I’m stronger than rage, and vengeance too. Vengeance is small and weak and ugly. Love is mighty and beautiful.
Instead, I keep my attention on the love and compassion that Jesus with his shining face would feel for these women who are locked here. I even pray for these men who would treat us like cattle, shoving us, tormenting us, making the weak ones cry, frightening my sisters here with tales of what will happen to us the day we’re sold to the ones who message us.
I’ll rescue these women without violence. I’ll resist my mysterious impulses to hurt our captors. I ignore the flashes of myself doing all manner of harm to them. I don’t know why I imagine these things—it’s not for me to judge or punish them.
I slide my fingers along my prayer rope, whispering. The repetition settles my mind and calms my soul. The repetition helps me focus my attention fiercely on the small icon affixed to the wall before me. It shows Jesus in his red robe covered in a green cloak. To my captors it’s just a bit of wood that perhaps raises my value in the eyes of those who would buy me. To me, it’s a window to heaven.
The sisters said my impulses to fight with people make me special. They say that God never gives you more than you can handle.
This is truly the ugliest place I have ever been, but this fight is the greatest fight I have ever waged.
Chapter Four
Viktor
We land in a small airport in a small city named Duluth. The last time we were through here, the hunt for Kiro seemed doomed. The investigator was not hopeful. I wanted to hurt him.
Now this lead!
We rent cars and drive west from there with enough hardware to vanquish a small army. I’m in the lead car. Yuri rides up front with Tito driving. I sit in the back with Aleksio, reviewing satellite images of the imposter professor’s hunting cabin. This man, this Pinder, has hundreds of acres of wild hunting land. He’s supposedly dead, but it’s all very mysterious.
Our P.I. did good work. I am happy I did not kill him.
“If Pinder has done anything to our brother, I will make him eat his own eyeballs.”
Aleksio frowns. Love has made him lose his taste for violence a little bit. “Maybe if Kiro is as wild as they say, maybe this is the kind of place he likes. Maybe this isn’t sinister.” Aleksio. Trying to stay positive.
I say nothing. I do not feel so positive.
Aleksio blows a puff of air from his lips, moving a lock of hair from his eyes. Mira once said he had the haircut of a teen idol. It’s just a haircut grown out, he growled. They had a silly fight. Aleksio and Mira can have fun over anything, especially the little things. The big things are more difficult. She’s a lawyer who hates crime. He’s a criminal.
On some things they agree. Like shutting down Valhalla. They are powerful allies who make each other better, I think.
Tito thinks it, too. Tito is Aleksio’s right-hand man. He has short hair that he dyes wild and bright. Americans love their hair.
Tito and Aleksio are like two hoodlums, and Yuri and I are like two military men. Our hair is short. Dark. Severe. We have dressed in cargo pants and camouflage jackets.
“We could have him with us in one hour. Riding between us,” Aleksio says. “Assuming he’ll even tolerate a car.”
“Right.”
A man we met with told us that when Kiro came out of the forest, he was wild and uncivilized. Like a savage, he said.
I look forward to meeting this brother of ours very much.
It is difficult not to check Tanechka’s feed on my phone, difficult to disconnect from her, like disconnecting from my own heart. But Aleksio needs to see that I can be focused on this trip. It is not easy, knowing the live feed of Tanechka goes on, knowing she could turn her face. I long to see her face so very much.
But I show Aleksio the reasonable brother he needs to see. We talk about the imposter professor, this Harrison Pinder. We talk about what we will do to him if he’s hurt our bratik.
The cornfields flow by. American corn, much of it harvested. It is autumn. Stalks dry in the field. This we see in Russia, but everything else is so different—the buildings, the feeling of the people.
I miss it.
Up front, Yuri is arguing with Tito over nothing. Like stags, playing at locking horns.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say to Aleksio. About Tanechka. He knows what I mean.
Aleksio is hurt; I see it in his face. “Why didn’t you?”
I look at my hands. “I didn’t want you to stop me from…” I wave a hand.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“It’s not,” I say.
He regards me with concern. Love, even.
I squeeze my eyes shut, so ashamed. “I would give my own life to take back what I did to her. I didn’t have faith in her. I didn’t have faith in us.”
Aleksio grips my shoulder. My brother—with me, no matter what. “Your gang had evidence that she was keeping secrets from you, that she was working for a rival gang. You saw her kiss your worst enemy. It’s a lot to take. She lied to you.”