The Devil Inside, page 29
She would do anything for them.
But could she control what she remembered to save them? It seemed to be what Anatoli wanted, but was it something within her grasp? If he was right and her mama—Claire Linklater once Katya Milosh—had done something to her mind to hide memories, how was she supposed to just pull them out? The flashes she’d had so far really told her nothing that she could think would be useful. And she’d been so young. How could she remember anything that would be helpful to him now? It wasn’t like she’d stolen the diamonds or secreted the Orloff’s bank account information away. Why would her mama and papa have told her any of it? He didn’t make any sense. And yet, he seemed certain she knew something and was determined to get it out of her.
How was he going to go about getting it? And what was he going to do if he didn’t get it?
She shuddered.
‘Time. Cover up and come to the kitchen. Now.’
She nodded, laying Arwen on the cushion and turned a little from his gaze. The pad-things that Bev had given her were a bit wet, but she had nothing to replace them with so she left them in place, clipped up her bra and did up her buttons. ‘Can we bring the cushion?’
‘Why?’ His gaze narrowed again as he looked at her with suspicion.
What was she going to do with a cushion? Smother him? She wished. ‘Arwen needs to sleep and I need to lay her down. I don’t think I can hold her while we get to the bottom of my memories, can I?’ She really wished she could leave Arwen here on the couch, safely away from him and his tempers. But Arwen needed to be burped and he wasn’t going to give her more time to do that here. She also needed a nappy change from the feel of her, but there was nothing she could do about that now. It wasn’t like he’d allowed her to bring the nappy bag.
‘The cushion?’ she asked again.
‘Fine.’
He obviously wasn’t going to help her, so she pushed to her feet, shoved the oversized cushion under her arm, then holding Arwen over her shoulder, tapped her daughter’s back as she followed him. Arwen promptly let out a loud burb. Anatoli glanced over his shoulder and glared at her. She glared back. He turned away.
One point to her.
Pity about the fifty-thousand points to him—mostly because he was a psychopath with a gun.
‘How are we related?’
‘We’re not. My mother died having me. Your mother was my father’s second wife. But she whored herself out to another after having Sergei. We didn’t know this until my father captured her and she threw the truth of your birth in his face. Your father was our bookkeeper, granted the solemn duty of looking after our money. My father had no reason to know he was also a spy, a thief and a traitor—his family had always been connected to ours.’
Thank god she wasn’t related to this psychopath. It shouldn’t matter, but it made her happy to think she wasn’t. ‘But Jerry—Sergei—is my half-brother.’
He nodded.
‘Who were the people who took me to live in America?’
The sneer on his face as he turned on her made her take a step back. ‘They too were spies, thieves and traitors. Mikhail Carmilov was your father’s brother. And Katya Milosh was your mother’s sister. They were all trained together with our family’s money and all of them betrayed us. If they weren’t dead already, I would have taken pleasure in cutting off their hands and feet and burning the skin on their bodies while they watched.’
A chill chased through her. Is that what he’d done to Gavin? And those other men?
His fingers pinched the skin on her arm as he grabbed her and yanked her forward. ‘Enough delaying. It is time for answers.’ He shoved her through the kitchen door. ‘Let’s get started and see if we can pry out those secrets your aunt Katya stuck in your head.’
‘Please, let me put Arwen down over there first.’
His jaw clenched but he gave a brief nod. ‘Hurry up.’
She dropped the cushion in the corner and placed Arwen in the centre of it, kissing her baby on the head. ‘Go to sleep, Princess,’ she whispered. ‘Your daddy will be here soon. He won’t let you be harmed.’ She had to believe that was true if she was to get through what was to come. Had to believe that despite being injured, he was looking for them now, finding some way to get them free of this.
When he did, when she was back in his arms again, she was going to tell him she loved him. No matter how much that frightened her, she wasn’t going to push it away and let it go for anything. It didn’t matter if she never remembered another thing about their life together. She was going to make new memories with him and their baby and that future of memories was all that mattered. All she could allow herself to think about, to cling to.
Fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to put them through all this, bring them together again, only to rip it all away.
She kissed her baby’s forehead, her cheek, taking a moment to breathe in the scent that was essentially Arwen, a scent that made her heart full and her mind flicker with a flurry of images of Phil kissing her bump and whispering to it; their hands on the bump as their daughter moved inside, his smile as he met her eyes, filling her with such joy; Phil singing to the bump; Phil with his head on the bump, his fingers tapping a rhythm as Melissa played with his hair. She felt the silk of it now on her fingers and realised she was running her fingers over her daughter’s mop of hair—so like her father’s.
‘Enough. Get up.’ Anatoli grabbed her and pulled her away from her daughter, shoving her at the chair. ‘Sit.’ She fell in the chair, clamping down on a cry as her leg scraped along the wooden arm. Before she could right herself, he’d grabbed one hand and snapped a plastic handcuff-tie around it, securing her to the chair, pulling it tight so that it bit into her skin.
‘Ow. What are you—?’
He grabbed her other arm. She struggled but he twisted her wrist until it felt like it was going to snap. ‘It is better if you don’t struggle.’
