Page 23 of Vasily the Nail

“No, that’s too much,” I mutter, more to myself.

Kseniya pulls it right back out. “We’re gonna make this work,” she promises.

She works for two hours, and it’s worth every minute for the rhinestone-studded ombre masterpieces she creates. They’re ridiculously inappropriate for me, and I’m sad that Tony will make me get rid of them as soon as he sees them, but I’ve never felt so glamorous in my life. And she did all this while texting, getting more and more irritated as her phone blows up. Finally, she says, “Is it the pink laptop or the gray-pink laptop? His words, not mine.”

“Is that Vasily you’re texting?”

“Yeah, he’s at your place and trying to figure out what to grab. He told me not to tell you he couldn’t figure out what youwere going to need for two weeks here, but how could I possibly know which laptop? Ugh, I should have just told him to grab both. Dammit.”

“Why wouldn’t he want me to know?”

“Honey, no man wants you to know how incompetent they are. They want you to find out when it’s too late and you already love their stupid asses too much to back out. Or you’ve just already learned that all men are incompetent and you’ve been rolling with it the whole time.”

She finishes up my nails, giving me little updates from the texts whenever she reacts enough to them that I have to clear my throat to remind her she’s already let me in on it.

He’s not sure which shampoo and conditioner to bring, if he should bring my shaver and if he should change the blade in it first.

He sends a picture of the stuffed animals on my bed to find out if I’ll want any of those, which has me blushing. I’ve figured out that Kseniya’s about twenty-three, not much older than I am, but she’s married and working and has just made these amazing nails for me, showing how seriously she takes this work. She doesn’tlooklike an adult, but I get a very mature, verynotpampered princess vibe off her.

But then she shows me a photo from her Instagram feed. It’s a stuffy almost identical to one of mine but twice the size and kitted out in a Halloween style instead of my unicorn. “I’m going to make him buy you the jumbo unicorn. The jumbos are so much better. He says there’s a package on your bed, too. He promises he didn’t open it, but he did squish it a little and saidit feels like a small book.” At the confused shake of my head, she types something and in another second says, “It’s from Kaiser.”

“Oh, my birth control!” I blurt out.

Kseniya types that in before I can stop her, and it’s not two seconds later that the phone rings. She cringes as she holds it to my ear.

“Zvyozdochka, you no say birth control is pill,” Vasily says in his broken English, his accent thick as motor oil.

“You didn’t ask,” I fire back, immediately perturbed. Maybe he is a good guy, and maybe I am in absolutely no position to be anything less than thankful for the kindness he’s shown me in my captivity. I know far too well how much worse this could be, and Iamthankful that I’m getting pampered with this beautiful new set of nails and not being terrorized or forced to do too many things.

But the broken English thing is ridiculous.

I hear him breathe on the other end. I don’t think he’s stomping his feet, not in anger at least, but I can hear his foot falls as he moves from the hardwood of my bedroom to the tiled bathroom. I even hear the click of the latch as he closes the door behind him. I don’t know who’s with him in my room, if it’s his men or mine, but he’s decided to make this conversation private.

And the way he says,“Zvyozdochka,”softly, even intimately, has my body warming up. I don’t know what it means or why his nickname for me has changed from whatever he called me before, but it’s mine. It’s his name for me. “You need every day,da? You need other pill now? Next morning pill?”

There it is, my golden ticket, the thing I was desperate to ask for but scared he would get mad that I lied about being on birth control or simply refuse out of spite toward Tony. If I was pregnant with Vasily’s baby, I really would be forced to marry him. I’d be a pariah.

Kseniya is staring hard into space, like she’s giving me privacy but also totally listening in on this. The way she tells it, Vasily supported her marriage with Miguel, welcomed him into the family but notthe family. She’s said Miguel wants kids but she’s not ready yet, so he was fine with her getting one of the implants Vasily no doubt thought I had. It’s probably why he didn’t think to question what birth control I have.

Tony’s always said I’ll be allowed to finish school before I marry and that he’ll make sure it’s a good match. He’ll pair me with a powerful but respectful man. He’ll make sure I’ll be taken care of. But he used me to settle a $150,000 debt, and I don’t think I can trust him again.

“It’s okay for me to miss a couple days on these pills,” I blurt out.

Immediately, I regret saying that. I should have said I’m on the placebo week or something. Now that I think about it, I’m due to get my period soon, so I don’t think there’s a big concern anyway. But I’ve already said it, and already, Kseniya is giving me a look that shows she knows I’m lying. She doesn’t look mad — which she has every right to be, considering what this says about me and my intentions for Vasily — but there’s concern.

“Da, ok. No wait up. Late night.” Not a concern in the world for the validity of my statement, just the stupidly broken English.

And Kseniya doesn’t say anything to me about my lie.

Day 4

Analiese

Morning 3.

I’m not sure if that means it’s Day 3 or Day 4. I have no idea when Vasily plans on returning me, if I’m being honest. He said fifteen days, but was Saturday a day? It’s not like I get any time to ask. The last two days, he walked out within a half hour of waking up and spent most of that time either outside smoking or in the bathroom getting ready for the day. At night, I’m already asleep by the time he gets home.

He woke me again last night, but it wasn’t like we had a chance to talk since his mouth was already between my legs by the time I realized what was going on. Again, he made me come, this time all over his face, and he insisted on kissing me directly afterward, which was gross.

---