22
CORA
The guest room is as bland as the rest of the house. So are the clothes in it. Neutral basics, jeans, jackets. I slip into a pair of camel-colored joggers and a white tank top. It feels so good to be out of my waitressing uniform that I don’t care who they belong to.
When I get back down to the kitchen, Niles redirects me outside. “Yasha is waiting for you on the veranda. I’ll have lunch sent out shortly.”
Someone else preparing food for me will never be normal, but I thank him and step through the French doors.
Yasha waves from a circular table across the patio. Flower boxes brimming with marigolds and periwinkle outline the edge of the patio behind him. A soft breeze blows across the lawn, lifting my hair. It’s such a picture-perfect setting that it’s almost impossible to think I was being shot at only this morning.
The thought fractures the moment. Cracks of panic bleed through the lovely scene. I look up at the blue sky above, white wispy clouds burning away in the sun, and all I see is danger.
Could someone attack us from above? What about the hills surrounding the compound? Are there any snipers up there? What if—
“You’re safe here,” Yasha calls.
I turn back to the table and he’s watching me. His feet are kicked up on the chair next to him, crossed at the ankle.
“We’re exposed.”
He shakes his head. “No one comes within three miles of the fence without someone on staff knowing about it. They won’t get close enough to take a shot. You’re safe.”
“I thought I was safe at the diner.” I pad over and drop down into the chair opposite him. “That was in public.”
“Yeah, well a sniper can blend in better in public. They can disappear into the crowd. Out here?” He shakes his head. “They don’t stand a chance. Plus, no one with even half a brain would try to break onto the Pushkin estate. It’s a death sentence.”
“And Francia has this same kind of protection?”
“She’s covered. Don’t worry.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I’m always going to worry when my friends’ lives are at risk.”
“Speaking of friends.” Yasha drops his feet to the ground and folds his hands on the table. “Is there anyone you need to alert about your whereabouts?”
I’m used to Yasha being kind of a smart ass, but he’s being serious now. This is what he’s like in his official role as…uh, whatever it is he does for Ivan.
I’m embarrassed by the lack of names coming to mind. “Jorden and Francia already know. Maybe I could tell my neighbors.”
“I left a note for Angela and Geoff.” I arch a brow and Yasha shrugs. “They’re nice people. They seem to care about you.”
“They might be the only ones,” I mutter.
Yasha turns to the side and plucks a marigold out of the planter. He twirls it around his finger, stripping the leaves from the stem one gentle tug out a time. “Do you have any family?”
“None that would care if I went missing.”
You’d think I’d get used to my family’s dismissal of me. That, at some point, the ache of their indifference would stop hurting. But the wound reopens again and again, as fresh as the day I first left.
“Are you an only child?” he asks.
“How did you know?”
He smiles knowingly. “I recognize my own kind.”
Talking about myself is one of my least favorite pastimes, so I jump at the opportunity to shift the focus to Yasha. “What about your parents?”
He moves from the marigold stem to the petals. He plucks them one by one, making a pile on the table in front of him as he talks. “Addicts. They had other priorities. Getting high, mostly.”
“It must have been hard growing up around that.”
“It was. That’s why I left when I was thirteen.”
I gawk at him. “Thirteen? Like…ten plus three? That thirteen?”
“Is there another kind?”
“I just can’t believe it,” I breathe. I was on the streets at thirteen, but I was with my mom. That was scary enough. I can’t imagine doing it alone. “Where did you go?”
“Wherever I wanted. I started out as a thief.” My thoughts must be written on my face because Yasha waves me off. “Don’t judge me. Growing boys get hungry and I needed to eat. Stealing was easier than anything else. My parents were hopeless and shelters always tried to call the police and have me put in foster care. It was easier to be alone. I got good at it.”
“You got good at being alone?”
He gives me a sad smile. “No. I never got good at that. But I was great at picking locks, taking only what I could carry, and then finding the right buyer. By the time I was seventeen, I was getting hired by grown men for high-level jobs. Serious shit. That’s how I met Ivan.”
