Dangerous Games

5

I have to look away for a moment to compose myself. I’d rather die right here than let him see me cry. When I can finally speak, my voice is tight with hatred. “I told you what would happen if you lost your leverage.”

“Yes. Your only purpose in life would be to kill me. Terrifying.”

He sounds bored. Then, after a moment, he asks, “Why are you smiling?”

I turn my head and meet his gaze again. “You underestimating me is going to be fun.”

I expect fury. What I get looks closer to arousal.

Then he leans forward and snatches my broken arm in an iron grip, and the scream of anguish that rips from me is like a banshee’s.

He drags me from the seat to the floor and leans down close. “We’re going to have all kinds of fun, my love,” he says in a throaty whisper as I writhe at his feet, crying out in pain. “Just you wait and see.”

“Oh. Pardon me, sir.”

A man stands to our left in the aisle. He’s balding, wearing glasses and a nice blue suit with polished oxford shoes. He’s carrying a large black bag in one hand. He looks like an accountant.

Dimitri releases my arm and relaxes into his chair, but not before giving me a brutal kick that sends me sprawling into the aisle. I roll to my back, gasping in agony, trying not to vomit.

The man with the black bag looks dispassionately down at me.

Dimitri says, “Leave her. Take a look at this.”

He stands, shrugs out of his jacket, loosens his tie, pulls it over his head, and unbuttons his shirt. He tosses everything on the chair I just occupied and allows the man with the black bag to inspect the hole in the side of his abdomen.

I swallow and swallow, choking back moans, cradling my arm and fighting to stay conscious. The pain is so intense it’s the only thing I can concentrate on, a white-hot burning point of misery that blots out everything else.

Then ancient habit kicks in. I retreat to that place inside my head where nothing can reach me. The place I found one night in a hospital bed during my first horrific year with Dimitri, the dark little hideaway where I know I can survive.

From far away, I hear Dimitri’s pleased laughter.

“That’s right, little reed. Go ahead and bend.”

He gives me another brutal kick, just for good measure.

A Rachmaninoff piano concerto plays over the jet’s speakers as the doctor attends to Dimitri’s bullet wound, and I lie curled and lifeless on the floor like a dead leaf dropped from a bough in winter.

Only I’m not lifeless. Not really. Inside the prison of my broken body, my heart still beats.

Naz. Naz. Naz.

Every heavy thump wails his name. Every bone and sinew screams out for him. Every breath I take bears witness to the impossibility of my existence in a world where he’s not by my side.

Or is he? Is he still out there living and breathing and desperate to find me? Is my grief one more move in Dimitri’s dark chess game?

The unknowing is torture. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and swallow the whimper rising in the back of my throat.

“Set that bone in her arm and see to her face,” Dimitri says to the doctor, who must be finished attending to his wound. “But no painkillers. She hasn’t earned them yet.”

The doctor murmurs his assent. He sounds neither surprised nor repulsed, simply deferential. He’s a man comfortable in the presence of other people’s pain.

I feel a light touch on my shoulder. When I don’t respond, the doctor says, “If you sit up, it will be easier for both of us.”

His tone is conversational. He’s prepared to set my broken bone with or without my assistance. I’m considering if I want to comply or kick him in the nuts when that awful hope rears its head again, reminding me that it would be wiser to save the fighting for when it matters most.

I open my eyes. Swallowing a moan, I push myself upright.

With my back against one of the seats and my knees drawn up, I look at the doctor. He’s crouched in front of me, examining my forearm. It’s black and blue, grotesquely swollen, and bent at a hideous angle. Dimitri stands down the aisle a ways, buttoning up a fresh dress shirt over his bandaged waist.

One corner of his mouth is curved up.

I recognize that telling curve. It’s anticipation. He can’t wait to hear how loudly I’m going to scream.

You soulless bastard. You will never, ever get a single scream out of me again.

If hearts are capable of turning to stone, mine just did.

I look the doctor in the eye. “Let’s do the arm first.”

He makes a dismissive sound and shakes his head. “I should clean and stitch that cut under your eye first. If I start with the arm, you might pass out before I can take care of your face.”

Looking at Dimitri, I say, “Do. The. Arm.”

The little upward curve of his mouth fades and is replaced with a dissatisfied quirk.

Finished buttoning his shirt, he tucks it into his trousers, then dons and adjusts his tie, cinching it tight around his neck. Then he sits down, crosses his legs, smooths his tie down his chest, rests his hands lightly on the armrests of the chair, and gazes at me.

I hold his gaze as the doctor runs his fingers down the length of my arm, quickly and efficiently probing the injury, then presses his thumb and forefinger against my wrist and counts my pulse. I hold his gaze as pain shoots through me in nauseating, stabbing waves. I hold his gaze as the doctor says, “Closed proximal fracture of both the ulna and radius. You’re lucky the bones didn’t break the skin. Wiggle your fingers for me.”