Chapter 7: Recovery
The jet’s engines were a low, perpetual thrum that vibrated up through the soles of Nadya’s feet. She surfaced from a drugged, black-water sleep not all at once, but in confused pieces. The scent of lemon and clean leather. The give of butter-soft leather under her cheek. A solid warmth beneath her, rising and falling slowly.
Andrey.
Her eyes fluttered open. She saw the weave of a white cotton shirt, the stark line of a collarbone, the familiar, daunting bulk of his shoulder. Memory slammed back in fractured images: the handlers pulling her from the shower, the forced injection, the world going soft and distant as they put her in a car. Prince Zayan’s cold eyes watching from a shadowed doorway.
A whimper caught in her throat.
Andrey’s arm, which was curled around her back, tightened almost imperceptibly. A single, brief squeeze. A signal. He didn’t look down. He was staring out the window, his profile a grim cut-out against the blinding blue sky and sea far below. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle ticked in his cheek.
She forced herself to be still, to breathe, to assess. Her mind, sharpened by years of forced observation, began to catalog. They were on a private jet, but unlike any she’d seen chartered by the organization’s patrons. This was quieter, older-money. The leather was worn to a soft patina. The wood was dark and real, not laminate. The air smelled of coffee, faint citrus, and something else—sandalwood, maybe.
And then she saw the Prince.
He sat across the aisle in a wide club seat, a sheaf of papers in his hands. He was reading, a pair of slender reading glasses perched on his nose, which made him look less like a predator and more like a graduate student. One of his guards sat at the very front, near the cockpit door, motionless. The other was nowhere to be seen, likely at the rear.
Zayan glanced up, sensing her wakefulness. His eyes met hers. Nadya felt a cold jolt, the instinct to look away, to make herself small. But something, a stubborn shred of the person she’d been before, held his gaze. He didn’t smile. He gave a slight, almost courteous nod, as if acknowledging another passenger in a quiet library, and returned to his papers.
It was unnerving. The absence of leer, of command, of open hunger.
She shifted slightly, and a wave of nausea rolled through her from the drugs still in her system. She swallowed against the sour taste.
“Water,” Andrey’s voice was a rough scrape, directed at no one in particular.
Zayan didn’t look up. “In the cooler beside you.”
Andrey reached across Nadya, his movement careful and slow, and pulled a chilled bottle of water from a discreet built-in compartment. He opened it, and only then did he look down at her. His eyes, the color of a winter sky, were hollow. The warmth she knew was gone, buried under layers of ice. He held the bottle to her lips.
“Drink.”
The command was flat. Public. The voice he used when others were listening. She drank, the water so cold it made her teeth ache, but it cleared the fog a little. He wiped a stray drop from her chin with his thumb, the gesture mechanically tender, then resumed his watch out the window, his hand returning to her arm, heavy and possessive.
“How long?” Nadya heard herself ask. Her voice sounded tiny.
“Five hours since takeoff,” Zayan answered, setting a paper down. “You slept through the refueling in Nice. We will land in approximately ninety minutes.”
“Where?” The question was out before she could stop it.
“Home,” he said simply. He removed his glasses, folded them, and slipped them into his breast pocket. He studied her now, his gaze frank but unreadable. “You will have your own quarters. Adjacent to Andrey’s. You will not be required to dance, or to attend any functions you do not wish to. This is not the syndicate.”
She just stared at him. Lies were always prettier than the truth. Promises were just a slower form of breaking someone.
“What will I be required to do?” Her tone was neutral, dead.
“Live,” he said after a pause. “Recover. You are, for all functional purposes, a member of my household staff. Your primary duty is to be present.”
It made no sense. She glanced at Andrey, searching for any clue, any flicker in the stone face. He was watching the Prince now, his expression one of sullen acceptance. He gave a minute, almost exhausted shrug, as if to say, Just go with it.
A member of staff. Not a trophy. Not a plaything. A servant.
It was a new cage, but a cage nonetheless. The dimensions were just unknown.
Zayan returned to his documents. The jet hummed. Nadya’s mind raced, picking apart his words, his demeanour. The calculated courtesy. The lack of overt threat. It was a different kind of control, one that asked for complicity rather than smashing resistance. It was, in some ways, more terrifying. She didn’t know the rules here.
She leaned back into Andrey, feeling the solid reality of him. His heart beat a slow, steady rhythm against her ear. That, at least, was a truth she understood. His hand on her arm was heavy, but the thumb had begun a slow, almost subconscious stroke against her skin. A secret message in morse code against her sleeve: I am here. I am here. I am here.
She watched the clouds outside, great towering castles of vapour, and thought of the stories from her childhood. Monsters didn’t always live in caves. Sometimes they lived in palaces and spoke softly. Sometimes they bought you.
The descent began with a change in the engine pitch. The guard at the front stirred, speaking quietly into a phone. Zayan neatly stacked his papers into a folio.
Andrey finally looked down at her fully. His eyes were still cold, but deep within them, buried under layers of performance and fear, she saw a glimmer. Not of hope. Of warning. His lips barely moved.
“Stay close,” he breathed, the words lost in the noise of the landing gear deploying.
The jet banked, and the world outside tilted. A coastline appeared, rugged and dry, burnt gold and green against a turquoise sea. A city of white stone cascaded down a hillside towards a harbour cluttered with yachts.
