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That thought makes me laugh out loud. The action might cause my bruised ribs to puncture my lungs. Only one of which is working right anyway. It’s been what - two weeks that he’s had me down here? With the lack of natural light everything blends together.
Nikolai hates when I laugh at him.
Sometimes, I think that my own defiance of him is going to break him first. What’s that saying again? Topping from the bottom? Does that apply here? Torture from victim or something? It’s just so funny that I can’t seem to stop.
At least until Nikolai’s brick fist collides with my kidneys and my laughter shifts to a spurt of blood from my mouth. That’s not so funny anymore. I gasp and strain to breathe. My feet don’t reach the floor so the very tips of my toes try to steady myself just enough to lift up to relieve pressure on my lungs as I swing in place. It doesn’t help.
“Much better.” Nikolai gloats before the chain holding me up is suddenly dropped and I collapse into the puddle of my own sweat, blood and drool on the ground. The chain from my wrist shackles is instantly shifted to the thick iron band around my neck that makes it almost impossible to hold my head at a normal angle - and I’m chained to the wall all over again.
Everything hurts.
No, this is something more than hurt. This is something that doesn’t stop. There’s no abating it. Nothing I do seems to make it better. I want to say something snarky to piss him off again, but I’m seeing double as it is. Vision swimming, consciousness only hanging on by a thread here. It’s not looking great in my world.
“Have it your way.” Nikolai speaks in a voice like razors. He swaggers toward me, full of false bravado and overwhelming ego. He squats down to talk to me, to relish in his little victory with a wry smile on his annoyingly chiseled face. “Tomorrow, you will tell me where that bitch is, or I’m going to start taking limbs.”
I believe him.
It still won’t be enough to make me tell him what he wants to know. I would rather endure his torture than tell him where my sister Helena is. My loyalty runs deep. If this is the very last thing that I can do for her, I’m happy to pay whatever price is asked of me.
My only acknowledgement that I’ve even heard a word that he said is a deep groan of pain as I struggle to roll onto my side so as not to choke to death on my own blood.
The sheer force of blood rushing back to my abused wrists and hands is painful enough that I almost don’t register the kick in my ribs that Nikolai finishes today’s session off with before he spits at the ground by my face. I don’t even have the impulse to flinch before he turns his heels, muttering under his breath in heated Russian, and slams the door to my prison.
Leaving me in darkness once again.
I’m not delusional enough to think that I’m ever going to see sunlight again. I know that I’m going to die in here.
I think maybe it would have been a mercy for Daniel Colombo to have killed me. His visit last week was unexpected to say the least. Was it only a week ago? Perhaps it was longer. Time has been blurring together. Maybe this is all just a nightmare. Still, his mug was yet another face that I never thought that I would see again. He has more of a reason to want me dead than Nikolai does. After all, Daniel thinks that I killed his sister, Lilian. I forgot how much they look alike. Looked. Nikolai had offered me up to Daniel in exchange for making some sort of deal with him. I couldn’t hear the terms of whatever it was that Nikolai wanted from him. But I do know that Daniel refused him and went on his way without taking my life. Talk about character growth. The Daniel I knew before, he swore he would kill me with his bare hands the last time we spoke.
The image of Lilian’s face swims to the forefront of my mind’s eye. And, for a moment, all the pain in my body disappears. Her lovely visage floats there, her smiling, laughing at something dumb that I said. And then it shifts to the portrait of rage that she was wearing the last time I saw her and the pain returns fast.
I’m almost thankful when oblivion pulls me under.
The black inky unconscious nothingness might be kinder still than the thought that maybe… just maybe… I deserve everything that I’m getting.
Time loses meaning so quickly.
There’s no way to know how long I’m passed out for. Even with my eyes open it’s dark enough in this little room that it’s hard to tell where the floor meets the wall apart from when the occasional sliver of light appears under the door. It’s not constant. They don’t feed me on a schedule, so unless I want to start obsessively counting the seconds, I have to let the concept of time fade entirely.
It could be hours, or maybe it has been days before the door opens again.
At no point does my body stop hurting. The gnawing in my stomach is just as bad. Never mind the rest of the bodily functions that I’m pointedly ignoring.
I don’t expect Nikolai to come back too soon - but when the door opens again I am ready with a sarcastic quip that doesn’t leave my lips because the body standing in the doorway is far, far too small to be Nikolai.
Something dark and anxious flops in my stomach.
For all the death jokes that I’ve been making to myself during my lovely stay here, I certainly didn’t think that I was actually going to die.
The silhouette of a woman that can only be described as heavenly comes quickly into the room. The little sashay of her hips is all I can make out of her features until she comes closer to me – the light behind her is so brilliantly bright that I can hardly even look at her for more than a second before my eyes burn.
The woman stops in front of me, and I can make out stunning olive skin and exotic features with a metal box in her hands.
She speaks, but in my delirious state I can’t really understand what she’s saying.
What game is this? Some new fresh hell, or have I died and this is it. An angel has come to patch up all the hurt.
“Am I dead?” I don’t even really recognize my voice as I speak because it sounds so much rougher than I expected it to. “Finally kicked the bucket?”
