Her lips are tentative at first but then her fervent passion leaks through, and we kiss as if we have been separated months instead of days. I run a hand down her back, feeling the fine bones of her shoulders and the individual bumps on her spine. These all reassure me that she is still alive, still possibly loving me. The bottom of her shirt has pulled up and I can stroke a tiny path of skin.
I feel her shiver in response. This time I know it is not from fear or the cold, and I press her more tightly against me, my fingers dipping below the waistband of her pants. She moans quietly, and I respond with my own guttural sound of need.
A cough behind me interrupts the fog of desire that has swept over me. Daisy breaks away and burrows, embarrassed, into my chest. Turning slightly so that Daniel can see me, I send him a heated glare. "Go away."
"Can't."
In that moment, I want to go and shoot Sergei myself so that Daniel will leave us alone. Instead, I press another kiss on Daisy's forehead and place a room service order for a bottle of vodka, borscht, two orders of blinis hold the caviar, and two steaks, one with the head still attached.
"Daniel, go check on our guest."
Daniel releases a huge sigh as if my request is extremely burdensome, but he gets up and slips into the adjoining room without another word. After the door closes behind him, I kneel down by Daisy's side again. Her head is resting on her small hands, and she looks uncertain.
"Do you need anything?" I brush the loose strands of her hair away from her eyes and tuck the fine silk behind her ear. "I can get you anything."
"No." She struggles to sit up, but I press her down. "I can't lie here with you kneeling beside me. It makes me feel weird. Or weirder, I guess." She pushes into a sitting position, and this time I do not protest. Patting the empty cushion beside her, she gestures me forward. Stiffly, I sit beside her until she curls her body into mine. Lifting her, I situate her in my lap, tucking her legs in and resting her head on my shoulder. Her nose burrows into my neck and a rush of joy permeates my bones.
"I'm sorry I never told you before what I am." My throat is tight as I await her response. She exhales, and I feel her body relax as she does.
"It's not like there was ever a good time, right?"
"Right." I'm so grateful that she is accepting and so, in this moment, I try to make her understand.
"When I was fifteen, Alexsandr sends me to Florence to take care of a curator of a small private museum. He is old, maybe fifties, and is surrounded by young boys. At first, I balk at doing this job. He is taking in young boys off the street and giving them a warm place to sleep, food in their bellies, clothes on their backs. Ignoring Alexsandr's summons to finish the job and return, I begin to watch. I take a chance and meet one of the boys who is delivering a painting. Up close I can see that he is scared of everyone. He scuttles through the streets, looks no one in the eye. I try to approach but he flees."
A mew of pain emanates from Daisy, and I realize I've squeezed her too tightly. "Sorry," I mutter and loosen my grip.
"It's nothing. Go on." She urges.
"So I watch and then I see. This curator takes in the homeless boys and makes them do things to him. Makes them watch each other. Makes them do things to each other." I pause, not wanting to give voice to the things I saw. "Do you understand, Daisy?"
"I do," she chokes out. Daisy is tenderhearted, and for a moment I think that maybe I should not share this story with her, but it is important she understands.
"Finally, after two weeks, I get one boy to talk to me. I tell him that the curator will be taken care of, and he tells me that the monster will always live within him. I do not want that for these boys, so I tell this one child, perhaps the leader, that I will help him kill the monster. And I do. The results were…messy," I admit.
"And for this, Alexsandr says I must leave the Bratva, for my loyalty was impaired by my feelings for someone else. He was right to make me leave, but I would've done it again if I had the chance, Daisy. I think your father is locked in his own prison because the monster who took your mother still lives. I do not want that for you."
We both fall silent. Room service comes and goes. Daniel comes out of the adjoining room and we eat together, silently. I know not what Daisy thinks as she has been quiet since I've told her the story.
After eating, she goes to the bathroom, and I hear the shower run for a very long time.
"Leave her alone, man," Daniel advises when I stand up and look at the bathroom door for the fifth or fiftieth time.
When Daisy comes out of the bathroom in a white robe, I offer her some clothes I've brought for her. Soft jeans, an undershirt, and a cashmere sweater. She takes them to the bathroom and emerges again, hair wet but fully dressed.
I offer her a glass of vodka, but she is uninterested.
"I'm going to go sit out on the balcony for a little bit."
I pick up a blanket and follow her out, but before I can cross the threshold, she places a hand on my chest. "I need a moment to myself, okay?"
The worry must show on my face because she reaches up to stroke one hand down my cheek. Turning, I press a kiss into her palm. "Yes," I say. "I will wait for you. Always."
She nods and closes the door, separating us. I lean my forehead against the glass until I feel Daniel drag me away.
DAISY
A number of minutes later, I return to the hotel room from the balcony.
"Can I…can I talk to Sergei? I want to find out where he's taken Regan."
"He is yours," Nick says, and his tone is more brusque. He gestures at the half-open bedroom door and steps aside.
