Page 70 of His Contract Queen

Now they come and go like ghosts.

They deliver trays of food with simple meals like borscht, black bread, boiled potatoes, and tea, setting them on the small table by the window without a word, then come around to collect the empty dishes later. They change the linens with quick, efficient movements, leaving fresh towels folded on the chair by my bathroom. Every task is performed with their eyes fixed on the floor, on anything but me.

Whatever my father said to them has them all scared enough to comply.

I can see it in the way their shoulders hunch when they cross the threshold and I try to talk to them. Their hands tremble slightly when they set down the tray, quickly retreating to the door and disappearing beyond it. They’ve been threatened—maybe with their jobs, maybe with worse. In this house, my father’s word is law. Disobedience has always carried hefty consequences.

Still, I try anyway.

It isn’t until one of the kitchen staff’s sons, Ike, comes up to bring me dinner that I finally get a breakthrough.

He’s sixteen, nearing seventeen, lanky in that awkward way boys are when they’ve grown too fast and haven’t quite caught up to their own limbs. His dark hair flops into eyes that are too big for his narrow face, giving him the permanent look of someone startled by the world.

He brings the tray into my room with the same tense body language everyone else has. When he sets the tray on the small table by the window, he hesitates. His fingers linger on the edge of the tray a second too long. Then he glances toward the door, checking for anyone lingering in the hallway before finally lifting his eyes to mine.

I speak before he can turn and flee.

“I know they told you not to talk to me,” I say, keeping my voice quiet the way I used to speak to him when he was little and afraid of thunderstorms. “But I need you to deliver a message to someone for me. That’s it. Then I’ll stop bothering you all.”

His Adam’s apple bobs. “I can’t?—”

I clap my hands together in front of me and sink slowly to my knees onto the carpet. If begging is what it takes, I’ll do it until my voice is gone.

“Please, Ike. It’s just a letter. That’s it. No one has to know. I swear.”

He stares at me for a long moment. I see the conflict flash across his face, the boy who once brought me drawings of hedgehogs and proudly showed me his first pocketknife now caught between loyalty to his employer and me. His father works in the kitchens. His mother cleans the upper floors. If my father finds out he helped me, they could all lose everything.

After a long, agonizing moment, he nods reluctantly. “Okay. But if anyone sees?—”

“They won’t.”

I scramble up from the floor and cross the room to the small writing desk under the window. There’s a single sheet of cream stationery left in the drawer, embossed with the Borchin crest, and a fountain pen that still has ink in it. The words come fast, short, no room for subtlety or second-guessing.

Aleks, I’m locked in the east wing. There is an old service tunnel that leads under the house. Comes out at the bottom of the hill. Old storm cellar door. It’s red. -K

I scrawl the address on the front of the folded note, the full street name I remember seeing that first day I was brought to the Volkov estate. Then I fold the paper into a tiny, tight square small enough to hide in a pocket. I press it into Ike’s palm and close his fingers around it.

His hand is warm, callused from helping in the kitchens, trembling just slightly.

“Thank you,” I tell him fiercely, holding his gaze so he can see I mean it with every piece of me. “If this works, if he comes, I’ll make sure you and your parents are safe. I swear it.”

He just nods again, a quick, jerky motion, before slipping the note into the inner pocket of his jacket. Then he’s gone, the door closing softly behind him.

I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the place where he stood. This may be my last hope. If Ike gets caught or changes his mind and the letter never reaches Aleksandr, I’m finished. My father will keep me here until I break, or until he decides I’m too dangerous to keep alive at all.

But if he succeeds…

I closemy eyes and let myself imagine, just for a second, the sound of Aleksandr’s car in the drive. The low, predatory growl of the engine cutting through the quiet night. The way the house would go still right before the front doors would burst open. Then he’d be there, that slow, dangerous smile curling his mouth up that says he’s come to collect what’s his.

I don’t know if he’ll come.

I don’t know even if he still wants me after being exposed so publicly. But I have to cling to the possibility like a lifeline. If Aleksandr Volkov decides to burn the world down for me, then Ramil Borchin won’t just lose what’s left of his reputation.

He’ll lose everything.

19

ALEKSANDR