Page 67 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

I stand up and face Ivana. “Fairy lights on the tree first.”

Her eyes roam the room as if she finds the whole experience too daunting to contemplate. Andrej said that she’s an enforcer for their business. How can she be overwhelmed by some Christmas baubles and a few strands of fairy lights?

“I’ll go make hot chocolate.”

I can’t help smiling. If that’s an olive branch, I’m all over it.

“Don’t forget the marshmallows.”

I half expect her not to come back, and am pleasantly surprised when the door opens, and she backs into the room carrying two mugs of hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream and topped with pink and white marshmallows. She looks so out of place all dressed in black that I’m tempted to wrap a string of white tinsel around her neck. But I don’t want to push my luck.

The fairy lights are already on the tree.

“We’ll hang baubles next.”

It feels strange for me to give her orders, and even stranger when she follows them, but then nothing about this situation is normal.

We work in silence, stopping occasionally to stand back and survey our work. The hot chocolate fills me with warmth, and I find myself singing along to my favorite Christmas tunes. Ivana doesn’t join in.

“Do you have a favorite Christmas song?” I ask.

“No.” Her eyes barely meet mine as she hangs a silver vintage-style bauble on one of the lower branches.

Undeterred, I find a tiny snow globe with a hook and hang it close to Ivana. “What about ‘All I Want for Christmas’? Everyone loves Mariah Carey.”

She shrugs. “I don’t have time for the holidays.”

“You don’t get time off to spend with family?”

I flinch the instant the words leave my mouth because her shoulders stiffen, and she stands back from the tree, crushing a bauble underfoot.

“The Ivanovs are my family.”

“Ivana, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need your apology.”

I feel her withdrawing, and I know that if she walks out of the room now, we’ll never come back from this. Maybe this is a lost cause, but I’ve spent too much time around scarred women to give up without a fight. Broken women are stronger once they’re fixed. I sense that Ivana would be a great person to have on my side.

I turn back to the tree and hang a glittery white snowflake. “How long have you been with them?”

I deliberately avoid eye contact. If she leaves now, then I know that I crossed a line I shouldn’t have. But if she stays…

“Since I was ten years old.” She stands on the opposite side of the tree, so that I can’t see her face.

“I was two years old when my parents died,” I say. “My adoptive family gave me a photograph of me and my biological parents, taken when I was a baby. I still have it.”

I don’t press her for information. I just carry on talking.

“I don’t remember them. It bothered me for a long time, the lack of memories that I felt I should’ve held onto, but I learned to deal with it.”

“I have memories.”

The statement takes me by surprise, but I don’t break my rhythm of bauble-hook-branch.

“My sister and I ran away from an orphanage. The bad men were coming for us. We’d seen them talking to the man in charge and looking at us when they shook hands. Twins probably fetched a decent price on the black market.”

Bile rises in my throat, and I wish I hadn’t finished my hot chocolate so quickly.