Page 21 of Pregnant Virgin of the Bratva
I laugh, and end the call without answering.
I’m not sure about anything, but I’ve made my move, and I’ll stand by it.
Chapter Seven - Esme
The room they bring me to looks like it belongs in another world.
It’s nothing like the basement, nothing like the damp, concrete silence I’ve grown used to. This place is soft and warm, flooded with golden light. There’s a chandelier above the bed, too small to be grand but still real crystal, with little droplets of glass catching the afternoon sun. The windows are dressed in ivory curtains with gold trim, and the floor is covered in thick, expensive rugs that silence my footsteps.
The bed is huge. It looks like it’s never been used. The kind of bed that doesn’t just belong to wealth, but to someone untouched by violence. The pillows are velvet, the sheets some impossibly smooth material that I don’t recognize by feel. There’s a mirror leaning against one wall—tall, with an ornate frame of gilded silver and etched glass at the corners. It looks like something stolen from a palace.
This isn’t what I expected.
The confusion builds slowly, thickening with each passing hour. I wait for cold metal, for new bindings, for shouting or threats. Instead, I get hands, soft, efficient, and disturbingly polite. Maids flit in and out like ghosts. They speak little and never to explain. One brings me clean towels, another draws a bath. A third sets a tray of food on the side table and leaves without making eye contact.
They undress me with practiced ease. I don’t protest. My body’s too sore, my mind too clouded. The bath is hot—almost painfully so—and it stings where the rope left red grooves around my wrists and ankles. They wash my hair, brush it through until the tangles melt away. Someone applies lotion to my arms, massaging gently, saying nothing.
It feels wrong.
Wrong to let them care for me like this. Wrong to lie back and accept silk and soap and warmth when only yesterday I was crying in the dark. My body accepts it anyway. It drinks in the comfort like it’s starved. My mind tries to resist, but my limbs sag deeper into the water.
They dress me in something soft and silver. Silk, I think, but not like anything I’ve touched before. The fabric clings to my body as though it remembers it. It has no right to feel as good as it does. I want to hate it, but all I feel is tired.
Food comes again. Real food. Steamed vegetables, white fish in a delicate sauce, something sweet and flaky for dessert. I eat in silence, alone on the edge of the bed. My eyes dart toward the door every few seconds. I wait for someone to burst through, to yank the tray away, to tell me it was all a mistake.
No one comes.
No one explains.
They just serve me like it’s become habit already.
I haven’t spoken since they brought me upstairs. Not a word. They haven’t asked anything of me, and I haven’t volunteered. It feels safer that way. As though silence might grant me some kind of invisibility. If I speak, maybe it breaks whatever spell I’ve been caught in.
My thoughts don’t stop racing. I don’t know what any of this means.
The silence grows heavier as the hours pass. No television. No music. Just the sound of the wind against the windows and the occasional click of a door opening when someone brings something new. I wonder if the door is locked. I wonder what happens if I try it. I wonder if this is a reward for obedience or a trick meant to lower my guard.
I want to scream.
I want to curl my hands into fists and shout until someone gives me answers, until someone looks me in the eye and tells me why I’m here, why I’m being treated like a guest instead of a hostage. But another part of me—quieter, colder—is too afraid to find out what screaming earns me here.
So I sit on the edge of the bed wearing silk, with clean hair and full stomach, while my wrists throb beneath gauze wraps and my head spins with questions no one will answer.
I don’t know how long I stay there. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. Long enough to feel the weight of it settle fully over me.
***
By the second day, the silence begins to unravel.
Not in any dramatic way—there’s no shouting, no sudden violence, no slip of a key in the wrong lock. The door stays closed, but it’s not locked. The meals keep coming, three times a day without fail. Breakfast with fruit and eggs and coffee too rich for my empty stomach. Lunches that arrive in silver-domed trays with linen napkins and matching silverware. Dinners with warm bread, fresh vegetables, and wine I do not drink.
No one watches me like I’m dangerous. No one yells if I linger too long by the window.
That’s what makes it worse.
They act like I’m not a prisoner, like this is my home. As if they’re waiting for me to stop being scared and start being grateful.
By the second day, I can’t hold the questions in any longer.
