4

RUSSIAN VOICES, ONE CONCERNED, ONE rough and low, crept into my subconscious. Papa only spoke fluent Russian when he had Russian guests over, but why were they in my room?

It was weird. And rude.

I sighed, reaching to pull the sheets over my head to shut out the noise. Instead, my hand slid over the familiar feel of one of my papa’s suit jackets, wool and cashmere. But something was different. This one smelled like pine and cinnamon with a hint of cigar smoke. There was something very unfatherly about the scent, and it was what convinced me to open my eyes.

I groaned as a sharp pain shot through my skull.

“Khorosho, ty vstala,” a silver-haired man said, pulling a high-back leather chair from a large mahogany desk toward me. Square-framed glasses. White button-up. Black slacks. A cold sweat spread through me as I stared at the stethoscope around his neck.

Some people had nightmares about falling, or public nudity, or ghosts. Mine was waking up to a doctor looming over me. They were so cold and professional, with a snap of latex gloves and the reflection of blood and needles in their eyes.

The ache in my head thumped in tune with my heart as I sat up on a couch. A chill caressed my bare midsection, and I realized my ripped shirt had been partly concealed by the suit jacket. I slipped it on and pulled it closed.

Confusion clouded my thoughts as I took in the masculine, well-worn office. My breath stilled when I met eyes with a man leaning against the front of the desk. The man I ran into. The man I got a glimpse of before I fell at his feet, unconscious.

Everything came back to me. The scarred man.

The near rape.

All I could think at that moment was, so far, Moscow really sucked.

The dark-haired Russian held my stare with a distant look of interest. I swallowed and pulled my gaze away when the doctor placed his chair next to me and sat. I eyed the briefcase beside him warily, knowing if he pulled a needle fromit, I’d take my chances out on the street.

Getting a closer look, the doctor paused and tilted his head. “Ty vyglyadish’ znakomo. My ran’she ne vstrechalis’?”

Sludge stuck to my thoughts like gum. He spoke too fast for me to understand any of it.

The doctor adjusted his glasses, scrutinizing me. “Mozhesh’skazat’svoye imya, dorogoya?”

I thought I heard “imya.” Was he asking for my name? I wasn’t sure, so I only blinked. He frowned in concern. “Ty dolzhen byl otvezti yeye v bol’nitsu.”

I only recognized “bol’nitsu.” The hospital. However, I realized his words weren’t meant for me but for the only other man in the room. The one built like a brick wall, as uncomfortable as it had been to run into him.

At first glance, he looked like a gentleman, like he belonged in a CEO’s boardroom, looking down at the world through floor-to-ceiling glass. Though, if one stared longer than they should, everything about him—the way he leaned against the desk, arms crossed; the way shadows fought in his eyes; how black ink decorated his fingers—opposed it. A powerful, maybe even dangerous edge lay in the relaxed set of his shoulders.

He was war embodied, tailored in an expensive black suit, sans tie and jacket. I knew his was the one I wore now.

As if he could feel me staring, the man caught my gaze. The urge to look away was so strong it itched beneath my skin. He expected me to. Though something foreign and astute made me persevere. Holding eye contact with him felt like a deadly game. Like Russian roulette. A revolver and one bullet. Asingle wrong blink, and I’d be dead. But it also evoked a whisper of adrenaline, as warmas half a bottle of UVBlue and the Miami sun.

“Poprobuy po-angliyski,” he said, his eyes on mine. Try English. The doctor’s brow lowered. “My English is no good.”

The other man pushed off the desk and came closer, dropping to his haunches in front of me. His dress pants kissed my preppy plaid ones. His black cap toe boots contrasted my white Rothy’s.

He was cool and calculated, from how he moved to how his gaze settled on mine, though something so alive played in his eyes. Eyes I could now see weren’t black, as I originally presumed, but a very, very dark blue. Darker than the heart-shaped stones in my ears.

