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“Didn’t they say not to?”
“They always say that!” she shrieked.
Not always. Somehow the bitter thought remained locked in my brain, remembering my own ransom demand as clear as day.
“Call the accountant. Donotcall the police. And I’ll check in with you later tonight, ok?” She whimpered something that sounded like an agreement. “Mom, it’s going to be ok. Just do what they say and it’ll all work out. Ok?”
She didn’t say anything else. All I heard was her crying until she disconnected. Part of me felt bad, the part that loved my mother for being the lesser of two evils. But the other part of me couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Perhaps if she’d shown an iota of that concern for me earlier this year, we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.
A minute later she replied to the email, agreeing to get the money.
“Will she really do it?” Sasha asked, casually shifting his hand to my thigh, his fingers providing a steady sort of pressure that kept me from losing my shit.
“Of course she will. She doesn’t have a choice.”
“She didn’t do anything for you.”
As much as I wanted to ignore him, he wasn’t wrong. At the same time, I really didn’t want to think about it anymore than I already had. The goal was to look forward, not back, like Sasha said. “This time she doesn’t have that asshole stopping her.”
Neither of us spoke again until we were back home. Wordlessly, we headed into the kitchen, making dinner together like a normal couple and not one who’d spent the day elbow-deep in an elaborate plot for revenge. He chopped vegetables while I kept an eye on the cabbage head boiling in a stock pot. Just an average day in the life, I guess, with the Russian mafia.
I couldn’t tell if our silence was the good kind or the bad kind. I mean, Sasha was never chatty, but he seemed to be extra quiet since he took me to see my dad. I didn’t know if that meant he was pissed about something or thinking about what he told me earlier. I sure as hell was. Now that it was just the two of us, I couldn’t think about anything else. Sasha’s words kept replaying in my brain, over and over, interspersed with flashes of his face — the pain, the rage, etched onto every line and burning in his blue eyes.
Beaten. Electrocuted.
Starved. Strangled.
Die.
He wasn’t talking in general terms or hyperbole. He was way too fucking specific for it to be hypothetical. That was a memory I inadvertently made him face, a truth he furiously unleashed.
No one is built for that.
That is the point.
That is why it is torture.
When the cabbage was finally ready, soft but not mushy as he taught me, I grabbed the handles on the stock pot and immediately swore. Ripping my hands away from the scalding metal, I looked around for a pot holder. Before I found one, Sasha picked up the pot — with no pot holder, or towel, oranything— and dumped out the water without even flinching.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked, rubbing my poor fingertips together gently.
“Doesn’t what hurt?” He shot me a weird look and grabbed the steaming cabbage head with his bare hand, setting it on the cutting board.
“How are you not burning your hand right now?”
“I don’t really have feeling in them anymore.” Furthering his point, he peeled off cabbage leaves one by one, releasing tendrils of steam and more boiling water trapped inside as he disassembled it.
“Anymore?” I prompted softly, biting my lower lip while waiting to see what his reaction would be.
He paused for a split second. He may have kept his gaze on the cabbage, but it was long enough for me to notice the way his jaw clenched and his shoulders stiffened.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you’ve been through worse,” I said, filling up the heavy silence before it strangled me. He knew about the worst trauma in my life, I had to know his, if only so I didn’t fucking remind him of it, like I did today.
“Can you get the meat?” He trimmed along the spine of the cabbage leaf with a paring knife, helping to lay it flat.Stillnot looking at me.
“All of that stuff happened to you. Didn’t it? Was it here... or back in Russia?”
Sighing, he stepped around me, retrieving the bowl of meat filling himself. Instead of answering, he went back to making dinner, spooning the filling into the cabbage and rolling them into oblong packets.