“Ivan hired you?”
“No.” Yasha grins. “Ivan was my target.”
“Oh.” I remember the way Ivan dealt with the assassin this morning. He claimed that was merciful. What would no mercy look like?
“I know better than to cross him now,” Yasha chuckles. “At the time, I thought he was just some useless rich kid. I broke into his car and stole his phone. I didn’t make it three blocks before he charged out of an alley and tackled me.”
“And you survived?” I blurt.
“Yeah. But only because that was Ivan’s plan all along. He’s the one who hired me.”
I frown. “That’s what I said, and you said—”
“There’s an artform to storytelling, Cora. It wouldn’t be interesting if you guessed right away. I was building suspense.” He sighs and continues. “Anyway, apparently, I’d hit one of the Pushkin warehouses a couple weeks prior. Ivan was tasked by his father to shore up security. He figured the best way to do that would be to go straight to the thief who broke in. I started out on the security team and worked my way up.”
“You stole from him…and he rewarded you with a job?”
“And a house,” Yasha adds. “We roomed together for a while, actually. Ivan moved out on his own for a few years once he was eighteen. He wanted some space to…roam, shall we say. We had an apartment in the city.”
I don’t even want to ask all the many ways Ivan roamed during that period of time. I’m going to take an “ignorance is bliss” approach to much of Ivan’s personal life.
“Ivan is…” Yasha shakes his head like he can’t find quite the right words. “A good man. He’s a better man than he likes to let on, at least.”
Every time I blink, I see him pressing a gun to that man’s head this morning. I hear the deafening bang of the discharge. I see blood on the expo counter.
Ivan saved me. But a “good man” would have called the police, wouldn’t he?
Yasha sweeps the golden marigold petals onto the patio and stands up with a groan. “Well, good chat.”
“Where are you going? I thought Niles was going to bring us lunch.”
“He’ll bring you lunch. I have work to do.”
I subconsciously glance towards the stone fence again.
“You’re safe here, Cora. I swear it.” Yasha digs into his pocket and then places a phone on the table. “This is yours. Some numbers are programmed in there. If you’re in trouble and no one is around, you can call for help.”
I lunge for the phone like it’s a lifeline. My own phone is still in my locker back at Quintaño's. I navigate to the contacts and feel my chest ease at the site of my friends’ names. Ivan’s name listed right next to theirs gives me a jolt of something I don’t quite understand and don’t want to.
“Thank you.” I give Yasha a sincere smile. “Really. Thanks.”
He nods. “It was Ivan’s idea.”
My smile fades. “Okay, so where’s the catch?”
“There’s no catch. Just don’t tell anyone your exact location. And play up the story that the two of you are madly in love and getting married. If it’s going to work, everyone needs to believe it.”
“But my friends—”
“Are depending on your acting skills,” he finishes. “If you blow your own cover, we’ll know. Your calls will be monitored by the Pushkin security team. Before you get all offended, they do that for every call that originates inside the compound. It’s another security feature to make sure we don’t have a rat.” Yasha arches a brow. “So you’ll be fine…as long as you’re not a rat.”
“I’m not a rat. I’m here against my will, remember?”
Yasha runs a hand through his light hair and glances around. “Don’t let Ivan hear you say that.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just…I think you should try to make the best of things while you’re here.” He gestures around to the meticulously landscaped yard and blue sky. “It’s nice.”
“Prisons can be nice,” I mutter.
“It’s not a prison, Cora.”
“Okay, then can I leave right now? What if I want to go for a walk or head to the mall? I’m sure I can just pop over with no problem, right?”
I didn’t think it was possible for his good humor to flag, but Yasha looks genuinely exhausted by me. “You’ll have to talk to Ivan about that.”
I roll my eyes. “Right. Talk to the warden, not the jailer.”
“It’s really not going to be so bad, Cora. If you give it a chance, you might have a good time.”
Yasha walks inside and I slouch down in my chair. “That’s exactly what I’m scared of.”