by Reinke, Sara
Andrei shrugged again. “What do you care, anyway?” he asked, his brow arched. “You told me Davenant was your friend. But he says he hates you…hates your whole clan.” Cutting Mason a glance, he added, “Strange for a friend, you ask me.”
“I guess I was wrong,” Mason said with a sudden heaviness in his chest, a leaden hold on his heart. Taking one last drag, he then let his cigarette fall to the floor. “We were friends once. A long time ago. But then I…I fucked things up.” He looked at Andrei. “He hasn’t forgiven me. Or forgotten. And I don’t really blame him for that.”
But even if that were true, it didn’t change anything in either Mason’s heart or mind. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Nikolić force Julien into a fight. It would kill him. One way or another, no matter what it takes—I’m getting us both the hell out of here.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At lunchtime, Sofiya came to Mason’s room carrying a tray laden with food. She struggled to keep it balanced as she closed the door behind her, and he rose from his bed to take it from her hands before she spilled what appeared to be some kind of hot soup all over herself and the floor.
“Thank you, Dr. Morin,” she said with her customary hesitant smile, her English broken but clear. He’d noticed she wouldn’t speak English around anyone else—not even Andrei—but him, as if she didn’t want Nikolić or any of his men to realize that she could.
“You’re welcome, ma chère,” he told her with a gentle smile. Because this endearment seemed to puzzle her, he added, “It’s French. It means my dear.”
He couldn’t tell if she understood or not, but she smiled at him at any rate. If no one else in that godforsaken place liked his company, at least Sofiya did, he figured glumly. “What have you brought me?”
He’d cut a glance down at the tray as he’d spoken, so she gleaned his meaning. “Is food,” she said, sounding proud. “Is lunch.” As he set the tray down on the table beside his bed, she pointed to one of the bowls. “Poltava yushka.”
Mason had no idea what that meant, but he tried to smile politely as she then directed him to sit on the side of the bed while she lifted the bowl from the tray and offered it to him. It appeared to be a chicken-broth based soup with dumplings and diced potatoes in it, along with onions, carrots, and chopped celery. The wonderful aroma wafting up to his nose left his stomach growling; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything.
“Hot,” she cautioned as she handed him a spoon.
“Thank you,” he said with a nod. He dipped the spoon into the golden broth as she watched, then lifted it carefully to his lips, making a show for her benefit of blowing on it to cool it before tasting. With an appreciative smile, he looked up at her. “It’s delicious. Did you make it?”
Sofiya nodded, seeming both to comprehend and be pleased by his praise. She had brought along some sliced bread and two glasses of milk. At first, he thought she meant to join him for lunch, and was surprised instead when she offered him one of the glasses along with some of the bread, and then hefted the tray again as if she meant to go.
“You’re not going to eat?” he asked, because he’d be admittedly disappointed if she left. Since Andrei had delivered him back to his room that morning, Mason had been all by himself. And since Andrei had seemed sort of pissed at Mason, he hadn’t bothered the medic—who sat outside his door, keeping sentry—in the meantime.
Sofiya shook her head, her face scrunched in a way that he’d come to realize meant she didn’t understand him. He lifted his spoon again, miming a bite of soup, and then pointed to her. “You eat?”
“No.” Her face brightened with comprehension, but she still shook her head. “This food…” She held the tray up slightly. “…for Julien.”
Mason raised his brow. “You’re going to see him now?” Setting aside his soup, he stood. “I want to come with you.”
Sofiya shied back a step, looking uncertain.
“I need to talk to him,” Mason told her. “He’s in trouble. A lot of trouble. I have to warn him.”
Sofiya cut a glance back over her shoulder toward the bedroom door, and Mason remembered Andrei. There was no way the medic would let him return to Julien’s room. They may have gotten off to a good start together, but asking Nikolić for clemency that morning had clearly crossed some unspoken line in Andrei’s opinion. Mason didn’t want to press his luck a second time and risk losing whatever help or support he may be able to find in the future from Andrei.