I didn’t know if it was the sudden uprising of nerves, his closeness, or a result of hitting my head, but the words slipped past my lips without thought. “You’re really uncomfortable to run into.” I said it so seriously, like it was something he should be concerned about.

“My apologies.” ARussian accent and amusement touched his voice.

I stared at his lips, at the thin scar on the bottomone and the two rough words pouring out of them like vodka over ice. I wondered how he got the scar. I wondered if his voice tasted like vodka too; if it would burn my throat and warmmy stomach. I felt . . . weird. My thoughts seemed to have no filter, ping-ponging against my skull like a game of pinball.

I opened my mouth to explain myself, but all that came out was, “You’re very Russian.” He drew a thumb across the scar on his bottomlip. “You’re very American.”

The doctor shifted in his chair and spoke, but I barely heard it over this man’s presence that was so very loud. He was an eclipse, blocking the pain from my head, and, probably, the sun. Though overwhelming, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was warm. Persuasive. Worldly. A royal flush in a den of iniquity.

“Do you know your name?” he translated. Slowly, I nodded. “Mila . . . Mila Mikhailova.”

The doctor shot a censorious look at the man in front of me, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care because his gaze remained on mine, pulling curiosity to the surface.

“What’s yours?” I asked on a shallow breath. He smiled. “Ronan.”

His name grew heavy in the air until the doctor cleared his throat and said something I couldn’t

translate.

“What day of the week is it, Mila?” Ronan asked.

“I, uh . . . Fri—?” I cut myself off when he shook his head with a hint of a smile. I tried again. “Saturday?”

The doctor made a hmm noise, apparently not impressed with this man helping me. No surprise. Doctors were no fun.

“How many fingers amI holding up?” Ronan translated.

I stared at his other hand resting on his knee, at the tattoos on his fingers in between the first and second knuckles. One was a cross, another a raven. The third, a king of hearts playing card.

Ink and déjà vu.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I couldn’t stop myself from touching him, from drawing an index finger down the tattooed raven. The whispered words were pushed from my depths by an irresistible force.

“Darkness there, and nothing more . . .”

The quote condensed the space between us, dipped in something as thick and dark as tar.

I was sucked back into a tunnel, reading Edgar Allan Poe under my papa’s desk, with dirt on my face and uneven bangs I’d cut myself. Papa was speaking to Ms. Marta, my childhood tutor, unaware I was near. He was concerned about my imaginary friends and lack of real ones, my introversion, and my disinterest in schoolwork.

He thought something was wrong with me. I thought so too.

Those whispered words in the hall coiled inside me like a snake sinking its fangs in and slowly spreading poison as the years passed by. Poison that sent me on a warpath to acceptance.

Sometimes, it was the little things that made us who we were.

The heavy, empathetic look in Ronan’s eyes tightened my stomach like the click of a trigger. I didn’t expect himto understand what I said, but he did. I knew he did.

“Sleduyushchiy vopros,” Ronan said. Next question.

The doctor frowned. “U tebya yest’sem’ya, s kotoroy ya mogu svyazat’sya?” “How old are you, moy kotyonok?”

From the way the doctor’s eyes flared in disapproval, I realized he understood that English phrase, and it wasn’t what he’d said.

I answered, “Nineteen,” before remembering I turned twenty yesterday.

The doctor released a tense breath. “Devyatnadtsat’. Yey devyatnadtsat’.” Nineteen. She is nineteen.

Ronan didn’t look away fromme. “Ya slyshal.” I heard.

I hardly listened to the exchange because I was trying to remember what “moy kotyonok” meant. My, what?

“Have you been . . . violated, Mila?” I watched the dark blue of his eyes grow black.

For a moment, his question confused me. A cloud obscured the entire scene in the alley as if it happened to someone else and I’d merely watched it unfold. It didn’t seemreal, and when I thought of it, I felt nothing but mild annoyance, which probably put me in the same crazy category as my papa’s tenants.

I shook my head. “Good.”

Just a single four-letter word, but it ballooned in the air like the most important thing in the room