They touched down with a gentle bump and a roar of reverse thrust. As the plane taxied, Zayan stood, smoothing his thobe. “There will be cars. You will come with me. Do not speak to anyone. Not the port staff, not the drivers. Is that understood?”
Andrey nodded, standing and pulling Nadya up with him. His grip on her elbow was firm, proprietary. She kept her eyes down, the obedient accessory.
The door opened, and a wall of heat rushed in, carrying the scent of jet fuel, salt, and flowering jasmine. The light was blinding. They disembarked not onto a public tarmac, but onto a private apron where three black, armoured SUVs waited, engines idling.
Zayan headed for the middle vehicle. A driver, wearing a simple uniform, held the door open. The prince slid in without a word.
Andrey guided Nadya to the same car, putting a hand on her head to usher her into the back seat beside Zayan, then followed, crowding in next to her, his large body a barrier between her and the window. The door thudded shut with a sound of finality. The guard sat up front with the driver.
The convoy moved off smoothly, leaving the airport without passing through any checkpoint. Nadya watched the world through the tinted glass. Palm trees, modern buildings, then older, narrower streets. The progression felt significant. They were moving away from the contemporary, into the ancient and private.
After twenty minutes, they began to climb. The streets became steeper, the walls higher, topped with bougainvillaea and sensor arrays. Finally, they slowed before a massive, weathered wooden door set into a high, cream-coloured wall. A camera looked down. The door swung inward silently.
They entered another world.
The chaos of the city fell away. Inside was a calm, green paradise. The driveway wound through manicured gardens; one trees, ancient and twisted, stood beside sculpted fountains that murmured quietly. The air was cooler here, scented with rosemary and damp earth. The main house was not a garish palace, but a long, low structure of traditional stone and modern glass, seeming to grow from the hillside.
The cars stopped at a shaded courtyard. Zayan got out. “Bring them inside. I will be in my study.”
He walked away, already dismissing them.
A man in a plain grey suit, older, with a calm face, approached. “Sir. Miss. My name is Fahim. I am the house manager. Please, follow me.”
He led them not to the grand front entrance, but along a shaded walkway to a wing set slightly apart. The doors here were dark wood. Fahim opened one.
“These are your quarters, sir. The lady’s are through the connecting door.” He gestured to another door within the sitting room. “You will find clothing in the wardrobes. A light meal will be brought shortly. The Prince requests that you remain in this wing tonight. You may explore the inner gardens tomorrow. Do you require anything for pain, or sleep?”
The question was so mundane, so practical, it was disorienting.
Andrey shook his head, silent.
“Very well.” Fahim gave a slight bow and left, closing the door behind him.
The lock did not click.
Nadya stood frozen in the center of the room. It was beautiful. Sunlight filtered through wooden latticework, painting the tile floor with intricate shadows. A comfortable-looking sofa, bookshelves with actual books, a bowl of fresh fruit on a table. Through an archway, she saw a bedroom with a wide bed covered in white linen.
It was the most peaceful place she had seen in seven years.
It felt like a trap.
She turned to Andrey, the question screaming in her head.
He was already moving, checking the bathroom, the wardrobe, running his fingers along the window frames. He peered through the lattice, then closed the wooden shutters with a soft click, plunging the room into a dim, striped twilight. He came to her then, and in the half-dark, his face changed. The icy mask crumbled, revealing sheer, staggering exhaustion. He pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest, his face buried in her hair. She could feel him trembling.
“Nadya,” he whispered, his voice breaking.
“What is this?” she whispered back, clutching his shirt. “Andrey, what is happening? His eyes… he doesn’t look at me like they do. It’s worse. I don’t understand.”
He held her tighter, his words tumbling out in a low, urgent rush against her ear. “He knows. He knows what you heard in Vienna. His uncles… they want you dead because of it. This is a purchase, yes. But it is protection. His protection. We must… we must act like it is a normal sale. You must be afraid of him. Of me. We cannot trust anyone. Do you understand?”
The information was too much, too fast. Vienna. The gala. The men speaking in that guttural language, laughing about a fire in an apartment building. She remembered the champagne flute slipping in her sweaty hand. She remembered the cold feeling that had settled in her bones and never left.
Andrey’s hands came up to frame her face, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were blazing now with a desperate intensity. “This is the only way. He is the only way. But you must not believe it. You must act like a prisoner. For the cameras, for the servants… for his uncles’ spies. Can you do this? Can you hate me a little, in front of them?”
She saw it then. The monumental weight he was carrying. The performance of a lifetime. Their survival depended on the quality of their lies.
She nodded, a small, sharp movement. “I am already afraid,” she said truthfully.
A ghost of his old smile touched his lips, gone in an instant. He kissed her forehead, a hard, brief press of his lips. “Good. That is good.”
He released her and stepped back, his posture shifting, the tender slouch straightening into something harder. The room felt instantly colder.
A soft knock came at the door. “Your meal, sir.”
“Enter,” Andrey said, his voice returning to its public flatness.
The performance had begun. Nadya wrapped her arms around herself, watching the servant place a tray of figs, cheese, and flatbread on the table. She let the fear she felt, the real, deep-seated terror of the unknown, rise to the surface and settle in her eyes. She didn’t have to act. She just had to let it show.
She was a prisoner in a beautiful room, with a man who was her only tether to truth, and a prince whose motives were a locked box. Outside, the fountain murmured its constant, soothing lie. The future was a door she was too afraid to open. For now, all she could do was stand perfectly still, and try to remember how to breathe.