Page 101 of Kept in the Dark

“Sounds expensive and time-consuming.”

He sits on the bed to pull on some silk socks and lace his fancy, uncomfortable-looking leather shoes. “Perhaps, though Helga is an excellent seamstress, even if she insults me under her breath the entire time she is pinning the fabric. And she knows I speak German.”

I hide a smile by pressing my lips together. “How many languages do you speak?”

“Four,” he shrugs. “German and English are close, so it was not so hard to learn both.”

It’s a strange thing that this is what cuts through the haze of denial. Seeing him in a suit again—a throwback to the night we met that started with such bright, bubbly happiness, only to melt into panic and fear—and being reminded that he knows more languages than anyone I’ve ever met is a sort of wake-up call.

I swallow and look down at my hands. “I think I just realized how long the list of things I still don’t know about you is.”

The bed dips by my feet, and his hand is warm around the side of my neck, tilting my head up towards him. “We have time for these discussions,” he says.

I feel the line form between my brows. “Do we?”

I’m filled to the brim with uncomfortable questions that sour my stomach and dissolve any of the lingering happiness from waking up and having Dimitri rearrange my guts.

How long until I can go home? What happens then? Will he still want to… date? Is that what we’ve been doing? It doesn’t feel like it. So how would we even begin to navigate a casual relationship after all this? Should we even try?

I think I prefer being in denial.

“We have time,” he repeats.

Don’t worry about it, not yet,he seems to say.

I nod.

He pulls me forward, meeting me halfway, and presses a kiss to the middle of my forehead.

He leaves, then, and I fall back against the pillow with a sigh, staring at the beams in the ceiling.We have time, he says. Too bad I’m a serial overthinker—it’s a skill to be so many steps ahead of myself, truly.

Objectively, it hasn’t been that long, but I already have a hard time picturing myself going back to my old life. And I loved my old life, as messy and chaotic as it sometimes was. I miss work. I miss the sterile smells of the hospital, and the camaraderie of bitching about a trouble patient at the nursing station. I miss feeling safe enough to leave the house. I miss the comfort of being surrounded by my own stuff. I miss having full control over every decision I make.

It’s not uncomfortable here by any means, but there’s a world of difference between waking up and thinking, “what should I do today” and “whatcanI do today.”

I jump out of bed and head towards the shower. I need to rinse away the evidence of how Dimitri says good morning, then I need to put on some bike shorts and release some of this nervous energy. Maybe I’ll hit something. That sandbag in the gym will do.

31

Dimitri

Torturing a man for information is nothing like bicycling.

After shaking out my hand from the jarring impact of knuckles against bone, I crack my neck to release the tension from my right shoulder and turn back to Viktor Volkevich, who is slumped in the chair. Bright red falls one droplet at a time from his nose onto his chest, getting lost in matted hair and older, dried blood.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

He and I have only been at this for two hours, but it is rather cold in this meat locker. Fluids dry and freeze quicker—that is why it is a favored, if somewhat stereotypical, place for interrogations such as this. That and the drain conveniently built into the floor.

My breath puffs out in front of my mouth, almost making me smile. I have missed the cold. Winter in New Jersey just is not as bitter or as long as it is in Russia, and the summers here are much too hot. I feel very energized.

I can taste victory.

In the end, getting Viktor to the butcher shop was a relatively simple matter. I disposed of his driver, donned my disguise, and picked him up at the usual time in the usual place outside the casino. He got right into the car with his guards—men who are now dead, though they are still sluggishly bleeding out on the floor at our feet. Viktor flinched when I sliced their throats, but has given their bodies little attention since. Everthe cold, aloofPakhan, believing his life means so much more than the men who keep it safe.

“This guy’s a real piece of fuckin’ work. The more Wes finds on his cell, the more I want to get in there and knock a few teeth loose myself,”James growls, low and dangerous.

“Drugs, prostitution, gun running… there aren’t many illegal pots Viktor isn’t sticking his finger in,”Wesley adds.“There’s stuff on here about a shipment, too. Encoded. Probably human trafficking, if I had a guess.”