A decent man would tell her that she didn't need to do this.

Abe isn't a decent man. He'd be useless to her, if he were.

Abe's office isn't like a snake den at all. Not that she's ever been in one. His office is clean, polished, modern; ostentatious even, just like Abe. It's obscene, how white the carpet is. The expense of maintaining it would cripple a less wealthy man.

"Payment?" Sydney repeats, unsurprised. These things rarely come free.

"An eye for an eye," Abe says. He smiles, and it's only unpleasant because it's directed at her.

She imagines him directing it at Keith.

"Do you want my eye?" she taunts. She's standing in front of one of his antique paintings, admiring its color. Red like blood: as self-indulgent as everything else.

Behind the mahogany desk, Abe lounges in his plush chair, hands joined behind his head. "Whatever would I do with it?"

"Then what?" Sydney asks. She wants to cross her arms, but knows better than to show weakness. His gaze already burns a line down her back, with red-hot intensity.

Predators strike, if you're weak.

Abe smiles again.

'I'm a little young for you, aren't I?' she wants to say, but instead she makes for the exit, and Abe, it would be bad for business if he stopped her. He relies on his reputation.

The wood—as polished as everything else—is smooth in her hand as she gently closes the door, obscuring his office from view. Abe's secretary barely looks up at the sound, resigned, or simply indifferent.

His eyes drill a hole in her back as she pulls her fuzzy sweater over her head—struggling briefly with the shirt that comes with it as it tangles with her pale hair. His attention flicks across the expanse of bare skin to meet her eyes, as cool as she's not. It taunts her, challenges her to dare follow through, and, her pulse pounding in her ear, Sydney undoes the clasp of her bra.

Her clothes are lying on a heap on the carpet behind her, leaving her entirely naked and shivering a little despite Abe's electric heaters (but she would not need a heater, with that gaze of his, almost compulsion-like), when Abe finally says, "You don't need to do this."

The swoop of fear makes her stomach knot. No. Her brief uncertainty fades. He waited to see her like this, exposed, before saying anything. Abe means it differently; it's a taunt, because no normal girl chooses to get revenge this way.

"But I want him blinded," Sydney says, uncrossing her arms.

She's alone in a foreign country, she's following a murderer's orders to spread her legs, it's an unnatural creature pushing into her, and it still feels better than Keith.

"And get me out of here," Sydney adds, watching the thick Russian snowfall through Abe's window.

The room is warm and amber, the sky outside stormy grey. Her hand knots in his scarf.

It costs her more, but he agrees.