Page 63 of Maksim
“This was your stepmother?” Elira asks, bringing me back to our conversation. I don’t want to talk about this or anything now. The silence was grueling with the discomfort, but now, this isn’t so bad.
“Hmm?”
“Anya’s mother. She was your stepmother?”
Elizabeth’s image comes to mind, her blonde hair that reminded me of my own mother’s, her kind smile. The puffy dresses she always wore, even when she worked in her garden.
I remember being in one of the fields, sweat seeping from every pore of my body, mouth bone-dry, skin hot as an iron. The house was so far away that people were mere sticks as they came toward the fields, and you never knew whether to fear or to feel the relief of company.
Those puffy dresses made her stand out, and I always knew to expect water soon. Cold. Iced. Not the drippings from the rain buckets but fresh from the well.
I hadn’t known English when I came to the farm, but I knew that her words, slow and enunciated, were kind.
My fellow unfortunate bunkmates taught me to speak the language, but she taught me how to read and write. She snuck books and food to me. She invited me into her home when her husband was away.
She was not my mother, but she was kind. And when she had a child of her own, she did not forget about the young boy in the barn. She introduced me to the new baby, Anya, as her son while I stood as a statue holding the child for the first time. Later, alone in the barn, I wept. I had siblings somewhere on Earth and parents who’d long forgotten me, but that was the first day in years I felt the warmth of a familial bond. I was someone’s son again. Soon, I felt like a brother. I had family. And this time, it seemed, they wanted me.
“No,” I say at last, letting the image of Elizabeth fade. “A foster mother, I guess.”
“Oh.” Elira considers this. “So you were adopted?”
I nod, but an imaginary boa constrictor wraps around my chest and begins to squeeze. I don’t like talking about this. “Sort of.”
She opens her mouth, and she might say something, but my attention is completely diverted to the out-of-place figure entering the yard.
I can feel Alik’s presence the moment his boot crosses the threshold.
Eyes like lasers do a single sweep of the area before landing on me. He doesn’t bother motioning for me or head this way. There’s no one else at Hugh’s that he’d be here to see.
Something’s wrong.
I dart my eyes to Elira, silencing whatever she was saying. “I have to go.”
“What? Where?”
I get up without replying and walk to Alik with Elira on my heels. “Hugh,” I call, gesturing to Elira. He goes to lead Elira away, ignoring Alik when he shakes his head and waits for me to reach him.
“We’re going to need the girl,” he says.
My spine stiffens, and protectiveness starts to flare. “Why?”
His eyebrows raise as if to tell me not to shoot the messenger. He isn’t here on behalf of himself. He’s delivering Nikita’s orders.
If Nikita is sending Alik, it’s bad.
“The trafficking organization has arrived.” His eyes drift to Elira who’s still being led off by Hugh. “They want their whore back.”
19
ELIRA
Maksim doesn’t tell me why we’re leaving, but I sense the tension between him and the man who walks just ahead of us, stopping at a running SUV parked in the driveway.
I go to walk past the SUV, but Maksim takes my arm and squeezes it gently to stop me. He flashes me a brief, serious look that hints at danger we must be in before he opens the door for me.
Swallowing, I drop my head and climb in, scooting to the middle so Maksim can get in beside me while my pulse quickens. Neither of the two scary looking men in the front seats acknowledge us.
The man who led us to the SUV opens the back door on my other side then climbs in next to me, shrinking the would-be large space with his suffocating presence. I purposefully don’t look at him and sit as far away from him as possible, pressing myself into Maksim who doesn’t wrap his arm around me like he did before. Back when things felt safe, nice even, just for a few fleeting minutes.