“A message, then,” he said. “Sofiya, can you get a message to Julien for me?”
As the girl watched, Mason rifled through some of the old, discarded papers and garbage on the floor until he found a relatively blank sheet. Using his hands, he did his best to smooth out the crinkles and brush away the grime. Then, using his soup spoon, he dug at one of the floorboards until he’d worked a splinter about the length and width of an embroidery needle loose. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with the paper in front of him, and using the glass of milk Sofiya had brought him like an inkwell, he’d started to write.
“We used to do this when we were kids, me and Julien,” he said. “A long time ago, back when we both lived in Kentucky. There was a hollow underneath an old tree between his father’s farm and mine. We’d leave notes for each other there, secret notes so no one else could read them.”
He glanced up at her as he blew gently on the page to thoroughly dry the milk. “It’s like invisible ink. You hold it up against something warm—a light bulb—long enough, and the writing will appear. Can you do that? Can you take this to Julien’s room and show it to him?”
Sofiya did that nose-scrunching thing again and Mason stood. “Can you take this to Julien?” he asked, showing her the piece of paper. “To Julien?”
“Julien,” she repeated, and he nodded. “Yes. I take.”
“Hold it…” Turning around, Mason carried the letter to his bedside table, to the old, crooked lamp with a torn lampshade that rested there. He pulled the lampshade off, exposing the naked bulb beneath. He held the sheet of paper up in front of the bulb, then turned to look at Sofiya, to make sure she understood. “…like this, see?”
She looked perplexed, as if she thought he might have lost his mind, but nodded nonetheless. “Da. Okay.”
“Good.” Mason smiled, then folded the sheet into fourths, making it small enough to slip into the hip pocket of her jean shorts. “Give it to Julien, okay? Like I showed you.”
“I give…to Julien,” she said, repeating as best she could. When he nodded, his smile widening, she smiled with him. “I give.”
“Thank you.” Mason clasped her face between his hands, leaning down to kiss her brow. “Thank you, ma chère.”
* * *
Son of a bitch, Julien thought as he craned his right hand toward his left wrist. Working with his head craned back at an awkward angle, nearly blindly, he slipped the pointed tip of the brass angel wing pendant into the key hole of his manacle. The cuffs weren’t the ratcheting sort, like police-issued, much to his chagrin. If they had been, it would have been a simple enough task to use the earring as a shim to pop them open. These, however, were designed for use in bondage, and were clamp-styled, with a key for each side. Which meant he had to try and pick the lock—which was proving a hell of a lot harder than he’d anticipated, even given the fact he’d taken his awkward position—flat on his back, his arms suspended above his head and nearly out of his line of sight—into consideration.
Son of a bitch, he thought again, because he really needed something smaller and slimmer to try and manipulate the tumblers inside each locking mechanism. The tip of the wing pendant was narrow, but not nearly enough to delve deeply into the lock. At least, not as deep as he’d need.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, taking a moment to huff out a long, frustrated breath and relax his shoulders, blinking against the sting of sweat that had rolled in steady rivulets down from his hairline and into his eyes.
It had seemed like n
othing short of blind luck that he’d been able to get a hold of the earring at all. When Nikolić’s heroin-addled girl had fallen across him during the struggle to make him feed, Julien had managed to clasp the pendant between his teeth. He’d hoped for the chance to use his tongue and work it loose, to open the flimsy clasp of the earring, but Nikolić had seized hold of the girl, yanking her back. In the process, he’d done Julien’s work for him, tearing the earring out of her ear. Any blood loss from the wound had gone unnoticed, considering the mess her slashed wrist had left in the room. Julien had used his tongue to pocket the charm between his back teeth and cheek, and had kept it there, waiting for the right moment to try and put it to some sort of use. It had taken nothing less than an act of sheer will power to pull himself up, to raise his head and shoulders far enough from the mattress to get the damn thing from his mouth to his hand.
