Page 25

Dimitry

Malaga, Spain

Two years ago

“ W hat the hell did you do, Abby?” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit with my head in my hands, the room still swirling around me.

It’s the early hours of the morning, but she clearly hasn’t slept.

Instead she’s standing by her easel, covered in paint, her eyes slightly unfocused, apparently having drunk most of the vodka bottle next to her.

“I haven’t been knocked out by vodka since I was a kid.

And even then it took more than a handful of shots to do the job.

” I squint at her in the darkness. “You drugged me.”

“Yes.” She nods slowly.

At least she doesn’t bother trying to deny it.

I clasp my hands loosely between my knees. “Why?”

She lifts a shoulder. It’s an oddly vulnerable gesture. I hate the fact that I want to wrap her in my arms, when what I should really want is to walk the fuck out of this apartment and never come back.

“I needed answers.” Her voice is quiet, raspy with fatigue. “And I knew you wouldn’t give them to me willingly.”

“You had no right to do that.” My head still feels thick, the night oddly surreal.

“I know.” She doesn’t attempt to approach the bed, just stands by the easel, the brush still in her hand. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I know it won’t help.”

“It would have been a fucking start.” I force myself to stand.

I walk past her, through the small living room and into the kitchen, where I pour a glass of water and drink it, then another.

“I should leave,” I mutter, as much to myself as to her.

When she doesn’t answer, I come back into the living room.

She’s still standing there, wearing a printed sarong over her naked body, paint splatters covering much of her skin.

I want to tear the sarong off and throw her down onto the bed.

I want to fuck her into mindless submission.

But I’m not that man. And no matter what she’s done, I refuse to become the man who would do that.

An old snatch of recollection drifts through my still doped-up mind, a fragment of memory long thrust into the past: of Yakov, in the tiny one-bedroom walk-up that smelled of other people’s cooking, his hands gripping my mother’s shoulders.

“Trust me, Ekaterina. How many times do I have to tell you to just trust me?”

My mother, her face pale and set, stares back at him, surprisingly unafraid given how much bigger than her he is. “You shouldn’t have tried to find us, Yakov.”

He shakes her, hard enough to make her wince. “I brought you to America. I gave you everything, Ekaterina. And I did it all for— ”

“Don’t say his name.” I’ve never heard my mother speak like that, so hard and cold. It scares me. “You don’t ever get to speak his name to me again.”

“Mama.” I slide my hand into hers, crushing myself close to her side. I don’t look at Yakov. I already know how dangerous it is to look directly at Yakov. The last burns he gave me are still raw and stinging beneath my ribs.

“It’s fine, synok .” She grips my hand, though she’s still staring at the man looming over us. “It’s all going to be fine.”

His laugh is hard and mirthless. “Not if you don’t come with me now.

How long do you think you can last alone out here?

You have no passport. No money. No English.

You can’t survive without me, and you know it.

Look at this place.” He gestures contemptuously at the peeling paint, the stained sink in the corner.

“You need to leave, Yakov.” Her voice is clear and cold.

“I don’t think so.” He moves fast, too fast for me to squirm out of his iron grip, though I try.

“Mama!” I reach for her, but he thrusts me behind him, through the open door into the corridor.

“Leave him alone!” For the first time my mother’s composure cracks. She rushes for me, but Yakov stands like a monolith between us.

“No.” He slams the door in my face, leaving me standing alone in the corridor. “You should have come to me willingly, Ekaterina.” His voice is slightly muffled, but the sound of his hand hitting my mother’s face comes through clearly, along with her cries of protest.

“Don’t fight me,” Yakov grunts, and I hear the sound of the old bedsprings as he throws her onto the sagging mattress. “You need a man. And you’re mine, Ekaterina. You should always have been mine.”

I hear the sickening creak as he lowers himself onto the bed, and my mother’s frantic screams as she tries to fight him off. I bang on the door, twisting the handle and crying out for her. But thin as it is, the old wooden door stands, locked from the inside .

It doesn’t prevent me from hearing everything that happens on the other side of it.

I rub my eyes, suddenly aware that it’s Abby’s living room I’m standing in, not that old, tiny one-bedroom. My heart is thudding, past and present unclear in my drug-addled mind. Abby is staring at me warily.

