Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74581 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I’m the one chained to the table, yet she seems hardly able to move while my eyes pin her in place.
“Why did you want to meet with me today?” she persists.
“I want us to get to know each other,” I tell her. “That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”
Those thick, dark lashes tangle together as she narrows her eyes at me. “You’re not going to control these sessions.”
“Do you think you’re the one in control? Here and now?” I ask her.
I tap one heavy finger on the desk, making a hollow sound that seems extraordinarily loud in the close space.
A shiver runs down her slim frame.
“You can cooperate with me, or you can go back to your cell,” she says, coldly.
She’s stubborn today. On the offensive.
I wish I weren’t chained to this table so I could make her pay for her insolent tone.
Instead, I’m forced to negotiate.
“Cooperation implies a mutualistic arrangement,” I reply.
“What do you mean by that?”
“In our last meeting, you refused to answer any questions about yourself. How do you expect us to converse together, to build a relationship, if I’m expected to tell you everything while you’re a closed book?”
“It’s not necessary to be personally acquainted with your psychologist,” Clare says. “In fact, it’s better if you aren’t.”
“Says who?”
“Decades of clinical research,” she responds, tartly.
“I’m not writing a textbook. I’m telling you my conditions.”
Clare considers this, her brain working rapidly behind the still mask of her face.
“You want an exchange of information?” she says. “A question for a question?”
I nod, repressing my smile. “That’s right.”
She taps her own fingertip lightly on the table, in unconscious imitation of me. Then she says. “Why don’t you go first?”
Ah. Ms. Nightingale prefers to play black, does she?
“Certainly,” I reply. “What did you do for your birthday?”
Her dark eyes swoop across my face, and she begins to say, “How did you—” before cutting herself off.
It took one call on an illicit cellphone to get a basic background check on Clare Nightingale. My obshchak Yury will dig up more information over the weekend, but for now, I’m already aware that Clare won a Distinguished Student Research award in school, that she lives in a posh apartment far outside the budget of a recent graduate, and that she turned twenty-nine just four days ago.
“My parents threw a party for me,” she says, stiffly.
There’s no affection in her tone. No gratitude. I don’t think that’s out of irritation with me.
“What did you do at the party?”
“That’s more than one question,” she says.
“Come now, you don’t want to enforce that rule—I’m sure you’ll have follow-up queries of your own.”
She purses her lips slightly, considering, and then acquiesces. “We played cribbage and poker.”
“You like cribbage and poker?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why did you play, then?”
She frowns. “I suppose you never do anything you don’t want to do?”
“Not very often… until I came here.”
We both become aware, once more, of where we’re sitting, of the chains on my wrists, of our relative positions in this room. For a moment those elements had seemed to dissolve around us, to become pale and foggy, while Clare’s face and mine stood out in sharp detail. Now it all comes rushing back into focus.
“My turn,” Clare says, firmly.
I expect her to ask about Roxy. My stomach clenches in anticipation.
Instead, Clare says, “You came to Desolation when you were sixteen?”
“That’s right.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Moscow.”
“But you’re an American citizen?”
“My mother was American.”
Clare sits back slightly in her chair, her dark eyes flitting over my hulking person.
“What was she like?” she asks.
I’m sure she’s wondering what sort of woman makes a son like me. She might be picturing an addict, a prostitute, a stripper…
The impulse to correct that assumption is overpowering.
“She was a pastry chef,” I say. “She worked in a Michelin star restaurant. Her pastries were literal art—people hated to eat them. She was educated and cultured. She would have fit in just fine at your birthday party.” I give a small smile. “Unlike me.”
I can see the curiosity in Clare’s face. She’s wondering how a woman like that becomes the bride of one of the most notorious Bratva bosses in Desolation.
But that is a topic I don’t wish to discuss.
So I say, roughly, “What about your mother?”
I already inferred that Clare Nightingale has a fraught relationship with her parents. Sure enough, she stiffens like frost, while attempting to answer in as bland a manner as possible.
“I suppose you’d call her a socialite. She’s on the boards of several charities. An excellent tennis player, too.”
Poor Clare is no poker player. She’s got mommy issues written all over her—possibly daddy issues, too.
Time to press on the bruise.
“Expectations must be high in the Nightingale house,” I say. “Little rich girls don’t become doctors unless they’re trying to impress someone. And yet, this is the last place a parent would want to see their daughter working. Is it possible to submit and rebel at the same time?”