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Or worse…beg her again.

Vasily Zaytsev always wanted me to take over his empire but his unsettling silence grates on my nerves as he’s keeping the whole project under wraps.

Which only tells me he’s hiding something.

I’ve barely slept these past three days, hacking into tons of files stored in Roman’s father’s laptop—which he brought over—and found countless faces of women and children that have been trafficked over the years.

The only file missing is the data from this month’s trafficking. What I thought was a business of drugs is a whole racket of human trafficking going on for years.

I’m not even surprised when I find Alina’s picture in the files from eleven years ago.

Roman might’ve smashed the screen upon seeing it, buried memories resurfacing, haunting him as he stormed past me and left my place.

I set up everything again on a new computer.

I’ve also been trying to track down Elara, but her phone is still switched off. There’s no sign of her, as if the earth spilt open three days ago and swallowed her whole.

There’s always a barrier whenever I’ve tried to track down Elara. I couldn’t find her all those years ago and I cannot find her now.

I also am physically incapable of going in our room. The place feels less like a memory and more like a grave I sealed myself out of.

The bed is untouched, sheets still bearing the faint, dying trace of her scent, and I can’t bring myself to ruin it, can’t risk losing the ghost of her completely.

I keep the door shut because I know the second I walk in; I’ll have to face what she did to me.

She hollowed me out and took every soft piece with her, leaving a wounded, bleeding heart that doesn’t know any healing.

She loved me.

I should’ve expected it.

THIRTY-SIX

Elara

Four days left.

Blood drips from my temple, sliding over the swelling around my eye before trailing down my cheek and pooling against my chest.

I haven’t seen my reflection in three days, but I don’t need to. The throbbing behind my right eye tells me enough, like it’s about to burst from the socket.

I don’t even remember the punch, but it still feels fresh. Like Roman Reigns himself decided to make an example out of me.

I chuckle at that. At least my humour survived. Can’t say the same about my sanity.

My clothes are intact, though ragged, which tells me I wasn’t raped, but above all that my mind is pacing, my thoughts are elsewhere, worried for Sergei.

When I left his apartment, I decided against booking a cab, choosing instead to walk the thirty-minute distance, thinking the quiet might help clear my head, before I ended my sorry life, alone in my flat. No longer waiting for my birthday.

Birthdays are overrated anyway. Terrible day to kill yourself.

I barely made it five blocks before a black van with tinted windows pulled up beside me. The side door slid open, and a pair of hands yanked me inside.

Five masked men stared back at me.

Five masked men with impossibly broad frames. Almost as massive as Roman—and that man is practically built like the Hulk.

Before I could jump or move or fight back, panic made me immobile and I was hyperventilating, slowly losing consciousness, letting them kidnap me with only the stars left as soundless witnesses.