‘What?’ She couldn’t let him tie her up. How could she escape if he did? ‘You don’t have to tie me down. I won’t move. I promise.’
He smiled nastily at her as he came around to her side. ‘You might not mean to, but you will. You won’t know what you’re doing when I begin the procedure.’ He secured her even more tightly on her left side.
Her mouth dried. ‘Procedure? Surely we don’t have to go that far? I’ll tell you everything I remember. Everything we have found in the documents and diaries so far.’
His eyes sparked with something deep inside and suddenly his face was right in front of hers. ‘The diaries? Where are they?’
‘Back at Storm Haven. Up at the house. You can have them. If you let me call Phil, I can have someone drop them off for you to pick up. Dae and Craig have managed to find writing on some of them and I’m sure with everything you know, you’ll be able to find more. There’s no need for this.’
He straightened. ‘The diaries will be useful.’ He seemed to consider for a moment. ‘I will go get them after I’ve drilled you for everything you know. Nothing like covering all bases Batya—my father—always said.’
‘What? No. That’s not necessary. I will tell you everything I know.’
‘Yes, you will. Even those things you don’t remember that your aunt hid in there.’ He tapped her hard on the head. ‘Now, you sit still and be a good girl, sestra, and I’ll just go get my things. I won’t be long.’ He patted her on the head and left the room.
She struggled against the ties, trying to move the chair, tip it maybe. If she could make it fall, maybe she could make it break. But he’d picked one of the heavy old-fashioned wooden chairs that she’d delighted in when she and Phil had come here—well-made and heavy in a way furniture wasn’t now. Even with all her struggling, she could barely move the chair more than a few centimetres by rocking side to side. She was almost crying with frustration when he walked back in with a small black suitcase in his hand.
She stilled. His gaze raked over her. Then he smiled. ‘You’re a fighter. I like that. But it won’t do you any good. And all it means is I’ll have to tie you up more.’
‘No. You don’t. I won’t struggle again. It’s just, these ties are tight and they’re hurting me. If you could just loosen them—’
He slammed the suitcase down on the table. ‘Another word and I’ll make them tighter. It’s not like I need you to have hands.’
She pressed her lips together, blinking hard against the rush of tears that blurred her eyes. ‘Please. I won’t move again. I promise.’
He stared down at her for long, agonising seconds. ‘An Orloff does not break a promise.’ The words were said in a way that made her think it was something that had been said to him too often, drilled into him so that even his psychopathic mind would remember and cling to them.
She nodded. ‘An Orloff would never break a promise.’ She hoped that he didn’t remember in that moment that she wasn’t an Orloff, no matter what one of her birth certificates said. Her father was Natan Carmilov. She knew that for a certainty now.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. She kept her chin up, gaze firmly fixed on his, pleading in her mind to make him believe her promise.
Finally, he nodded. ‘I won’t tie you up more, but I won’t release the ties. I need to stop you from moving once the drugs take effect.’
‘Drugs?’ Oh god. What was he going to do?
He flipped open the case and started to pull out vials and needles.
It took everything inside her not to struggle, not to vomit. A memory flitted through her mind of a similar bag on a bedside table, her mama looking down at her as she lifted a syringe, her papa sitting on the other side of her.
‘Is this really necessary, Katya?’
‘Claire. You must call me Claire. And yes, it is.’
‘But she’s so small. How will she remember any of this?’
‘Trauma stays in the mind in ways other things in childhood do not. We cannot take the chance she will remember anything of what she has been through. She must believe we are her parents. She must believe she has never had a life anywhere else. She must believe she is a normal American girl.’
‘It’s going to hurt her.’
‘I know. But I will make certain she forgets that too. Nothing of what she has seen can ever break through.’
‘She won’t remember them.’
Mama reached over the bed and covered Papa’s hand. ‘We will. We will remember for her.’ Then she looked back down at Melissa. ‘And maybe, one day, we will be able to tell her the truth.’
‘She will need to be told about the money. About the bank accounts.’
‘That is what your diaries are for. She is clever. She will figure it out. We will leave in what she needs to know when the time is right. Now, let’s begin.’
‘Now, let’s begin.’
Melissa blinked rapidly, the voice that had just spoken louder and harsher than the ones in her memory. She looked up to see Anatoli squirting a bit of liquid out of a syringe. ‘No. No. I just remembered something.’
He halted, lowered the syringe. ‘Tell me.’
She told him what she’d just seen. ‘I don’t know. They said I don’t know.’
He tipped his head on the side. ‘But you were there for some of it or they wouldn’t have blocked your memories.’ He dipped his head and righted the syringe. ‘No. I think we’ll continue.’ He put the syringe down and pulled a few other things out of the suitcase—a canula, packets of swabs, and a number of syringes.
‘No. No, please don’t. You could hypnotise me.’
He shook his head as he prepared his supplies. ‘It won’t work. I have been trained in Katya’s techniques. She would have made you resistant to hypnosis.’ He turned, his expression knowing, smarmy. ‘Didn’t you wonder why you have such an aversion to being hypnotised?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Sergei told me. And Alan. He didn’t know he was reporting to us when he talked things over with Sergei. Sergei made himself indispensable.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Pity I had to shoot him. I wonder if he survived.’
