Page 51 of Vitaly

This is so strange.

Once the food and drinks have been served, all but two women, one of them Mila, exit the dining hall. The two women stand off to the side, ready to serve when called upon.

I can’t help but stare and wonder how Mila does it. How she can live like this. She’s a Pitbull being dressed up in frilly clothes and told to roll over for her master’s amusement.

I don’t understand her.

Why is she choosing this?

Why won’t she leave?

“Is something wrong with the food, Aly?” Nikita asks just to be unkind. Neither Nikita nor I have picked up our forks.

I look over at Aly to see her eyes glossed over like she’s gone somewhere else, but as her husband delivers another bite of pain, she winces and picks up her fork.

“No, Pakhan. My apologies.”

Nikita moves to pick up his as well, but thinks better of it and gazes over at Mila. When he crooks his finger at her, she walks over to us with her head high, like she’s compensating for the degrading attire.

“How’s my ?????” he asks, running the back of his hand up and down her thigh.

“Fine, Pakhan.”

“Are you hungry?”

She hesitates to answer, her calm composure loosening as a silent plea enters her eyes. My brow furrows in confusion while I watch the exchange. For a solid few moments, I think he’s finally showing an ounce of humanity. That he’s inviting her to dinner. So her not jumping on the chance is odd.

Nikita’s brows raise, prompting Mila to answer, and finally, she nods.

“Yes, Pakhan.”

He smiles. “Good.Eat.”

I look around, seeing no empty chairs, but he isn’t offering her to pull up a chair. Mila kneels and crawls beneath the table.

I can’t help myself. I peek at her, a mere foot and a half away and see her undoing his belt.

Unbelievable.

“My whore told me you did well today,” Nikita says, relaxing into his chair and swirling the wine in his glass.

I slowly grip the edge of the table and look at the ceiling, ignoring the conversation around me, deep breaths coming in through my nostrils. Beside me, Aly eats tiny bites as slow as a person could.

My vein pulses in my forehead, and I barely hear Nikita.

“She also told me she upset you… I want to apologize for that. She’s my responsibility, and I thought I trained her better than that. But…” I see him shrug out of the corner of my eye.

“She did nothing wrong,” I say, not caring if I believe it or not.

My words boomerang back to me after hours of spitting them at her. I told her she was nothing, that her family was nothing.That I didn’t owe her for destroying her worth. That she’d had none to begin with. That she was a coward.

I felt justified at the time, but now...

“So what was prison like?” Olive asks me.

I look over at Olive with her elbow propped on the table, her wine glass in her hand, and can’t help but narrow my eyes in confusion at the sudden shift in her posture. She was scared a moment ago. Now she’s relaxed.

What was prison like?

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