Whenever he moved, arching his back and straining to keep the tension slackened between his wrists, he could feel the chest tube inside of him, scraping and sore. It was a strange sensation, completely alien to him, despite even all of the years he’d been alive, and all of the experiences he’d had—and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. The first thing he planned to do when he got his hands free was to yank the goddamn thing out of him, Mason and his warnings about impending hemorrhage be damned.
Mason.
That was the second thing he planned to do once he was free: find Mason and get him the hell out of there.
With that thought galvanizing him, he opened his eyes again, looking up at his hands. He held the pendant pinched lightly, deliberately between his fingertips, and occasionally blew up in the air to try and keep his hands from growing sweat-slickened. Just as he eased the tip of the charm into the lock again, he heard the click of another opening—the deadbolt lock on his door.
Shit! Julien pulled the pendant back, curling his fingers around it to hide it against his palm. If it was Nikolić, then he was as good as caught and he knew it. Not only would Nikolić realize quickly that he was hiding something in his hand, but once he found the pendant and took it away, he’d undoubtedly come up with some kind of sick, unpleasant punishment—like shocking the shit out of him, as he had with Mason. Shit, shit, shit!
When the door opened, held in place by Vučko, the man with the scarred face and eye patch who’d been posted as a sentry outside, Sofiya walked across the threshold. She carried a tray, and even though she seemed to have trouble balancing it without spilling the contents, Vučko made no attempt, chivalrous or otherwise, to help her with it. Instead, he reached out, pawing at her buttocks through her shorts with a lecherous sort of sneer, and Sofiya hunched her shoulders, her eyes downcast and timid as she scurried out of his reach.
“Privyet, Sofiya,” Julien said as Vučko closed the door, leaving them alone. Hello.
The girl looked up from the tray of food and managed a tentative smile. “Privyet, Julien. I have brought you some lunch.”
He smiled gently at her. “Spasibo,” he said. Thank you. “But I can’t eat when my hands are bound.” Arching his brow, he glanced up at the manacles. “Maybe you could get the key and unlock me…?”
He said this last with what he hoped was a pleading look at the girl. He didn’t expect her to agree, and thus wasn’t entirely disappointed when she shook her head, her eyes fearful.
“Nikolić has the only key,” she said in Russian. “He keeps it in his pocket all the time.”
“That figures,” Julien muttered in English, giving an aggravated tug against the unyielding chains.
“But I help you eat,” Sofiya said in English, softly, and he blinked at her, his surprise so obvious, color bloomed in her cheeks like a pair of primroses. “I speak English,” she admitted. “Little bit…for you.” She set the tray down beside his bed and reached for the hip pocket of her shorts. “I have for you,” she said, words that made no sense at first, not until she pulled out a folded scrap of paper. As she opened it, she looked at him and smiled. “Dr. Morin has for you.”
“Dr. Morin?” Julien blinked again, surprised anew. “He told you to give that to me?”
Sofiya nodded. But when she held it out, Julien frowned, puzzled. It was only a blank piece of paper, yellowed with age and water-spotted in places.
“I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head at her. “Ya nye ponimayo.” I don’t understand.
Her nose wrinkled slightly, then her eyes flew wide. “Podozhdite,” she said—wait.
She hurried over to the lamp in the corner, reaching beneath the shade to switch it on. As he watched, perplexed, she held the paper up against the shade. After a few seconds, she drew the paper back as if checking for something; with a frown, she put it back again, only to check a second time moments later.
And he realized. Holy shit, the secret notes we used to write when we were younger!
“Sofiya,” he said, drawing her gaze. In Russian, he instructed, “Hold the paper up to the window.”
The lamp hadn’t been on all day; the bulb was cold. To reveal the message, the dried milk on the paper needed to be warmed. And considering how bright the quality of light seemed as it filtered through the blind, he suspected the window panes would put off plenty of heat to reveal Mason’s message.
Sofiya crossed the room and tugged at the blind until it obligingly snapped up, curling around the rod above the window. Julien squinted against the sudden, blinding glare, and she turned her face from it slightly as she held up the piece of paper, pressing it to the glass.