“Dimitry.” She puts a hand out toward me. “You should lie down. You don’t look right.”

“Don’t touch me.” I’m naked and furious, but the sickening memory churning inside me is a reminder of all the reasons I won’t ever allow rage the upper hand, not where women are concerned.

“I need to get out of here.” I’m finding it hard to breathe, the scent of paint and turpentine suddenly cloying rather than the sensual backdrop it’s always been for me.

“Please don’t.” She drops her brush and comes toward me, her hands out. “I was scared, Dimitry. I know that’s no excuse—”

“No.” I pull on the jeans and shirt I threw over the back of the sofa hours before, back when the sun was shining and the darkness was far away. “It isn’t.”

Picking up my shoes, I stumble for the door, gulping the dank air of the corridor beyond like it’s my salvation.

Even here, past and present shift like sliding doors through my brain, the old chipped corridor in Miami superimposed on the dank stone of this one in Malaga.

I almost fall down the stairs, lighting a cigarette as I go, Abby coming behind me, calling my name.

I make it out onto the street and almost run down the alleyway toward the still water of the bay, collapsing on the sand by the marina, my elbows on my knees, head down.

I smell the paint on Abby’s skin moments before she sinks down beside me. Out here the scent is no longer cloying, but achingly familiar.

“You shouldn’t be here.” I still can’t look at her.

“I couldn’t let you leave like that.” She’s still naked but for the sarong. She sits at a distance, not trying to touch me.

I know I should tell her to go, but I can’t. Instead I smoke in silence, staring out at the thin silver line on the horizon, the first hint of the coming day.

When she finally speaks again, her voice is subdued and she doesn’t look at me. “I was in prison. In Colombia. For two years, before I came to Spain.”

Shocked out of my silence, I twist toward her, but it’s Abby’s turn to stare out over the sea. She reaches for my cigarette, and I hand it to her. She takes a deep draw on it before she speaks again.

“I had a boyfriend. He was... stupid. And he crossed some very dangerous people.” She blows a stream of smoke out over the water. “By the time I realized what he was, and who they were, it was too late to get out. He—they killed him. I was put in prison.”

She falls silent.

I have a thousand questions. But I know better than to ask them.

“I made a deal to get out,” she says finally.

“And then I came here.” Crushing out the cigarette, she turns to me.

“I can’t go through that again, Dimitry,” she says quietly.

“I know what I did to you was wrong. I knew it the moment I put those pills in your drink. I’m not trying to make excuses for it.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. ”

I sift sand through my hands. “Scared.” I study her face, but in profile and the dim light, it’s hard to read her expression. “Scared of me?”

“No!” Her answer comes quickly, with a fierce shake of her head. “Never of you. But I am afraid of the world you’re part of, Dimitry. I know how dangerous that world is. How quickly it can turn on you, and turn ugly.”

“My world isn’t like that, Abby.” I still don’t quite trust myself to touch her. “I’m not saying it isn’t dangerous. But not to you. Not ever. Look at me.”

She slowly turns toward me, her eyes wide and dark, and suddenly my anger is gone. Or rather, it’s directed toward someone else, toward whatever mudak caused that fear in the first place. A mudak who is a dead man already, not that he knows it yet.

“Listen to me.” I take her hands, and she shivers slightly at the touch.

“I’m not the idiot who crosses dangerous people, Abby.

I am the dangerous people. Roman, me—our entire army, if it comes to that—we’ll all go to war to protect what belongs to us.

And new as this thing is between you and me, I swear I will always protect you from danger, not bring it to your door. ”

“I don’t want that,” she whispers, her eyes searching my face.

“I never wanted that. What I want is to leave that life behind. To live a normal life, one without guns and scars and fear.” Her hands slip from mine.

“And after what you said tonight, I know that’s impossible for you.

Roman and you... I understand that now.

Why you’re so loyal to him. I know you won’t ever leave him. ”

I clench my fists in frustration. “So what does that mean? Are we just done, then? You walk away and act like the last few weeks never happened?”

Her shoulders rise and fall in a wordless gesture of defeat.

“Wow.” My anger is back, but it’s worse now. It’s dangerous, a taut friction between the allegiance to Roman that I’ve never questioned and the seductive possibility of a life I’ve never imagined. It’s anger born of a frustration I’ve never felt and can’t, right now, make any sense of.