He filled the doorway the way certain people filled rooms — not by taking up all the space, but by making the space rearrange itself around them. He was wearing dark trousers and a dark shirt, no jacket, sleeves rolled to the elbows in a way that struck Jane as aggressively casual given the gravity of the situation. His hands were in his pockets. He looked, she thought with a surge of fury that helpfully burned away most of her fear, like a man who had absolutely nothing to apologise for.
"You're awake," he said.
His voice was deep, accented — not heavily, but unmistakably. Russian, mostly, with something Italian underneath, like bedrock beneath topsoil. It was the kind of voice that carried without effort, the kind that made rooms go quiet.
Jane stood up from the bed. She was aware that she was in socks, that her hair was almost certainly chaotic, and that she had no weapon and no shoes and no plan. None of this, she decided, was relevant. She met his eyes directly.
"Where am I?" she said. "Who are you?"
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something adjacent to amusement, cold and controlled. "You'll find out later. My name is Dimitri. That's enough for your little brain for now."
The patronising edge of it cracked through Jane's composure like a stone through ice. She looked around the room, grabbed the first thing her hand found — a heavy decorative paperweight from the desk she hadn't noticed — and threw it at him.
He stepped aside. Barely. The paperweight hit the doorframe and fell to the floor with a thud that vibrated through the floorboards.
Jane picked up a book next. Then a small ornamental dish. She threw both of those too, with the focused efficiency of someone who had decided that if she was going to be furious she was going to be usefully furious. He avoided the first. The second clipped his shoulder — she felt a spike of savage satisfaction at that — and he looked at her, finally, with something that wasn't amusement.
She made for the door. He was faster. His arm caught her around the waist mid-stride, pulling her back against him, and before she could process the fact that she was now entirely surrounded by him — his chest against her back, his arm a bar across her middle — he had walked them both back until she was pressed against the wall.
He wasn't rough. That was the confusing, infuriating part. His grip was firm but careful, measured precisely to restrain without harm, and when he spoke, his voice was low and steady, close to her ear.
"Don't make me angry," he said. "And forget about your boyfriend. He didn't deserve you." A pause. "I can prove that."
Jane's breath was short and sharp. She could feel the solid reality of him — warm, certain, infuriatingly calm — and she hated that her brain, in the middle of registering terror and fury, was also registering things it had absolutely no business registering.
"Let go of me," she said.
He released her immediately. Stepped back. Returned his hands to his pockets as though none of it had happened.
He took out his phone and held it out to her. On the screen was a photograph.
Luke. And a blonde woman Jane didn't know. And the photograph was taken recently — she could see, in the background, the café Luke had taken Jane to on her birthday. The café that, last Saturday, he'd told her he was "maybe going to pop by" with friends.
It wasn't an innocent photograph. It was not, in any way, the photograph of two people who were just friends.
Jane stared at it. Something cracked open in her chest — not dramatically, not in the way of stories; it was quiet and cold, like ice giving way. Eight months of certainty. Eight months of fine.
She handed the phone back without a word.
He was watching her. Not with triumph. She would have handled triumph — would have thrown something else. His expression was closer to something she didn't have a word for. Something that sat uncomfortably between caution and care.
"I won't touch you," he said. "Not without your consent. You have my word."
Jane looked at the man who had kidnapped her and told herself his word meant absolutely nothing.
She looked at the snowfield outside the window.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, very carefully, and said nothing at all.