Victor didn't ask what they'd done with his fiance. It would have betrayed weakness; it would have shown them how valuable she was to him. The one thing he couldn't hide was his anger: Dominic's betrayal had grabbed Victor's mind like a fever. He'd made a mistake.
The contract was for one year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. Fifty-two weeks, or twelve months. It didn't seem bad when he looked at it that way. Alternately, it would be eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours – math being the one subject Victor had excelled at in high school.
People always told him that being good at math would open doors, that not many people were good with numbers. He was lulled into the false idea that his life might be easy. In reality, math was just another deadbeat parent: math didn't put food on the table, and it didn't fill the perpetual holes in the bottom of his shoes. It hadn't promised him a job, once school was long over and he had to fend for himself.
Here's what had: Dominic, puffed up and smug in his thick, fall coat outside the boxing club. Victor had wondered even then if Dominic wore Kevlar underneath. The tip of his nose, red from one too many nips on the sterling flask he held as they stood on the sidewalk. Victor, on the other hand, was drunk on his new winning streak. It had been the end of September, and he'd just won his 20th bout in a row.
"You're a pretty good fighter," Dominic had said, a hint of the booze in his tone. He jerked his chin like he hoped to catch the attention of a waiter. "How much do you make, when you win?"
The question had scorched him. "Amateurs don't get paid," Victor told him. He had a collection of hairnets and restaurant aprons to prove it. Sure, he could pick up underground fights and gamble, but it was never enough. It wasn't professional boxing money. His curiosity prevented Victor from shaking Dominic down right there, on the street – ripping off that stupid coat and turning out the pockets. His opinion of Dominic hadn't changed much since then.
So while Victor never asked, begged or even demanded to know where Octavia was, he was confident that she lived. He wouldn't act until he knew for sure. He did his training and played along, waiting until he'd earned some small freedom of movement. Then, all of his free time was spent looking.
His first assignment was scheduled for Friday, which meant that his patience ran thin Thursday night. He hadn't had any luck for several nights in a row, and he was locked in his room during the day. When dinner wrapped up in the cafeteria, some men left on assignments and others went to their rooms. One small group darkened the cafeteria to wheel out an entertainment system and watch a movie. Victor paced every square foot he was allowed, inspecting each door on the lowest level and wondering where she stayed.
Where Dominic kept her.
He had no right. It was one thing, signing away a year of his freedom, but Victor thought he'd be sharing the experience. Living how they had at the apartment, but better – knowing that he was earning money for their future. Octavia was his comfort when the stress of working and fighting became too much. She was soft and malleable; she would learn anything, endure anything to please him. He had trained her to be his alone, and Dominic did not deserve her.
He ran out of places to look. Victor went to the empty gym to lift weights, wondering how close she might be. He never saw her in the cafeteria, but he knew the men ate in shifts. It was possible to hide her.
She had to sleep somewhere. Victor huffed against the weight of his bicep curls and stared through the tiny windows at the entrance to the gym, to Dominic's private quarters. An argument brewed out in the stairwell. Well, it didn't brew, exactly – it sounded like it had gone full swing and came closer, volume rising – and one of the two voices was distinctly female.
Victor dropped his weights on the rack and hugged the inside wall next to the swinging doors. He recognized both voices. The second was his trainer, Alex.
"You have to understand," he was saying, "That's what they all say, when they get here and they're facing it – I won't, I won't. It just means that you're human, you're nervous. That is the stock line."
"Well then, here's a refreshing change for you. I mean it." It was Octavia. He counted thirteen days since he'd seen her last, and there had been no explanations, no context to help her understand. Just the shouting, the jerk and pull of the van and the stab of the tranquilizer, filling his blood with cold oblivion. He risked leaning out the gymnasium doors, where he could see her standing in front of the weapons cage, arms folded over the front of a baggy winter coat. She had been out in the cold – how? But Victor could see it in the contrast of her dark eyebrows to her white skin, and the flush in her cheeks.
"I want you to take the idea and just put it away for now." Alex's voice floated from the cage. Victor didn't like the thought of Octavia near one of them and all those weapons. "Do the training, learn everything you can and...shove that fact away. It doesn't help you, knowing what you're going to do."
Victor ducked inside when Alex emerged, and their voices vanished into the stairwell again. When they were far enough away, he followed.
At the bottom of the stairs, Victor padded to the security door and caught it before it could latch. He left just enough space to hear them. If he tilted his head right, he could catch a glimpse of them walking from the tiny, square window, without betraying his position. Alex said, "Dominic has requested an exam. Has Nick talked to you about it?"
"No."
"Do you know what it means?"
Octavia stopped in front of the farthest door – so perhaps she did have a room – and rested her back against it. "He doesn't trust me," she replied.
"It's not that. He doesn't trust that you can do the job."
Victor had expected a lot of things; Dominic wanting to employ her was not one of them. It was slightly better than another scenario he'd imagined. So his own trainer was also training Octavia. He hadn't paid much attention to Alex so far, largely ignoring him during their makeshift classes, but watching him interact with Octavia made Victor scrutinize him in a fresh light: a few years younger than himself, an inch or so taller, and messy hair to his shoulders that told women he wasn't afraid to have feelings. He would have been easy to take, in the ring. Now he was talking to Octavia. Changing her. Ruining all of Victor's hard work.
"It's the same thing," she told him. "What should I do?"
Was this a joke? She should get the hell out of there; she should tell him to put it up his own ass. She should run straight into Victor's arms, get back to the arrangement he'd painstakingly negotiated and wait in his room while he did the job – the way things were supposed to be.
"You need to think about whatever moral obstacle you're coming up against and how you're going to get around it," Alex said.
"How do you do it? How would you have done it, if you'd had to kill me?"
A long, uncomfortable moment of silence. Alex reached out, hesitated, and tucked a stray hair behind Octavia's ear. She turned petal-pink. "I wouldn't have killed you. I've never killed a woman." Rather than return his hand to his side, he let it linger against her shoulder. "So you don't have to worry about me. I wouldn't hurt you."
Her mouth tightened. "That," she replied, "is the stock line."
A pilot light flickered on in Victor's belly. His trainer had moved in to claim her. How long had this been going on? Was the arrangement false from the start, Dominic having a laugh at his expense while making dating arrangements for his idiot nephew?
Raul had warned Victor to treat Alex much like Dominic and he supposed, with his fiancé being stolen and all, that he would have to oblige. Raul had called him jefe menor, the lesser boss, and explained their relation. His new amigo was full of useful information and excited to share it in a familiar language.
She's cheating on you. That's why she didn't accept your engagement ring.
It wasn't like her. His imagination ran everywhere, all at once. The conversation had ended down the hallway and Octavia was being locked into her own room for the night, but all Victor could see was that hand brushing her hair back and the color in her cheeks. He let go of the door, turning to take the stairs back up two at a time.
He sprinted straight to the gymnasium, where he struck the punching bag until it bled sand.