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He leaves the room without looking back, and I’m left staring at the walls of the interrogation room. I still have my phone, and I pull it out to stare at the screen.

Tears welling up in my eyes, I find the app I’d downloaded to talk to Ilya… and delete his number.

I can’t risk being tempted to talk to him again, and there’s no way he’ll contact me.

I’m Adam’s, and nothing I say or do is ever going to change that.

NINETEEN

ILYA

Boris and Little Kolya glare at me through the bars of the cells across from me.

I already know what they’re thinking.

I shouldn’t have trusted Micah. I barely know him. He was involved with a cop. He was snooping around—badly, but even so.

But I know I’m not wrong about how that fucker treats him. I saw how withdrawn Micah became in Adam’s presence.

“What now?” Kolya asks in Russian. “We sit here all night? I thought everybody had rights here.”

Boris scoffs loudly. “You’re new here, Kolenka. The truth is, pigs are pigs no matter what country you’re in.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kolya mutters. “And I know that pigs are pigs. But they can’t let us rot here all night.”

“They can,” I say steadily. “Be glad if it’s only one night. In St. Petersburg, I was forced to sit in a jail for five days once before they even talked to me. They’d get to me soon, they promised!”

By the time they’d finally pulled me out to interrogate me, I was exhausted and starving. The meager meals they’d fed me didn’t do much to sate my hunger. I’d asked for my lawyer, but of course that hadn’t happened either.

Mostly, the cops had pulled me out to beat me and demand a confession. I barely even remember what crime I’d been accused of that first time.

“Five!” Boris grins at me. “That’s nothing. I once sat in jail for two weeks without any charges thrown at me.”

I shake my head. “Five was the first time. The second, it was almost a full month.”

Kolya rolls his eyes, but he smiles too. “A month! Those are baby sentences. I rotted in a detention cell for a full year once.”

My eyebrows shoot up. Kolya is barely twenty years old. As far as I know, he hasn’t done any time in jail at all. His father had asked me to train Kolya up and keep him out of trouble.

I think he was mostly worried about Kolya pissing off some of the old guard.

Boris starts laughing. “Oh? What was your crime? Stealing candy from a shop?”

“Yes!” Kolya agrees. “I was seven years old, and we went to one of those import shops with all the foreign foods. My mother wanted to bake a German pastry and needed some ingredient the local shops didn’t have. While she was reading all the labels—in German, which means she understood nothing—I grabbed the exotic candies. I stuffed my face in the back before we even left the store.” He shakes his head sadly. “They didn’t believe me when I said my little brother did it, so I got pulled in for questioning. I outgrew all my clothes waiting for them to finally ask me anything.”

I chuckle at the ridiculous story. “The cops in your town must not have had enough crime on their plate, for them to even bother with you.”

Kolya grins widely and waggles his finger. “Or they knew I would grow into the mastermind I am today.”

Boris laughs and drags Kolya closer to muss his hair.

It’s good they’re getting some enjoyment out of this situation, even if my own good cheer is dampened by the knowledge that Micah is still with Adam.

I sit down on the bench and close my eyes, listening to their joking and bickering.

It’s too uncomfortable for me to get any sleep.

Mostly, it does remind me of my time waiting to find out what they were going to charge me with, after I’d broken my father’s leg.