Page 50 of Ruthless Sin
“Pozhaluysta.”
The word lands in my chest before I can stop it, warm and exact, like being handed something I didn’t know I was missing. His voice unhurried. Like he says it to no one else, and I know that’s not true, and I want it to be true anyway.
He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t look at me. He puts the SUV in first. The clutch out. We move with the light.
Sofia in the back stops moving.
I drink the water.
I look at the water bottle. At the streetcar tracks. At a man walking a dog on the neutral ground. Anywhere that isn’t him.
He keeps his eyes on the road.
The gearshift between us is the only thing in the SUV that’s moving.
The badges are different at the gate. Plain black, no Casa Lucia script. Marco’s men at the corners in plainclothes. My chest tightens and I keep my face still as we step out of the SUV.
“All clear. Cassia rerouted the morning intake.”
Nico nods. “Tell her thank you.”
“Will do, boss.”
Nico’s hand rises toward the small of my back. I feel the air behind me change, the heat of his palm a half-inch from my spine, and then it’s gone. His hand comes back down to his side.
I keep walking. I don’t stop. I don’t turn around. My back is warm where he almost touched me, and the almost is louder than any hand that ever landed on me.
Sofia is at my elbow, notebook against her chest, and we walk into the building together.
The group room has eight chairs in a loose half-circle.
The therapist is in scrubs. She speaks slowly, like she’s checking each word before she puts it down.
She nods to me and Sofia at the door.
“Sit anywhere.”
We sit at the back, near the window.
The other women come in.
The blonde woman’s eyes go flat the moment she sits. The Vietnamese woman’s left hand hasn’t left her right. TheRomanian girl has stopped flinching at doors. The note-taker is in the corner chair. Another survivor.
The chair next to me is empty when the room starts.
The door swings open hard.
“Bozhe moy,” the voice says. “Bozhe moy, I’m late, I am late again, Lord forgive me, this child is going to come out of me sideways, I swear it on my mother. Mila, scoot over,milaya, I have eight months of belly and I cannot fit in the corner.”
Oksana.
She drops into the chair next to me, the belly arriving two seconds before she does.
She’s wearing a man’s button-down shirt with the bottom two buttons undone. Her hair is dyed three shades of red and piled loose at the crown of her head.
A wedding ring is on a chain around her neck. Thin gold.
She catches me looking.
