Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (39 page)

The guard poked the barrel of his gun into my back, urging me forward. He really didn’t have to do that; I was well past the point of disobeying my captors. But I remained silent, and didn’t even give so much as an
eyeroll. My biggest priority was to stay alive and alert, so I could commit every detail of this ordeal to memory on the off chance I’d get to write about it later.

The van was much like the others I’d been corralled in over the past few days. Bare metal, no creature comforts, not even so much as a
rear passenger seat, although this one at least had windows and an overhead light. I sat in the back with one of the guards, and Bluschencko sat up front in the passenger seat. Or so I presumed---there was a steel panel between the cargo section and the driver’s compartment.

We drove over bumpy roads for about twenty minutes. The guard kept me at gunpoint,
keeping his assault rifle trained on me to ensure that I stayed low. The other guard who had accompanied us on the plane had remained back at the tarmac. Unable to look out the high tinted windows, what little I could see out of the corner of my eye consisted entirely of pine boughs and peeks of the moonlit horizon. The sky was a deep black here with thousands of twinkling stars, no light pollution drowning out most of the constellations like the Cleveland sky, where all you could make out was Orion and maybe the Big Dipper on a clear night. I wished I were here on a pleasure trip, taking in the stunning night air at my leisure, instead of as a quivering captive---perhaps with Rostovich at my side.

Rostovich
.
He’d gotten me into this mess, and yet I was still obsessed with him. My mind raced with a dozen different fantasies at once---that he’d come and rescue me from this Godforsaken place, that I’d beat him senseless for mixing me up in this ordeal, that somehow this was all a dream and we would someday end up an old married couple living in a simple Cape Cod house in Lakewood. All of them ridiculous, none of them with any possibility of coming true. No, I would in all likelihood spend the rest of my days here, doing whatever grueling work Bluschencko had planned for me. I’d die young, probably without anyone back home ever knowing what had happened to me. I was doomed.

So I was reduced to planning for and accepting my own pathetic demise now, huh? Talk about lacking self-esteem.
Shut the eff up,
my inner self snapped at me then.
Seriously, you are pathetic. You’re a smart girl, you can get yourself out of this. Stop being so goddamned negative.

I had two competing voices arguing in my head---the practical, buttoned-down, everything-by-the-book me at war with my sensual, creative side.
Well, I’m sorry, Little Miss Dominatrix-slash-Investigative Reporter, but it’s really fucking hard not to be negative when a dude wearing a bandolier full of seventy-caliber armor-piercing bullets has the butt of his Kalishnikov jammed into the small of your back.

I shut my eyes tight and rubbed my temples, trying to silence the battling voices in my head. I had to stay calm, with a clear rational mind if I was going to keep my head above water now. I had nothing to rely on but my wits, and I was already on the verge of losing them.

The van came to a stop. My guard opened the rear hatch and nudged me out with his weapon. Neither Bluschencko nor the driver got out of the van; as soon as my feet were planted safely on the ground, the van drove away, leaving the guard and me alone in the moonlight.

The guard nudged me forward, always with the barrel of his Kalashnikov. There really was no need for him to be so forceful; I would have obeyed him no matter what he asked me at this point. But there was no point in questioning a masked man with an assault rifle in the middle of
an empty woods. One wrong move, and my bullet-riddled body would land on the forest floor to be found by no one but perhaps a hungry bear.

We walked through the pitch-dark forest for ten minutes, finally landing in front of a large, low-slung building that reminded me of the one Hannah and I had encountered back in the state when we were first captured. I wondered if might even be the same building, and that the flight in the Learjet had just been a ruse, but then I noticed some writing on the walls of the building in the Cyrillic alphabet. There was a single floodlight attached to one of the building’s upper corners, illuminating whatever the writing said. I’d never studied Russian, let alone Ukrainian, so I had no idea.

The guard guided me up to the building and directed me to stand just to the left of the front door while he punched a numeric code into an electronic keypad. The door slid open and he gestured me inside.

I stepped into the building, expecting to see yet more stark, Spartan interiors guarded by armed hulks. But instead I found a lushly decorated lobby, with a beautiful female attendant. She looked to be in her early
to mid twenties, my own age or perhaps slightly older.  She wore her long chestnut hair loose and straight, with tiny wisps pinned back from her face in an old-fashioned Alice-in-Wonderland style. In striking contrast to her innocent-looking locks, she wore heavy makeup, with kohl-rimmed eyes and blood-red lipstick, heavily applied. Her attire could best be described as skimpy, yet in a classy way. She wore a strapless black bustier trimmed with red lace, a short black satin skirt, black lace stockings, and shiny black patent platform heels. Christian Louboutins, I knew because Hannah had a pair just like them. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite place what. I studied her features carefully, almost positive I’d seen her somewhere before, but it was almost impossible to tell what she really looked like underneath all that makeup----it reminded me almost of a kabuki mask, or the makeup worn by models in heavily stylized 1980s music videos.

The woman greeted me with a smile. Her teeth were bright white and perfectly even---most likely an expensive veneer job. “Good evening and welcome,” she said in perfect British-accented English. “Nancy Delaney, I presume?”

FOURTEEN

How on earth did this woman know who I was?

“Um, yes
?” To my shock, my masked guard gave the woman a silent nod and slipped out the front door, leaving the two of us women there alone. The door clicked behind him, and a magnetic lock buzzed, sealing us in. “Where am I?”

“You’re at the Hall of Pleasure, which is part of Mister
Bluschencko’s private estate,” she explained, motioning for me to sit down on a velvet-upholstered chair. “You’ll be working here from now on. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.”

I
looked at her sideways. “How long, exactly?”

“A few months. Mr.
Bluschencko has had his eye on you for a quite a while now, as I’m sure he’s already told you.”

