Page 19 of The Mad Don
I stay another moment. Then I stand, I button my jacket, and I walk to the door.
Fabiano is in the corridor. “Kirill’s girl is here, Don Mondi.”
I am still for a moment.
“She came.”
“An hour ago. She’s in the entrance hall. One bag.”
I have met her twice before now. And twice she captivated me: first at Annika’s art gallery, then on the dock. I heard about her, about her strength and stone-cold look. I wasn’t disappointed. She is sharp and smart. Kirill trains them well.
I smooth my jacket. I roll one sleeve down and fasten the cuff. I take the stairs down slowly without hurrying.
She is standing with one bag at her feet, her coat still on. She looks at me when I reach the bottom of the stairs, and her face does exactly nothing.
I take her in because I can. She looks like someone who has slept badly.
She came. Well then, I can have fun with her while Kirill tidies up. Not a bad deal. She intrigues me after all.
“Miss Yana,” I say.
I let the silence sit. Then I smile.
“Welcome.”
Chapter Six
Yana
The bunk beds are in the corner, and I am on the bottom one, and there are six other people in this room.
Six men, rotating shifts, which means this room is never fully empty and never quiet. Someone is always coming in or going out or lying on a bunk, talking too loudly about nothing.
“—scura,” one of them is saying to laughter I am not supposed to hear, “gli occhi scuri —” and another one says something in Italian too fast for me to follow, and then one of them, in English, loud enough that there is no question it is meant to carry: “I dream about it. The thick armed Russian girl. Those dark eyes look up at me while she sucks my dick.”
The laughter fills the room. They are talking about me as always. I lie on my back, and I look at the ceiling. I breathe, and I think about other things.
It’s been two days.
I wake at five, and there is the yard. Their training is designed to remind me where I stand and to see what I’ll do. Then comes breakfast, then rest, and another training session. Another meal and another session. Same as Kirill’s house in structure, nothing like it in anything else.
At Kirill’s, I had a room with a lock and a bathroom, and Annika left things outside my door, sometimes books or something from the kitchen she thought I’d like. Here I have a bunk in a room full of men who have spent two days berating.
I can only shower at three in the morning when the room is finally empty and quiet enough that I can be certain no one is coming in. I have slept in intervals, lightly, the way I learned to sleep a long time ago.
I have not complained. I have not asked for anything. I have not shown them anything.
The bell rings.
The men file out, and I stand and walk with them to the meal hall, a long room with long tables. I join the line to see the portions. Watch who eats what, where they sit, and who defers to whom.
I reach the front of the line and hold out my plate. The man behind the counter ladles something onto it from the main pot, then reaches below the counter and opens a second pot.
The smell hits me first. He ladles it onto my plate. It is grey. It is bubbling at the edges. It smells like something that was food at some point, weeks ago.
“Special delicacy,” he says. “For guests.”
The laughter comes from everywhere at once. I look at the plate.
