I eat in silence, trying to take my time and savor every last bite. It could be my final meal.
He rises from the stool and approaches me, but I keep my head down, focusing on my eating. When he’s close enough, he drags his fingers through my hair. Since I’ve been here, he’s grown more and more comfortable with touching me, and each time he does, it makes my skin crawl. I don’t know what he’s going to do if this thing lasts any longer, but I know that I won’t put up with him hurting me that way. I’ll go down fighting before I let him violate me.
Thankfully, he stands up straight again and says, “I’m beginning to wonder if Matvei really isn’t coming.”
I swallow a big piece of bread, my throat raw as it goes down. “Why?”
“I’ve been watching him for a long time now. That’s what I spend most of my time doing. He seems to be going on with life as usual. It’s very disappointing, truly.”
I refuse to let the light of hope reignite in my chest. Matvei is not coming to save me. He’s going to take Nikolai and hide, run, fight back—whatever it takes to keep the boy safe. I might die here. But at least I’ll die knowing I did the right thing.
I look up to meet Rogers’s eyes. “Why are you disappointed?”
“Because I would have thought Matvei would make a move by now. His brother was the reckless one, true, but Matvei came running to stop him from getting to the factory. This kind of scenario deserves a show of love,” Rogers murmurs. “Him bursting through the door, risking his life to save the woman he cares for. I mean, it writes itself, truly.”
I finish the soggy meat and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, chewing thoughtfully. “You talk a lot about love,” I note.
“It’s the only thing we have in this miserable life,” he replies.
“I … I just have to ask. If you loved Brianne, why did you kill her, too? She was the only woman who ever treated you right, that’s what you said. But you went and shot her?”
A flash of anger sparks on Rogers’s face, and I prepare myself for him to yell at me. I’ve gotten to a touchy subject and he’s not ready to talk about it. Instead of screaming at me, though, Rogers takes a seat in the chair he dragged inside.
“Morozov surprised me. I didn’t expect him to be there. He caused me to shoot her on accident.” Rogers wipes his mouth and looks away, his knees bouncing with a noticeable nervous energy.
“Oh,” I say.
I want to ask more questions, but the way he’s sitting, it’s clear that he’s not in the mood to answer them. I soak up the last of the meat sauce with the bread and finish eating it. A moment later, I drink the last of the water, too.
“No, I lied. He didn’t surprise me,” Rogers says guiltily. It almost sounds like a confession. “She chose Dmitry over me. She picked this life over everything I could give her. How could I not be mad at the woman who basically spit in my face when I gave her my heart?”
When I start to talk, he cuts me off, continuing. “That was her fatal mistake, really. She picked this family of beasts over me.” He swivels and fixes his eyes on me. “You’d know something about that, wouldn’t you? Because, from the looks of it, Matvei is choosing the same thing; otherwise, he would’ve been here by now.”
His knees bounce with even more energy, and I swallow hard. His twitchy movements make me uneasy, like a cornered rat who might jump in any direction without warning. Since we’ve been here, I’ve watched this man mentally unravel, growing angrier and angrier at me and Matvei and the Morozov family and everything else under the sun. He’s worked himself out of that calm, collected demeanor he had at first and now he looks clearly out of his mind.
It’s almost comforting knowing that we’re going insane together. That it’s not just me.
“I know what I can do,” Rogers says, smiling wide. “I can send him one of your fingers. If I do something to show him that I’m not fucking around, he’ll have to come for you, and then this plan will go accordingly.”