“He has. But I’m not sure I believe him. Or you.”

She blinked, fluttering impossibly long lashes. They were falsies that hung to the middle of her cheeks whenever her eyes closed. “Well, believe it. Everything under Bluschencko’s watch is very carefully orchestrated. Though in your case, your role is going to be a bit different than what was originally planned for you. Which can be either good or bad for you, depending on how you decide to approach it.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this, so I just kept silent.

“My name is Elzbeta. I’ve been here for five years. I supervise all the girls here, and serve as a go-between for you and the clients. I’ll answer any questions you might have, since I’ve done pretty much everything there is to be done around here and more.” She lowered her lids slightly, sending those long lashes dancing along her cheeks again. “I would advise you strongly to listen to me, and follow my instructions for you own good. Whether or not you survive here is mostly up to you.”

“Survive?” Did she mean that literally?
I hoped not, but then again, I wasn’t necessarily surprised.

“We are expected to satisfy our clients,”
Elzbeta replied, as if reading my thoughts. “But Bluschencko gives us a great deal of leeway on exactly how we do it.  He does not supervise us directly, nor does he tell us what to do. He just sends us the clients, and it is our job to figure out how to keep them happy. I’ve found that most of my girls do just fine on their own. I don’t step in unless there’s a problem.”

“Perhaps you could enlighten me on exactly what it is I’m supposed to be doing.” I assumed that I was now some sort of prostitute, like the fallen women in Victorian novels who’d taken a wrong turn along the way. Either that or they became hostesses in opium dens, which was essentially the same thing, except with drugs. The many times I had fantasized about living the life of a character from nineteenth-century novels, wishing that someday I’d get to live it out, I’d never expected my fantasies to come true in quite this way.

She smirked at me as if I was some sort of idiot. “I think you should be able to answer that question for yourself, intelligent and educated American that you are.”

I didn’t mince words. “I’m supposed to fuck them, right?” I winced at my own candor.

Elzbeta’s expression softened. “You could. Or you could find another way to entertain them. Not all of my girls use intercourse to please their clients. There are other things you can do that will work just as well, if not better.”
I mulled that over for a minute. What else could I possibly do to entertain men---I assumed they would be men---who were paying for expensive female company? Dance a jig? Recite the alphabet? “I assume I’m a prisoner here,” I said.

“We are not free to come and go as we please, if that’s what you mean.”

Of course not. Otherwise the masked guards toting Kalashnikovs would not be necessary. My inner self wanted to brandish a club at Elzbeta and her nonchalance. “So we’re sex slaves then.”

She sighed. “I prefer to think of us as entertainers. Nancy, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you learn to make the best of any situation. The girls here are very talented, and the clients we serve are wealthy and powerful. They can have anything they want, including sex. The key for us is to provide them with something that can’t get anywhere else. That’s what they’re paying for, and providing it for them won’t just keep you alive, it will bring you prestige. It might even bring you your freedom.”

“And yet, you’re still here.”

She
pursed her lips. “I could have left several years ago. I stay here by choice. Soon you will too. Bluschencko only forces us to come; he doesn’t force us to stay. Though he can force us to leave if he likes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

She patted me lightly on the shoulder. “It will in time. Here, I’ll show you to your room.”

****

My room---or perhaps more accurately, my cell---was like nothing I’d ever seen before. At least not in real life. I was stunned to find that it looked remarkably like the room I’d conjured up in my fantasies.

Four-poster mahogany canopy bed. Lots of red velvet and satin. Ornate carved furniture with animal-skin upholstery and gold-leaf trim. Abundant pillows, shag carpeting, a private bath trimmed with brass and marble. There was a table and chairs and a sideboard for serving food and beverages, and a small bar lined with bottles of vodka and whiskey, along with cut-glass highball glasses. There was a tall wardrobe on one wall, made of carved mahogany to match the bed. Along another wall was a mounted cabinet, its doors paneled with mirrors, a brass key stuck in its lock.

Elzbeta
went to the wardrobe and opened it. “In here you’ll find all your clothes. Mostly loungewear. It should all be fitted to you; try everything on and let me know if you need anything adjusted and I’ll have it taken care of right away. And if you should require any kind of special attire, you can just ring for me and I’ll make arrangements to get it for you.”

“Special attire?”

She smiled. “Anything that you might imagine could entertain your clients, we will produce for you. Costumes, bondagewear, even ordinary street clothes if you think it will serve your purpose. You’ll find that we’ve already provided you with the basics.”

I flipped through the hanging garments and found several negligees, two sets of tailored satin pajamas, and quite a few lace teddies, bras, and one heavily boned
red satin merrywidow.  The drawers below the hanging section contained panties, stockings, and more bras, along with several pairs of satin slippers. No street clothes, though I could ask for them if I wanted to. All made of the highest quality workmanship of sumptuous materials. I surmised that the total value of what was in that closet was probably close to what my parents made in a year. Even Hannah didn’t have anything that nice.

I had trouble grasping all of this. My captors held me against my will, yet housed me in luxury and gave me
boudoir clothes fit for royalty. I was a canary in a gilded cage.  The only question was, how would I survive my nest?

I sat down on the bed, sinking deep into the down-filled comforters. The bedding was soft; the mattress firm, a perfect surface for coupling, should I wish to entertain my clients that way. But
Elzbeta had referred to other options. I wondered what they were. Then my eyes landed on the unopened cabinet on the opposite side of the room, and then I had some idea.

I grabbed onto one of the bed’s four posts and pulled myself out of the deep recesses of the bedclothes that threatened to swallow me whole. I made a beeline for the second cabinet, twisted the old-style brass key in the lock, and flung the doors open.