Page 61 of The Pakhan's Captive
“I’m trying to make breakfast.”
“Maria already made breakfast.”
I look at the table. There is indeed a full breakfast on it that I didn’t make and had no part in and didn’t ask for and I pull out a chair and sit down and pour coffee and say nothing because there is nothing to say.
“Mama your toast is getting cold,” Theo informs me without looking up from his construction.
“Thank you, baby.”
He adds another soldier to the structure, deeply satisfied with himself. “I told Superman how you like your eggs,” he announces. “I said no mixing the green bits in and he told Maria and Maria did it right.” He looks up at me with the expression of someone who has solved a significant problem. “You’re welcome, Mama.”
I look at my plate. Scrambled, not too dry, chives on the side.
I look at Razvan.
He’s still reading his phone.
I eat my eggs and say nothing. The fury of it sits somewhere in my chest where I can’t get at it cleanly because I don’t even know exactly what I’m furious about and that makes it worse.
The morning moves and I find my edges where I can. I tell the guard at the east corridor that I’m going for a walk outside and he steps aside and I get twelve steps into the grounds before I notice the two men who have materialized from nowhere and are walking a casual thirty feet behind me.
I stop. They stop.
I turn around and go straight to Razvan’s office.
“Call off your dogs,” I snap from the doorway.
He looks up.
“Your men. The ones following me around the grounds like I’m a flight risk.”
He raises a brow. “Why would I call them off and hand you a clean chance to run again?”
My jaw tightens. “I’m not going to run. I agreed to this arrangement and I?—”
“You agreed the last time too,” he says pleasantly. “Right up until you didn’t.”
I stare at him. “So this is how it’s always going to be? Men following me everywhere? For the rest of my?—”
“Yes.”
One word. No elaboration. He looks back down at his desk.
I stand in his doorway with forty responses stacked up behind my teeth and none of them will change a single thing and we both know it, so I turn around and leave and find a different corridor to be furious in.
This is what he does. All day, this is what he does. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t restrain. He doesn’t raise his voice or lock doors or do anything that I can push back against directly. He is simply immovable, present everywhere I am and somehow also already wherever I’m going, and fighting him is like fighting water. It just goes around whatever I throw at it and keeps being water.
I rearrange the sitting room furniture in the afternoon out of spite. Move the chairs, the side tables, the lamp. The housekeeper finds me doing it and watches with an expression of deep uncertainty. I tell her I’m redecorating and she nods and leaves, and I feel approximately thirty seconds of satisfaction before I realize I’ve rearranged someone else’s furniture in someone else’s house and I’m still here.
Razvan finds me in the rearranged sitting room an hour later. He stands in the doorway, looks at the furniture, looks at me, and says nothing about any of it.
“In two days you’re coming with me to a nightclub. Business meeting. I’ll have someone bring clothing options for you tomorrow.”
I set down the book I’m not reading. “I’m not going to a nightclub.”
“You are.”
“And I’m certainly not wearing outfits you’ve selected for me.” I hold his gaze. “I’m not your doll. I have my own clothes and my own taste and I’m capable of dressing myself without your?—”