‘You don’t care if you killed your brother?’
He tipped his head, considering. ‘I think maybe I do. I know Babushka will not be pleased. But if I can bring her the information we require, she’ll forgive me and everything will be fine.’
‘You’re insane.’
‘Perhaps. I prefer to think I’m driven.’ He flashed her a smile and, picking up the canula and swab, came at her.
Chapter 27
Anatoli clamped his hand just above Melissa’s elbow and reached for another plastic tie.
‘I thought you said you wouldn’t tie me up more,’ she said, struggling as he tightened the tie making her elbow slam down on the chair.
‘This one is necessary. Now, be still.’ He swabbed the vein that clearly showed in the crease of her arm then picked up the syringe.
‘No!’ She bucked, trying to kick him.
He grinned at her, easily moving out of the way then punched her in the stomach.
Breath wheezed out of her, the pain making her unable to do more than curl forward, gasping to get her breath back.
He took her moment of disorientation to insert a canula, securing it with a clear bandage and tape. Then he inserted the syringe into the plug.
She gasped for breath as the liquid disappeared inside her in a cold, stinging rush.
‘There, that will help you relax to begin with. We have to get your brain to a pliable state so I can start picking at it.’
‘You can’t do …’ The room tipped sideways, pulsing in and out, and against her will, her body slunk into the chair, heavy and pliable. She could move, but everything was heavy. Her head flopped to the side and even though her vision was hazy and her mind sluggish, a part of her still screamed as he picked up another syringe and injected the contents of that into her.
‘There. How do you feel, sestra?’
Her mouth felt too heavy and liquid to work, but words came out of her anyway. ‘Drugged.’
‘Good. Now for the rest.’
More? He was going to inject her with more? The room shifted and swung around as he pulled more things out of the bag. He left the room and returned with a stand of some kind with a hook up the top—the kind they hung bags of saline from at hospitals. He proceeded to do just that, except the bag held some kind of yellow fluid. He hooked up the tube to her canula and released the drip mechanism. ‘There. Only a few more minutes now and we can proceed.’
‘Please. Don’t,’ she managed to whisper.
He smiled at her. ‘Everything will be better when we have the truth.’
His words echoed in her mind as fire ran up her arm and into her chest. Her heart clenched, stopping for an aching second, two, three, before slamming to a start again, racing until she could hear nothing but the beat of it in her ears, louder, so loud. It hurt. It hurt.
She screamed, bucked, fighting against the thing inside her, the thing that was torching her veins, reaching into her mind, tearing at it, picking at bits and throwing them aside. And through her screaming and fighting, she could hear a voice.
His voice.
Her mama’s voice.
Fighting with each other.
Remember.
Forget.
Remember.
Forget.
The fire intensified and she thought her heart would burst through her chest ...
The world flipped over and over and then everything was still.
She was going to die. She was going to die and she would never see Phil. Never see her baby.
She tried to move her arms to touch her stomach but couldn’t move. Tried to move her head to look down but the wave of pain and nausea made her almost pass out.
She could hear glass tinkling. And a groaning sound. The smell of petrol.
She was in the car. Had been run off the road. No, no, please. This couldn’t be the end. She couldn’t lose the baby. She couldn’t leave Phil.
Phil!
A sob ripped from her throat. They were supposed to have forever. He’d promised never to leave her. Promised he would be with her forever—that promise had meant more than she’d ever let on, more than she’d ever understood.
Now, she was the one who was leaving. No. How could this be happening? She’d fought so long to … to … what? She screwed her eyes closed, her chest tight and aching as her mind reached for …
A memory. Memories. Shadowed. Hidden.
‘Forget that memory. Reach for the other ones. They’re the ones we want. Remember them. Remember your mamochka and papochka. Tell me what you saw. Tell me what they said.’
She blinked …
Her mama and papa standing over her, their expressions oddly blank as they intoned, ‘Forget, kukla. Forget.’
‘No. Not that. You’ve already remembered that. Go back. Go to before Katya made you forget. Tell me what you remember. Tell me what you see.’
She shook her head, mumbling. ‘Can’t remember. Too painful.’
‘What’s too painful?’
‘Loss …’ Horrible … terrifying. ‘Loss.’
Her mind slid sideways and her vision went dark as nausea rose up in a sick, thickening wave.
‘Not on me, sestra.’
She tipped sideways and the sounds of retching filled the air. Her stomach ached; her throat was on fire to match her veins. Was she dying? She couldn’t die. Not now. Not like this. Not so far away from Phil. And their baby. She was supposed to be a mother. The baby deserved the best life with parents who loved her so much it hurt. Like the love she’d missed out on with her mamochka and papochka.
Flames. Hot. So hot. Smoke choking her as arms tightened around her, carrying her away while she screamed and screamed.
‘Yes, yes. We suspected you were there but Father couldn’t find you. Tell me more.’
She squeezed her eyes tight against the image that lurched into her mind of a house in flames swallowed in the distance by the dark. Oh god. Oh god. It hurt …
