wide, surrounded by an interlocking cage—a Koshelek—and places it into the briefcase.
Gloating, he snaps the gold buckles closed and then buttons his coat.
Bekami glides back over to me. He bends forward to stare me in the eye. He traces my collarbone with his fingernail. His nose has blood crusted in the nostrils. “Girls like you need to learn their place,” he says in a chilling voice.
“Because boys like you can’t keep up?” I smile.
With the back of his hand, he swings the weight of his forearm across my jaw.
Blinking lights go off in my head. All the pain, all the bruises, all those nights on a cold tile floor come flooding back.
“You dare insult me?” he fumes.
Except those memories that once haunted me now fuel me. I lift my chin. “Whatever it is you’re planning?” I glare at Bekami. “I will stop you. Again. And again—”
He grips my neck, pinching my esophagus, strangling me.
“Never!” he declares, dousing my face in a barrage of spit.
“You have what you want.” Abramovich steps between us and places his hand on Bekami’s chest. “It’s time for you to leave, Izam.”
With a final squeeze, Bekami lets go of my neck.
I slump forward in my seat, coughing blood onto the marble floor. I listen to Bekami’s footsteps fade.
Abramovich takes a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and shakes it loose.
“Why are you helping him?” I ask. “He’ll kill innocent people—”
“Many, possibly.” Abramovich presses the embroidered edge to my cheek, wiping away Bekami’s spit, my blood, my sweat. “A small price for you.”
Refolding the silk handkerchief, Abramovich places it back into his pocket. Blood stains the wool of his jacket. “None of this would have happened if your American parents had surrendered you from the start.”
“You mean if your men had found me in Kotka and killed me too?” I retort.
Squirming in my seat, I try to loosen the knot, but it is so tight that my hands become covered in sweat and blood.
“I wasn’t entirely truthful earlier,” Abramovich says abruptly. He folds his fingers together, then unfolds them, and tucks his hands into his pockets. “The truth is, I died long before they signed my death certificate in Lefortovo.”
His eyes gleam as he watches me, captive, immobile, unable to do anything except twist my hands and listen to him.
“Shortly after your father, Anton …” He pauses. “You know about him, the traitor?”
I grimace. “Hero. Yes, I know.”
He scoffs. “After Anton escaped with your American parents, SVR came for me. We were staying at our dacha when Spetsnaz arrived in the middle of the night. My wife, Elizaveta, ran outside. ‘My father is wealthy,’ she pleaded with the commander, ‘He will pay you to go away, to leave us alone.’ ”
Abramovich removes a tusk-handled knife from his breast pocket and twists the handle between his thumb and forefinger. “It is Anton’s fault she was killed.” His voice becomes almost a whisper. “It is Anton’s fault they both died.”
“Both?” I ask with trepidation. I watch his fingers curl and uncurl around the handle. I can’t be sure if he is telling the truth. Is this some elaborate tale to gain my sympathy? My trust? I continue working on the knot.
“Elizaveta wasn’t alone.” Abramovich goes still. “He followed her outside. He never let her out of his sight … Spetsnaz gunned Elizaveta down with my little boy clinging to her chemise. So, you see, Sophia, Spetsnaz may have shot them, but it was your father, your hero, who killed them.”
“You’re lying.” I force back tears. He’s not going to see me cry. He’s not going to make me feel sorry for him—make me feel guilt.
Abramovich puts the blade on my scar and runs the tip down my clavicle. I dare not breathe. “I was being tortured in Lefortovo when she told me you had survived. I can’t express to you what I felt. You gave me a reason to live again.”
Exhaling, Abramovich steps away from me, and returns the knife to his pocket.
I rub the rope up and down the back of the chair, hoping for a nail or a splinter in the wood to catch it. But the back is smooth, varnished mahogany, and the blood-soaked rope slides along it seamlessly.
“Do you know what is harder than seeing your family murdered?” He begins pacing, his head snapping in my direction every other syllable, as if he’s rehearsed his words a thousand times and now he has stage fright and can remember none of them. “What is more tormenting