“Do you see anything?” he asked.
At first, she shook her head. Then she pulled the page back a little to peer more closely, and turned to him, her eyes widening with excitement. “Yes, something is happening!”
She held it to the glass a little while longer, then brought it to him, smiling brightly. The writing was faint but decipherable; in the heat, the milk had turned a pale shade of yellow, almost golden in places. The note was short, simple, and hastily scrawled, but even so, it made Julien’s skin crawl:
Do NOT let him take you out of here.
There was no doubt who he was—Nikolić.
With a frown, Julien looked up at Sofiya. “Put the paper in my mouth,” he told her.
At first, she blinked at him, bewildered, but then seemed to realize. If Nikolić or any of his men found the note, they would all be punished. With a nod, she crumpled the page between her hands, making it as small as she could. When she held it out, he opened his mouth, and she pushed it inside. She watched, wide-eyed, as he chewed on it for a moment, then swallowed with a wince.
“Vkusny,” he said with a crooked smile. Delicious. And then, because he dropped her a wink, she started to laugh, her hand darting to her mouth as if to hide her sweet, unguarded smile.
She pulled the tray of food closer as she knelt beside the bed. Leaning over him, she offered him a glass of milk, pressing the cup to his lips and tilting it so he could drink. He gulped at it, parched, and when he choked, she dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.
“Thank you,” he said in Russian, and she nodded once.
“You’re welcome.” Next, she offered him a spoonful of soup, some kind of vegetable mix in a savory chicken broth that was both warm and delicious. “It’s poltava yushka,” she told him. “Noodle soup from Ukraine. My grandmother used to make it all of the time for me.” There was profound sadness in her voice, shadowing her dark eyes, as she said. “She must be worried for me. I haven’t seen her…not in many, many months.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “How old are you, Sofiya?”
“Eighteen,” she said after a moment. Without looking up, she mumbled as if by rote: “We are all at least eighteen here.”
Aloud, he pressed gently in Russian: “How old are you really, Sofiya?”
Her shoulders hunched. “Chetyrnadtsat.”
His breath caught. Fourteen, she’d said, her voice so soft, it had been little more than a hush. With a grimace and a grunt, he tried to lift his he
ad, the chains at his wrists and ankles jangling. “Look at me,” he told her, and when she lifted her gaze, hesitantly, he said, “When I get out of here—and I will get out of here, Sofiya—I’m taking you with me. I’ll get you back to you grandmother. I give you my word. That might not be worth much, but…”
Sofiya shook her head. “It is to me,” she said. Then, in her rough-and-tumble English: “You are good. Like Dr. Morin. You…are good man.”
He blinked at her, caught off guard and somewhat charmed. “No. I’m not.” It was her turn to look confused, and Julien shook his head. “Mason’s the good man,” he told her. “Not me. I’ve done very, very bad things. Lots of them. Too many to count.”
Too many to forgive.
For a long time, she said nothing and he didn’t have the heart to look at her. But when he felt her hand cup gently beneath his chin to catch any wayward drops as again, she offered him a spoonful of soup, he glanced up and found her smiling again.
“My grandmother,” she said, the Russian word Babushka falling fondly from her lips. “She says ‘a horse has four legs, but still stumbles.’”
Julien might have told her that he’d done more than stumble in his lifetime, that he’d done things that probably would have changed even her already-bleak concept of Ad—Hell. He might have, except it had been too long since he’d seen that look of unquestioning, unwavering faith in someone’s eyes—faith in him. It was the way Aaron had always regarded him as a child. The way Mason regarded him even now.
“You going to spoon-feed me my lunch, too, Sofiya?” Vučko said in Russian from behind them, and Sofiya jerked, her eyes widening with bright, sudden fear. Julien cut a glance over her shoulder and saw the scarred man looming in the doorway, his dark eye glittering with a malicious sort of glee as he regarded them.
“I’m feeling hungry, girl,” he leered, grabbing hold of the crotch of his pants and giving a suggestive adjustment. “Come over here, give me a taste.”