Jasha is driving. We tear down in the road in silence.

Sergei has wrapped me in a coat and he’s holding me in his arms. It’s warm, but I can’t stop shaking.

“W-w-will those girls be all right?” Tears run down my cheeks. I brace myself for him to mock my stutter, but instead he strokes my hair.

“They’ll be fine.” He sighs. “No. They won’t be fine, but they will receive help and recover as much as they can.”

“You speak Serbian.” My dazed mind plucks that random fact from somewhere.

“I speak a lot of languages.”

“Where did those women come from? Feodyr said that you arranged the whole thing.”

“No,” he said coldly. “That is not my business. I deal in commodities, not human beings. Feodyr must have struck a deal with someone who can supply women like that.”

“There might be more of those women being held prisoner, right now!” I say, jerking upright. “You have to save them!”

Sergei’s voice is heavy and dull. “There are hundreds of thousands of women like that all over the world. These women will tell the police everything, and the police will likely be able to catch and shut down the local group of traffickers. And more will come along to replace them. It’s the way of the world.”

I start to cry again, because I know he’s telling the truth, and because nobody should have to feel the pain and terror those women felt. “The world is ugly and evil.”

“Now you’re learning.” But his arms tighten around me as if to shield me from the truth of what he just said.

Finally, we get back to the house.

He scoops me up in his arms and carries me out of the car, through the front door, and down the hall to my room. I feel so safe in his arms.

When he sets me down, I rush to take a shower, and I scrub and scrub. I want the feeling of those men off me. Their fingers, their sweat, their slobbery saliva…

I pull on a terrycloth robe and stumble out of the bathroom.

Sergei is sitting in a chair next to his bed, and I am shocked by the look on his face. He actually looks like he’s angry. With me.

He stands up as I approach him.

“Did you ask for that?” he demands. “Did you want to be with all those men? Is that what you like?”

And that’s it. I break. I pick up a vase and throw it at him. He parries it easily. I don’t care. I am so filled with rage that I’m fearless.

I throw a heavy book at his head. He slaps it aside.

“Did I want to be taken to a warehouse and raped by a bunch of fat old pigs, you stupid motherfucker?” I scream at him. I fly at him and claw at his face. He grabs my hand. I go to knee him in the crotch and he swings to the side.

He pulls me up against him and wraps his arms around me without a word, crushing me against him.

“Get your hands off me,” I hiss.

He lets me go.

“Get the fuck out of my room!” I scream, crying.

He actually obeys me. He turns and leaves.

I fall down on the bed and sob until my pillow is soaked, until I have no tears left.

I am shocked when the door opens a short time later and he walks toward me. Shocked and furious.

“Get out!” I scream at him. “I will kill you, or die trying.” I can’t stop shaking, and tears are running down my face, but it’s like someone else is crying. I can barely feel my own body.

He sits down on the bed next to me.

“I didn’t want those men to touch you,” he said. “I just went crazy when I saw their hands on you.” Pause. “Feodyr took you without my permission. I would have killed him if you hadn’t passed out.”

And now after everything he’s done to me, after this final indignity, I should just melt in his arms the first time he admits that he cares about me a little? Because I’m that pathetic, that needy?

“Well, hooray, that makes everything all right,” I say bitterly. “Would you like a blow job now? Asshole. Douchebag. I fucking hate you. I want you dead.”

“I know,” he says mildly. “That’s beside the point.”

“What is the point?”

He took a deep breath. “I was jealous when I saw those men with you.”

I fly off the bed with a scream of rage and punch him on the side of the head. He doesn’t try to stop me. He lets me hit him three times, and then my hand is throbbing with pain and he grabs my wrist.

“Stop that, or you’ll break all your bones,” he says. “You punch like a bitch. I’ll have to teach you how to hit right.”

“Jealous!” I scream at him. “Jealous is how you feel when you see your girlfriend flirting at a party! You get jealous when you think your girl is falling for someone else! Those men were about to rape me!”

“They’re dead now.” He lets go of my wrist.

I fling myself back on the bed, turning my back to him.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said. “That was not my intention. I don’t want anyone else to touch you, ever. Carmelo had already asked me for you, and I threatened to kill him if he didn’t back off. And that’s why Feodyr took you.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“Feodyr was trying to force my hand. He’s never seen me like this before, and he thought that you were weakening me. I think he believed that if he made you dirty, if he tarnished you with all those men rubbing all over you, I wouldn’t want you anymore.”

I turn to look at him. “Why would he think I was making you weak?”

“Because he could tell that I was…” He stops and avoids my gaze. He’s never done that before.

“You were what?” I prod, with a snap in my voice.

He shook his head. “He knew that I wanted you. He knew that you were affecting me.”

He’s dodging the question.

“Affecting you how?” I ask sullenly.

