Day twenty-two…

Last night he came to me and woke me from sleep, and we had sex again, and he was a little rougher this time. He held my hands over my head, and cupped my chin in his hand and made me look at him when I came. He lay with me for hours afterwards, stroking me softly. But he still wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with me.

He skipped breakfast, but at eleven a.m. he comes to find me when I’m out for a stroll in the garden. He’s wearing a light gray linen suit and he smells like spicy cologne and testosterone.

“We’re going out to lunch. Don’t fucking argue with me,” Sergei growls as I open my mouth to protest that I’m not up for it.

I drop my gaze. “I wasn’t going to argue.”

“Yes, actually, you were. I know the look on your face, the way your body moves, when you’re about to argue with me. So you’re lying to me. Are you that hard up for a spanking?” His eyes gleam.

I snort. “Sergei, you say the sweetest things.”

That earns me a dirty look. “If I start acting sweet, someone has put a microchip in my brain and is controlling my thoughts. Please have me shot and put out of everyone’s misery.”

“The thought’s entered my head. More than once,” I say wryly.

“Oh really? Have I reminded you lately who’s in charge, little Willow?” He grabs my butt cheek and squeezes hard. I jerk, and gasp in pain and arousal. I loved it when he was sweet and tender a couple of days ago, but this is my drug. It’s crack cocaine, it’s a mountain-size chocolate fudge sundae, it’s an endorphin rush that I’d die for. I realize how much I’ve missed when he torments me.

“We could go a little later,” I say to him.

“I know that’s what you want. That’s why I’m going to make you wait. It’s part of your punishment.”

I stare at him, wonderingly. “You are an evil son of a bitch.”

At that, he winks, with a grim smile. “Now who’s saying sweet things? Be dressed in fifteen minutes, or I’ll shove something up your ass that makes you cry like a baby.”

Damn it. When he says things like that I want to tear off my clothes and lick him from head to toe.

I go to my room, smiling and feeling warm all over. I walk into my closet and a sudden panic attack swamps me like a tidal wave and I sink to my knees, gasping. I’m ice cold. I’m shaking.

Ugly voices scream at me.

You’re joking around while women are being raped? You’re flirting while they’re being tortured? Being murdered? Selfish bitch, selfish bitch, selfish bitch…

Your father sold little children! You deserve nothing but pain! Selfish bitch, selfish bitch, selfish bitch…

I clench my fists and my nails sink into my palms. I should hit myself. I should bang my head on the wall untiI I crack my skull open and let my brains leak out.

“Willow?” Sergei is standing above me.

“Oh!” I gasp, and start violently. The voices fade and vanish. I gape up at him. “I lost an earring.”

He reaches down and grabs my hand, and pulls me to my feet.

“There it is. In your ear. It matches the other one you’re wearing.”

“I am?” My hand flutters to my ears.

“What you meant to say was that you were having a panic attack. Here, wear this.” He shoves a white silk A-line dress at me, and stands there and waits.

I strip out of my slacks and T-shirt and change, feeling incredibly grateful that he isn’t trying to talk to me about my feelings or chastise me for my weakness. He’s just there, giving me exactly what I need, no more, no less.

How does he know how to give me exactly what I need?

When I trudge out to the car, I can’t say the panic attack is completely gone. The screaming voices frightened and disoriented me, and my heart is still beating faster and I’m breathing too quickly, but I remind myself that I don’t have to feel okay all the time. I just have to keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other.

Sometimes I will be okay. Sometimes I will feel horrible. Whether I am feeling good or bad, the most important thing to remember is: this too shall pass.

The restaurant is half an hour away, in a small, charming downtown seaside village. Sergei orders the wine for us, and I choose a seafood salad. His bodyguards are with us, of course, and they sit at a table right next to us.

When I get up to go to the bathroom, I feel oddly light, like a balloon whose string has been slashed. I realize that this is the first time I’ve gone out with Sergei, without someone following at my heels. It’s a real date. Not a hostage situation. That thought wrenches a shaky laugh from me.

As I stand at the sink washing my hands, my phone rings. It’s Anastasia’s ring tone.

When I answer, she’s shrill with panic.

“He’s got her!”

My heart leaps into my throat. I don’t have to ask who has who.

“When?” I demand.

