Page 148 of Sinful Lord

“Trouble,” Maksim grunts, brushing past me. “It’s—wait… is that you?”

Confusion fills his gruff voice as he stares at the wall in front of us. When I look over his shoulder, my stomach drops.

“And Gabriel…” I huff, dread worming through my chest. “… And Rozalia…”

Ahead, on a stained and rusted wall is a morbid collage of photos. Secret surveillance shots of me and my siblings hang in a twisted web beneath a flickering yellow light.

It takes a closer look to understand the full horror laid out before us.

In each photo, our eyes have been systematically gauged out. Our bodies are burned. Our faces are crossed off with red ink.

No. Wait. Not red ink.

Blood.

“What the fuck is going on?” Maksim croaks.

The room is hardly any bigger than two or three upturned coffins. It reeks of piss and blood and hate and nightmares. A ratty pile of clothes fills one corner. Yellow jugs another.

Beside that, an old police radio quietly hisses and cracks. Behind it is a mountain of medical equipment. Pill bottles. Gauze tape. Surgical scissors.

A dreadful chill skates up my spine.

“Fuck,” Maksim coughs, nearly retching. “This is disgusting. Who the hell could be living here?”

“I know exactly who’s living here,” I sigh, a pit forming in my stomach.

It doesn’t feel any better to know I was right.

“Who?”

“My brother. Krol Cieni.”

A tense silence fills the heavy air as I look back towards the ghoulish collection of photos pinned to the front wall.

Beneath the overflowing collection is just the subtlest sign of another print-out.

I walk by a paralyzed Maksim and pull aside the other pictures, ripping them from the wall, one by one.

“Krol is dead,” Maksim finally manages to mumble. “Your brother killed him… Melina’s brother helped… there was no surviving what happened.”

I ignore him and continue tearing down the mangled photographs until I get to the one hidden beneath all the mayhem.

“Fuck,” I curse.

As if this shit couldn’t get any worse.

It’s Melina.

A pin-up sized print-out of a secret photograph taken without her knowledge. It’s hard to tell exactly when the picture was taken, but she’s clearly in Berlin.

A single blood-red arrow points to her. A dripping heart has been drawn right next to it, then crossed out.

Krol is going after Melina.

The confirmation momentarily stops my racing heart. I’m frozen in place. I knew this was happening, but to see it spelled out so brutally is still staggering.

He’s not supposed to be alive…