Something dark and dangerous sparks in his eyes. “In a bad way, for a man like me. To have feelings for anyone is a weakness that my enemies could take advantage of.”

That’s not quite an answer, but it’s also a million times more than I ever dared hope for. I feel the twisted rage inside me unclench just a little.

I close my eyes. “What do you want from me?” I ask. “What do you want right now? What do you want forever?”

He laughs, a bitter chuckle. “Forever. I forgot. Nice little girls like you want forever. But all I can offer you is this.” He runs his hand over my breast. I stifle a moan and try to slap his hand aside. I’m still furious.

He grabs my hands and pins them over my head. He slides on top of me, and he’s rock hard. I feel his thick length pressing into my stomach.

He looks down at me.

“What I want right now, of course, is to plunge my cock into your tight little pussy. I want you to satisfy me, and I want you to scream my name when you come, every single day. Until I don’t want you anymore. There is no forever with me, princess. You already know what I am. Cold. Fucked in the head. Evil. You’re too good for me, and for my world. When the thirty days is up, whether your uncle pays me or not, I’ll send you on your way. It will be better for you that way. And it will be better for me, which is the only thing that matters.”

I start to cry.

He’s going to throw me away like trash.

He slides off me and releases my hands. Then he bends down and kisses the tears from my cheeks with his soft lips. Who is this man? And how do I keep him from vanishing? His rare moments of tenderness are more precious than oxygen.

His voice grinds on, low, relentless. “I’ll set you up with enough money to get away from your family. Your uncle will be dead by then. You already know that. And for the next couple of weeks, I guarantee that I will make you come every day. That’s all I have to offer. Don’t ask for more, because it will make me angry, and then I will hurt you in ways that you don’t like.”

“You think your threats scare me?” I spit at him. “You already hurt me. Every day, whether you’re with me or not.”

“Then getting as far away from me as possible is the best thing for you, isn’t it?”

He’s right. I can’t argue with that. And I have to go home to Helenka and Yuri anyway. I have to get them away from a world where this kind of captivity is a thing that could ever happen to them. What kind of happy ending did I foresee with Sergei anyway? Him taking me out on dates? To dinner, to a play, to a museum?

“I don’t understand you,” I say, shaking my head in bewilderment. “You’re two different men. Sometimes you’re so soft and tender to me. I’d die for that Sergei. And sometimes you’re the meanest, cruelest bastard, like a little boy tearing the wings off butterflies.”

“I’m a sociopath. I’m a sadist. What’s hard to understand about that?”

“Do you truly enjoy hurting me?”

“Sometimes.” He answers without hesitation.

“Do you care about me at all? Do you have any feelings for me besides hate?”

This time he hesitates. “I don’t hate you, Willow. I wish I could. I’ve tried to, but I can’t. You’re the kindest, most decent person I have ever met. That’s why you have no place in my world.”

Again, the sweet and the bitter, the caress and the slap.

I could argue, I could plead, but I don’t. I want to tell him that he could be more than he is, that he doesn’t have to live with all this rage and hate consuming his soul. But I have my mind focused on one single goal – make it home to my cousins. Even if he’d let me stay, I couldn’t.

I roll over and turn my back to him again. I’m in such a haze right now, I don’t know what to do or say.

He wraps his arms around me and presses me up against him. He doesn’t move his hands or kiss me. He just holds me, his massive wall of muscle like the walls of a fortress, both trapping and protecting me. I am his prisoner and his pet.

I’m still shaking, I realize. I can’t stop.

He tightens his arms around me.

“You’re safe,” he murmured. “Nobody will hurt you.”

“Except you.”

“True,” he sighs into my ear, his hot breath lighting a bonfire of desire low in my belly.

He stays with me for three precious hours. I know because I keep sneaking looks at the clock, terrified he’ll leave me.

He strokes me with the lightest touch, fingers trailing down my arm, setting my skin alight with pleasure. He doesn’t try to have sex with me. He’s just there. And as the minutes tick by, the horrors of the night recede bit by bit and I stop shaking and my heart is no longer hammering itself to death against my ribcage.

It’s so unfair.

He’s making me want him, crave him. Is this just a new, more subtle form of abuse? Creating an addiction that only he can cure, then telling me he’ll send me away and leave me to burn?

When he stops stroking me and slips out of my bed, it’s all I can do not to cry out, to beg him to stay with me. I want to fling myself at his feet, weeping, and hang on to his ankles, like a child.

I try to summon up thoughts of what a truly evil monster he is. All the times he’s mocked me and made me pay for my family’s crimes. How much he’s hurt my body and my heart. I’ve seen him kill people and send people to their deaths without a blink of an eye.

I want to hate him. I need to hate him.

But I can’t help but think about the little boy, that tiny act of mercy. I can’t stop thinking about how gentle he can be with me. How protective he was of me tonight.

I turn on my side, curl up into a ball, and pray for sleep that won’t come.