Sara

---

After that night, it becomes even harder to resist Peter’s efforts to insinuate himself into my mind and heart. I don’t know if he thinks his revelations terrified me and is seeking to make up for it, or if he simply senses my resolve wavering, but he becomes impossibly more attentive toward me, pampering and indulging me beyond belief.

Everyone except me has chores. Peter does most of our cooking, and the other guys are in charge of laundry and keeping the house spotlessly clean. I help with the laundry anyway, so I don’t feel like a total slug, but Peter doesn’t require it from me, and other than that time when I threw the plate, I haven’t had to touch a vacuum or do anything else that I don’t feel like doing.

On top of that, anything I want is mine—within the confines of my captivity, of course. If I mention a preference for silk pillowcases, Peter gets them for me within a few short days. If I express a desire to go for a walk, he drops whatever he’s doing and accompanies me, no longer entrusting that duty to any of his men. Most importantly, though, he does everything he can to ensure I’m not bored.

His dance studio idea is a bust so far—all I use the room for is occasional yoga and some stretching—but I really appreciate the recording equipment he got for me. It’s as high-end as anything a professional might use. I can record and edit anything I want, and while I start with the pop songs I love, I soon begin experimenting with variations on those songs and even try composing a couple of my own, setting the lyrics to music mixes I create from different tunes. Mastering the software and the equipment requires a steep learning curve, but I welcome the challenge. It’s not only fun, but it consumes a lot of my free time, and when I’m trying to find the words to express the song forming in my mind, I don’t think about everything I’ve lost and the fact that I’m an assassin’s captive.

I just focus on the music.

I’ve also started to perform for the guys. It’s an after-dinner ritual now, where Peter asks me to sing as a way of entertaining everyone and I reluctantly (but secretly, quite eagerly) agree to do one song, prefacing each performance with disclaimers about possibly not remembering the words, being unprepared, and so on. Naturally, it’s always a song I rehearse in advance, usually a variation on whatever popular hit I played with in the recording studio that day. I’m too shy to share my own songs, but the guys are so enthusiastic about my renditions of pop music that I foresee a day when I might try performing one of my own pieces.

“You have a really good voice,” Yan tells me after the first week, his cool green eyes assessing me with some surprise. “Peter was right about that.”

I grin at him—praise from our resident psychopath is an exceedingly rare event—and decide to perform two songs next time.

If the guys enjoy it and so do I, why not?

Between the music and my usual activities with Peter, I have enough to occupy my days, but I still miss my old job. Whenever one of the guys gets hurt—which happens with scary frequency during their daily sparring—I get to use my medical skills, but it’s not enough. I need the intellectual stimulation of my profession, all the things I learned daily by treating a wide variety of patients and keeping up with the latest studies. Now I feel out of the loop, isolated from new developments in my field, and when I mention it to Peter during one of our walks, he promises to do something about that.

Sure enough, he starts having his hackers send me biweekly compilations of all the cutting-edge medical research happening around the world. Some of the material is obviously public—peer-reviewed studies published in the academic journals I used to subscribe to, et cetera—but a lot of it seems to come straight from the companies’ private archives.

“Peter, this is insane,” I say after reading about a gene therapy that holds hope for reversing late-stage breast cancer. “Where did your people learn about this? This is huge.”

“Is it?” He smiles as he looks up from his laptop.

I nod vigorously. “If this therapy is as effective as these researchers’ notes indicate, millions of women’s lives will be saved. How did your hackers come across this? I should’ve at the very least heard rumors about this back home. This is a game changer in cancer treatment. You realize that, right?”

His smile broadens. “What can I say? Our guys are good.”

I shake my head and bury myself back in the detailed study analysis. I should feel guilty that I’m essentially stealing some startup’s intellectual property, but I’m too fascinated to stop reading. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to use this knowledge for financial gain or share it with anyone. My access to the outside world is strictly limited to phone calls with my parents.

It’s the one thing Peter won’t budge on, no matter how much I beg and plead.

“Come on, what harm would it do to have me browse the news once in a while?” I argue after Peter catches me trying to log on to his laptop—a fruitless attempt, given all the passwords and security he has in place. “You can block certain websites, prevent me from using all email and social media if you want. There are a ton of apps for that, and—”

“No, ptichka.” His face is resolute as he takes the laptop away from me. “We can’t risk you performing a search that would expose our IP address to the FBI, nor you figuring out some clever way to get in touch with them. Every website has a place to leave a comment nowadays, and you’re too smart not to know that.”

Frustrated, I give up on accessing the internet and try to think of other escape venues, but none come to mind. The one thing I could try—some kind of coded message to my parents during our brief phone calls—is far too risky. Peter is always with me, listening to every word I say, and I know that if I so much as hint at our location, he’ll cut me off from further contact with my family. He’s said as much, and I know he means it.

No matter how much he indulges me, I never forget that his obsession has a dark side, that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep me his.