Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,17

information and takes note of it before he gives me one last glance and then leaves the room.

Magda sets a glass of water on the nightstand and smooths back the tangled hair in my face the way that I’ve seen mothers do to their children. Not mine. Mine kept us locked away where we couldn’t disturb her.

I squeeze my eyes shut and tell Magda to stop. She does.

“It’s okay, child,” she murmurs. “Everything will be okay now. Mr. Nikolaev will take very good care of you. You are safe here.”

Her kind words anger me and I want to tell her so. I want to tell her that she’s a liar. That you are never safe. That you can never count on anyone to protect you. Only yourself. And even then, you will fail. But I don’t say anything. Because another sharp jolt of pain seizes my body and I flop onto my side and curl up in a ball.

“Try to get some rest,” she tells me in a soothing voice. “I will be right here.”

I hear her soft footfalls move to the chair by the window, and a weak thought enters my mind. Even though I lashed out at her, I am grateful that she is there. Because if I’m going to hell, at least I won’t be going alone.

Pain.

I understand now that the word truly meant nothing to me before. The thing I thought I knew well was merely a shadow of the demon that courts me now. Howling inside of me, clawing at my insides, desperate for more poison. My body is at the mercy of this demon. The sanctuary inside my head no longer exists. Nothing exists. Only the pain. The want. And the demon I cannot control.

I continue to beg Magda to end it for me. To kill me. I say horrific things that I didn’t even know I was capable of. At one point, I hear her sniffling from her chair across the room.

I think I black out for a while. Everything is fuzzy when I wake, and Magda is shaking me.

“Miss Talia,” she says, “This is Dr. Shtein. She is here to give you an exam.”

A groan is my only answer. I can’t move. I can’t even see anything but the fuzzy figure of a woman hovering over me.

“She isn’t going to hurt you,” Magda says gently. “Just making sure you are alright. It won’t take long.”

The poking and prodding that takes place over the next twenty minutes barely registers. The pain is gone, and now there is only exhaustion. I think I’m hallucinating too. My limbs don’t feel like my own as she lifts them and examines every inch of me. I’m still naked. But there is no shame anymore. There is nothing.

The numbness is starting to return, and I am grateful. Magda and the doctor speak in murmured Russian and then Magda translates to me.

“She will give you something for the pain. Something to help with the withdrawal.”

The pain is gone, but I don’t argue. I’ll take anything I can get.

“It will be back,” Magda adds. “She says this is normal. This liquid will help you.”

They help me sit up long enough to ingest whatever it is they are giving me. And then I flop back onto my pillow, my eyes rolling up towards the ceiling.

“She needs to do a vaginal exam as well,” Magda says.

There is a note of concern in her voice. As though I might react unfavorably. There is nothing they can do that is worse than what’s already been done. My body has not been my own in so long, I don’t remember anything else. So I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling and come up with a new number in my head. Thirty. I will give myself thirty days to find another way. By then, Alexei will let his guard down. I will convince him I am better.

There’s a snap of latex gloves, and then an instrument inside of me. It doesn’t hurt. But then the doctor is moving the IUD around inside of me, and I cringe at the sensation. Arman had it placed when he purchased me.

Dr. Shtein murmurs something in Russian, and her and Magda talk quietly for a few moments, coming to some sort of conclusion. And then Magda squeezes my hand tighter and says something in English that I don’t hear.

Something shifts inside of me, and then the Doctor pulls away and pats me on the leg. Magda covers the lower