“I don’t know, I was on my computer when Yuri came in and gave me a note she’d left on her bed. The note said she’d run away because I won’t tell her what’s going on with her father. She could have been gone for as long as a couple of hours by then. Then right after that, like two minutes ago, I got a call from her phone. It was Vilyat.” Her voice rises higher and higher, she’s almost screaming into the phone. “He grabbed her up when she was in the parking lot outside the condo. He says that I must call up the news stations right away and tell them that I was lying about him beating me, and I must give him full custody of both kids, and transfer back all the money, and check myself into a mental institution, or I will never see her again. What do I do? If I just give him all the money would he give her back?”

Stay calm, stay calm… “Let me ask Sergei. Don’t do anything until I call you back. Don’t fall for his threats. Even if you do everything he asks, he won’t ever let you have the kids again.”

She sobs. “Oh, God, please save her, Willow. I’ll turn the information over to the police. I’ll do anything.”

“I will call you right back. Sergei will save her. I know he will.” I don’t know that, but I cannot accept any other outcome.

Before I can leave the room, my phone rings again. It’s Helenka’s phone, but I know that it won’t be her calling.

I answer it, my insides liquid with terror.

“Listen to me, you little slut,” Vilyat snarls. I hear Helenka sobbing in the background. Helenka never cries. What has he done to her?

The rage that burns through me is the purest, truest thing I’ve ever felt. I will fucking end him.

“You are in the bathroom of the Salty Dog. Go climb out the window and run across the parking lot. You will see a blue van there waiting for you.”

So he had someone follow Sergei’s car here. “Fine. I will trade myself for Helenka. If you want me, you have to let her go.”

“You don’t get to bargain with me, you traitorous bitch!” Vilyat roars. I hear a smacking sound, and Helenka screams. It takes everything I have not to cry out in fury.

“You want leverage against Sergei,” I say, keeping my voice steady. I am about to die, or be raped or tortured. I know this. But Helenka’s life depends on me keeping calm. “He doesn’t care less about her. He cares about me. You will let her go, and I will go with you and do anything that you say.”

I hang up before he can answer.

I climb out of the window, and fall awkwardly to the ground. I pull my little canister of mace out of my purse, and flip the top up, and run halfway across the parking lot. The cursedly empty parking lot. Nobody to help me, nobody to hear me scream. God, I wish I still had my taser, or better, a gun.

I see the van, engine running, waiting.

The door slides open. I see Helenka and Vilyat, and a man pointing a gun at Helenka’s head. Her face is contorted with terror. I want to fall to the ground and die, but I stand up straight, for her.

“Let her out,” I call. “I’m not getting in until she’s free.”

The door closes and the van starts to slowly move away.

I force myself to stand there. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I have no choice.

Finally the car backs up and the door opens. Helenka and the man climb out. He has her arm twisted up behind her back, and her mouth is open in a wordless wail.

“Let go of her,” I call. I walk closer. She’s so pale, she looks so wretched and helpless…they’ve beaten Warrior Helenka into a terrified child. I can see red marks all over her face, where she’s been hit, and her lip is bleeding.

I am almost on top of them, but I stay out of his reach.

I hear a group of people talking now, around the corner, by the side of the restaurant. He hears it too; his eyes dart nervously in the direction of their voices.

The man lets go of her, and rushes forward, and grabs me by the arm. She starts to stumble away, and he grabs her again, and now he’s dragging both of us towards the van. I fumble with my mace and he jerks me violently, making me drop it and fall to my knees.

The expression on Helenka’s face changes in a flash.

As smooth as can be, she kicks him in the crotch so hard he doubles over, letting go of both of us. She kicks him again, in the jaw, so hard I hear it crunch. Blood pours out of his mouth. It was all an act! A beautiful, beautiful act. Thank God for Jasha. Without his teaching, she’d be back in the van already.

Another man shoots out of the car and grabs me as I’m staggering back to my feet, and I scream at Helenka. “Sergei is in the restaurant, go to him, run, run!”

Helenka flies across the parking lot with her feet barely touching the ground, around the corner, shrieking at the top of her lungs the whole way. Her shrill child’s voice sings in the wind. “Kidnappers! Perverts! They’re kidnappers, they tried to kidnap me, they tried to rape me, kidnappers, rape, rape, rape!” Instantly I hear answering shouts, getting closer.

It’s too late, though. I’m hauled into the van, clawing and biting and thrashing. The van door slams. I know I won’t win, but I vow to go down fighting.

Vilyat is behind the wheel. The van screeches out of the parking lot.

I am on the floor, flailing and kicking. A man slaps me across the face so hard my head bounces off the door. Then a reeking cloth is forced over my mouth and nose. Chloroform. I try to hold my breath, but someone punches me in the stomach, forcing me to suck in air, and everything goes dark.