Page 17 of Dirty Daria
He nods.
Bile rises in my throat. How is it possible that he’s known for that long and not said anything to me? And more importantly that he’s known for that long and I haven’t caught on. That he’s been following me and neither myself nor my girls have seen him. We are too good for that. We don’t miss things like tails.
“What are you going to do?” I hate that my voice shakes.
“Why don’t we start with you telling me why.”
So, I do.
“My great-grandmother is Lidya Limonov.”
The ways he nods tells me he’s not getting it.
“The original femme fatale,” I add.
“The sniper?” The shocked tone in his voice a sign that he’s starting to understand.
I take a deep breath and ready myself to tell him my story. “In my family, there is at least one person in every generation with the gift of sight, as Lidya would call it. Sight being the eye for shooting, an innate talent. Before me it was my mother. Her mother before her, and Lidya before that. So far it’s always been a woman, even though the boys are tested for the gift at a youthful age as well.
“The men in my family make a lot of money, but in ways that are not so, how you would say, above board. And it is often necessary to take out the competition. Or the customer. As retribution, payment, etcetera. Another way to make money for our family is as hired assassinations. Training begins at an early age—at age eight for me. It is not limited to just guns, but also hand-to-hand combat, explosives, poisons, self-defense, code deciphering, much of what you would consider spy espionage.
“We are readied for anything. I have a cousin who works exclusively for Putin as a Jane-of-all-trades. She is not as good as I am. Putin would have paid double for me. But my mother promised us all one wish on her deathbed, for me it was to visit America with my sister. Before we came here, a while before actually, she started with the cocaine. We drink very heavily as it is, and when she would mix it with the cocaine, it would not go well. As you can imagine. She liked to party. And my father, he likes the party girls.”
I pick up my cocktail and drain it, then motion to the server for another. My salad is still untouched after that first bite.
“I don’t think anything untoward ever happened, that is not my point. My point is that he was lenient with her. Let Katya have whatever she wanted, and she was very spoiled as a result. Within days of coming to America, she met a man who introduced her to heroin. And she fell in love. With the man and the drug. It was all I could do not to kill him. I don’t even know how it happened so quickly, her addiction. It was as if one minute she was my sister and the next, someone else entirely.
“At first it was fine, Katya seemed to be managing it, but I knew the guy was bad news. I could see it in the way his eyes traveled down my body whenever he saw me. As though he wanted to devour every inch, and not in an enjoyable way. Or at least not in a way that I appreciated or wanted to have happen. He was smart, I’ll give him that. Because he knew to stay away from me.
“But with my sister . . . Katya was never as strong as me. It’s like he could tell that she was low-hanging apple.”
“Fruit,” he interrupts. “It’s low-hanging fruit.”
I nod, not sure if I’m annoyed that he interrupted me, or appreciate that he corrected me.
“Anyway, he wasn’t wrong. We’d been here less than a week when she disappeared for the same amount of time. I was frantic trying to find her. I almost had my father’s men come to help me. But she eventually came back, acting like it was no big deal. That she’d been at a party that ran long, and she lost track of time. But, I mean, come on, a party that lasts for seven days?”
He nods as though he agrees with me. His attention has been riveted since I began talking.
“The second time Katya went missing, she failed to return at all. A few weeks later I received a DVD.”
I must brace myself for this part of the story, taking a large gulp of my second cocktail to help. “I watched what was on it and it was obvious Katya was being used as a sex slave.”
He reaches for my hand to comfort me, but I pull away. I can’t be touched when I talk about this, it would make me feel vulnerable when I don’t want to feel anything less than removed and untouchable.
“It was shortly after that I went to the party where I met you. I was there that night looking for clues. Either men I’d seen in the video, or something that might help me get Katya back.”
“Did you?” he asks.
“You know I didn’t. I met you and all sense just flew out the door.” I wave my hand in the air to illustrate my point. “It didn’t matter, none of the men showed their face in the video anyway. Unless I could examine their cocks, I wouldn’t know it was them.”
Mack stiffens as I say that. I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes because what a stupid thing to be upset or jealous about.
The server sets our main courses on the table and asks if everything is okay when she sees our unfinished salads. Mack gives her a look that has her backing away from the table quickly.
“It was a few weeks after that when I saw her again.” My lashes dampen and I feel a tear start to trickle down my cheek. Mack reaches out to wipe it gently from my face.
“She was walking down the street, looking all normal like to someone who didn’t know her. Only I could tell that she was missing. You know? Her eyes were vacant and blank. She looked like she hadn’t bathed in weeks. And the man she was with was pulling her forcibly down the block. She didn’t even recognize me when she saw me. And of course, the man didn’t know who I was.”
