry about anybody touching you or hurting you in any way. Do you understand?”
I nodded again. I understood what he was saying, but I had no idea if he was telling me the truth.
He rubbed a hand along the stubble on his jaw. “You don’t trust me. I get it. But it doesn’t matter if you trust me, right? Because I’m going to do what I want to do, and you can’t change that. Only accept it.”
“Yes,” I choked out.
He crossed his arms again. “Then at dawn, you’re going to leave here. I won’t need to leave until two hours later. You’re going to rip your shirt and make sure your hair is a mess. You’re going to go back to that bastard Nikolai, and you’re going to cry and lie better than you lied to me and tell him that I was horrible. That I hurt you. That I was the worst thing that had ever happened to you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Because that’s the only way someone like Nikolai is going to be satisfied with what happened here—if he thinks that whatever I did to you was worse than whatever he would have done had he kept you tonight.”
“Yes,” I said again. The big man—Sarge—was right. That was the only way Nikolai would be satisfied.
“Good. Then we have a plan.”
The rest of the night went exactly as he said it would. I took a shower, enjoying the wonderful pressure and unlimited hot water, although my eyes were glued to the door the entire time.
But he never came in.
I got dressed afterward and went back into the room. I found Sarge lying on the floor, the corner of the covers pulled back on the bed so I could get in. So I did. I didn’t sleep much, still not completely able to trust him, but he never moved from his place on the floor.