Page 90 of The Harbinger

A door slammed in the distance, causing my body to jerk from my disparaging thoughts. What was he doing out there?And why did he lock me inside?

I stood, the ends of my wrinkled chemise falling to mid-thigh as I composed myself, then tested the door once more.

Locked.

Of course it was. Why did I expect anything different?

The large circular clock above the fireplace struck midnight as I looked around the room. It was almost as if it was constructed for this very moment. The lock on the outside of the door, no windows that opened, and enough entertainment to keep the boredom at bay for a significant period of time.

Did he treat Nina this way? Why would she stay with him? Maybe that’s why she disappeared. She’d taken the first opportunity to escape him, and she’d succeeded.

I stared at the clock’s secondhand as it ticked its way around the numbers.

One minute.

Two.

Five.

The hour hand clicked over to one A.M.

I broke from my stance and lay on the bed, my body numb, my heart thumping in a steady rhythm. I curled into a ball and stared at the lone black book in the middle of the shelf, my eyelids bobbing with sleep.

Chapter 21

Mia

Thesofttrillofa songbird caused a smile to lift my frown as I flipped the textured page over.

It was an old brown book with the image of two men walking behind a woman with a red scarf around her head. The entire book was written in Cyrillic, but that didn’t stop me from studying the foreign words—but mainly because all of his English books were non-fiction.

I’d slept hard for four hours but jarred awake every minute after, just before dawn, as the sun’s rays touched this side of the earth. I’d washed my face, oiled my body with perfumed lotion for some normalcy, and then chose a random Russian book from the shelf after checking the locked door. With my English-Russian dictionary, I’d translated every word on the first page before the sun had finally risen to the tree’s peaks.

My arched shoulders ached with a needling between them as I stretched, rolling them out when the door handle jiggled.

I froze as I glanced at the door opening wide to reveal Sacha with his well-groomed hair, slick-shaped beard, and a wrinkle-free navy-blue suit and brown oval-tipped loafers.

His gaze landed on rumpled blankets strewn across the bed, then on me sitting next to the bookshelf.

“You’re up,” he said, surprise stringing his voice.

I nodded and held up the book in my hand. “Just trying to read.”

“Dead Souls is a literary masterpiece.” He walked the length of my room and sat across from me as I crossed my leg over the other and leaned back. “Nikolai Gogol was one of the most innovative writers of his time.”

“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I said, shrugging as if we were normal people having a normal conversation. “Only the first page. So far, I like it, but it’s slow going.”

Slow because each and every Cyrillic word required a skim through the dictionary. It’d be easier to understand, too, if I had a pen and paper so I could write the words down and read them in English.

My hand shook as his cedar cologne wafted in my direction, sending an unanswered aching throb between my thighs, which had my teeth clenching together.

“I’ll see about getting you the English version.”

My irritation drained away, and I perked up, my gaze slamming into his. “You will?”

“Provided that you follow the rules, I don’t see why not.”

Lowering my gaze, I bowed my head and stared at the book in my lap. “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure why his small gesture warmed a part of me towards him, but I couldn’t help but accept the tug inside. It was as if it were ingrained in me. “What is abritch-ka?”I paused, my cheeks heating. “I think that’s how you say it.”

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