I glance at the door and then back at Nick, but he won't look me in the eye. He's scanning the room again, a pretense of safety keeping him from looking at me. I know he wants to clench me to his side—I can tell by the way his hands keep making fists—but he's giving me space. He knows I need it.
He knows me so, so well.
I swallow hard and push the door open, stepping into the bedroom of the hotel. It is opulent, this room, with an enormous mirror across from the king-sized bed and the dainty, old-world furniture that decorates the room. Sergei sits in a cleared space, taped to a chair sitting on plastic. I close my eyes for a minute, not wanting to process what the plastic means
When he sees me, though, his gaze flicks to the gun in my hands, and he laughs. "So," he calls out. "They have sent the little flower to do the deed?"
I step forward, trembling. Even though this man is bound on the chair and looks helpless, I am still frightened of him. He's malevolent, this Sergei, and I can feel his evilness seeping out of his pores and into the air I breathe.
I look behind me, and Daniel has come to the door. He closes it and then leans against it, standing guard. He is there to make sure Sergei won't hurt me, I know, but his presence isn't reassuring. For a moment I wish he were Nick, but I guess that he needs time to process my struggle with who he is.
I want Nick, but I'm still unsure about the fact that he's a trained killer. Can the two be separated? Will Nick be the same if they are?
I approach the bed slowly. There is a wooden chair at the table next to the side of the bed, and I carefully place the gun on the tabletop and angle the chair so I can sit facing Sergei who is still taped to his chair. The plastic makes crinkling sounds as I move around.
"Where is Regan?" I ask. My voice is so, so calm. I've learned this from Nick—that I can sound fearless even if I'm shaking inside.
Sergei's lips pull into a thin, ugly grimace. I notice he has dried tracks of drool around his mouth and wonder at it. "The little blonde? You will never see her again."
"Where is she?" I am responsible for her. I must know where Regan is.
"Even if I knew, pizda, I would not tell you." Sergei's smile is condescending. "Likely, she has been sold to a black market whorehouse. Once they have used her until she is diseased, they will harvest her for organs. It will be a slow and ugly death for your Regan, and she will curse your name every hour, upon the hour. How does this make you feel?"
I know he's simply trying to rile me, but his words hurt. I flinch.
As if he can sense my pain, Sergei continues. He nods at the gun on the table. "So, he has sent you in here to dispatch me, has he?"
"I'm not going to kill you," I tell him quietly. "I don't play games with death. I just want to know where my friend is."
"You will not kill me, da." He laughs again, as if he finds this funny. "Poor Nikolai. Lonely, discarded Bratva boy brought low by an innocent virgin who is repulsed by who he is. He drags me to you and places the gun in your hand like mangy cat bringing a rodent to its master for approval. He does not understand your disgust, because to him, it is job well done."
His smirk is so ugly to see. "But you are not like him, eh, little flower? The thought of killing one such as me repulses you, even though your Nikolai would not hesitate."
I say nothing. He's right about everything so far. I'm curious what else he will talk about if I remain silent. Nick uses this technique a lot. I see that now. If he doesn't know what to say, he waits you out. So I sit there and stare back at Sergei.
"Your lover cannot cut it with the Bratva, though, can he? Daniel, there—" He nods at the door. "He would not hesitate to cut my throat and think nothing of it. But Nikolai, he is a romantic. He is desperate for your approval, da? Shall I tell you a story about Nikolai?"
I wait.
"When he is a young boy, Alexsandr despairs of what to do with him. He tells me, Sergei, I have a young man I am training to be ubitsya. He is good, but I worry he is soft. And I say, why soft, Alexsandr? What makes him so? He tells me that he has boy followed. That when others are experimenting with whores at the tender age of twelve and thirteen, Nikolai, Alexsandr's prodigy, has been doing the same at the age of nine."
I blink. I will not let him see me react.
"But do you know what he has been paying these whores to do, he tells me. He says to me that Nikolai has been purchasing the oldest whore there. She is fifty, with a pizda that is as worn as an old sack. He wonders what a nine-year-old wants with such a woman. So he has him watched. And do you know what Nikolai does with this old whore, little flower?"
"No. What?"
"He has her hold him while he sleeps," he says with a sneer in his voice. "She sings him to sleep and makes him dinner, and he pays the old slut as if she is the finest piece in the land. He has affection for her. So, I tell Alexsandr, there is one way to make it stop."
A sick feeling comes over me as I listen. I picture Nick as a lonely nine-year-old boy, so desperate and starved for attention that he has to pay an elderly hooker to pretend to be his mother.
"So we send the boy to the brothel with a project, da? Kill the whore or be cast out of the Bratva. He must choose his family. And do you know what he chooses?"
"He let her live?" I hope, but even as I say it, I doubt it is the truth.
"Nyet," Sergei says. "She is old and diseased, and she owes much money to the Bratva. Nikolai does the hit, because it is how we have trained him. He is the creature we have made him." His smile is thin again. "However flawed. And he did not cry once, this Nikolai. This is the man you love. He kills because it his life."