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EMERY
It’s impossible to keep time here.
There are no windows, no cracks in the foundation, no way at all for me to get even a hint of daylight.
Days could have passed. Or hours. But part of me thinks it has only been minutes since Adrik was standing in front of me.
I can still smell him. When I stare hard enough through the bars of my prison, I swear I can see his shadow there, watching me.
My eyes adjusted to the gloom slightly in the first hour, but everything is still a muddled gray. Every so often, I wave my hand in front of my face just to make sure I’m not entirely blind. My fingers waver before my eyes as if I’m seeing them through dirty water.
So when a shaft of light pierces down the stairwell and illuminates the stone wall across from my cell door, it’s so sudden and blinding that I shriek.
My heart thunders in my chest, my adrenaline spiking, wondering what comes next.
But I can’t look. It’s too bright.
I bury my face in my arms, my eyes watering into my sleeve.
“Who’s there?” I rasp.
God, I’m thirsty.
“Hello?”
It’s strange hearing my voice—or any voice, really—echoing off the walls. I haven’t spoken a word since Adrik left me. There was no need. I’m obviously alone down here. That’s the whole point.
Footsteps move softly down the stairs.
I lift my face and blink rapidly at the light, trying to help my vision adjust. But it’s like trying to adjust to being on fire. My eyes burn.
“Fuck,” I groan, swiping away the tears that roll down my cheeks. “Who is it?”
“Would you be quiet?” a voice hisses back.
It isn’t Adrik. I know that.
I knew that before the person even spoke. Adrik is all too happy to dump me down here and forget I exist. He doesn’t care what happens to me. The person who spoke cares, in some way I can’t put my finger on.
“Who is it?” I ask again, my voice only slightly softer.
Suddenly, a dark shape presses itself against the bars of my cage. The light is still so blinding that I can’t make out any features. My eyes see only in extremes, deep black or bright white.
“Who is—”
“It’s Rurik.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you—” I’m not sure what I thought happened to him. I haven’t seen him since the last time Adrik locked me away. Though I much preferred that time. At least I had a bed and a bathtub. The good ol’ days.
“After I tried to help you, Adrik made it clear I should keep my distance,” he explains.
“Then why are you here now?” I back away as if there is anywhere for me to go. “Did Adrik send you?”
“No.” He almost laughs but kills it quickly. “No, but I… I heard about where he put you. It… it doesn’t seem right.”
I have no idea why Rurik cares what happens to me. Adrik seemed to think it was a schoolboy crush, and maybe it is. But I’m not above using that to get what I want. What I need.
And that’s boiled down to two things exactly.
To get out of this cell.
To see my daughter.
“Can you get me out?” I whisper, stepping into the light.
I must look as bad as I feel, because Rurik’s eyes widen. “Shit.” He shakes his head. “No. I don’t have a key. But… shit. Even if I could let you out, Adrik would kill me. No, actually, he’d torture me for as long as I could take it. Then he’d kill me.”
“I’ll never tell. No matter what he did to get answers out of me, I’d never—”
“Don’t make promises you aren’t prepared to keep,” Rurik interrupts. “You’ve never seen a Bratva interrogation.”
A shiver works down my spine.
“Anything,” I breathe, wrapping a hand around the bar. “Anything you could do or give me. Anything would help.”
Rurik fumbles in his pocket and comes back out with a small knife. He hands it through the bars. “I have this. It’s—”
“The mail opener.” I turn the small silver knife over in my hands. I can still see the faint smear of dried crimson. Adrik’s blood, clotted onto the blade.
“It’s not much, but it’s something,” Rurik says. He glances up the stairs. I can tell he’s getting nervous. The longer he stays down here, the more likely it is he’ll be caught. “I wish I could do more, but… I’m sorry. I just… I can’t.”
“Thank you, Rurik. Really.”
He nods and, with one final look, turns and heads up the stairs.
His shadow is cast long across the wall as he ascends. Whatever light he turned on is located upstairs. As soon as he closes the door again, I’ll be plunged in darkness.
With my last few seconds of light remaining, I run my hand over the metal door until I find the lock hole. I press my index finger to it just as the door clicks closed and the light is snuffed out.
“At least I have something to do now,” I mumble to myself.
I pull the knife out of my pocket and fit it blindly into the hole. Then I begin twisting it around indelicately.
I have no idea what the lock looks like or how sophisticated it is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to pry it open. For all I know, I’m wasting my time. But it’s better than sitting uselessly in the dark, waiting for… well, I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
I don’t want to imagine, either.
After a while, I have a mental map of what the inside of the lock looks like. I can picture the metal gears and tumblers sitting inside, ready to be manipulated into place. And my clumsy fumbling has become more sophisticated, more precise. I work the knife into the hole and press my ear to the metal, listening for a click or a pop or something like that. Some sign that I’ve done it.
But in the end, there isn’t a sound at all. I’m simply sitting there, twisting the knife in the hole one second, and the next, the door is swinging open.
It happens so suddenly and so silently that I actually fall forward when the door moves. I almost faceplant on the cement floor.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, going perfectly still on my hands and knees, not quite believing what I’ve done. “I did it. I’m… I’m free.”
Except I’m not free. Not by a long shot.
I’m out of the cage, but when I climb back up the stairs Adrik led me down, the door at the top is locked. I could try and pick it, as well, but even if that miraculously works, I’ll be nabbed by security before I can even make it to the front door.
But I do find the light switch at the top of the stairs. I flip it and the dim yellow lights buzz on, illuminating the stairs and the endless hallway.
“At least I won’t die in the dark.” The sound of a voice—even my own—is helping me stay calm. So I hum to myself as I descend the stairs again and step into the thick, damp air of what I’ve been thinking of as “the dungeon.”
The pukey yellow tinge of the lights is making me feel nauseous, but that could also be because I skipped dinner to try and run away with Isabella.
“It was my idea to have that dinner. But I would have met Yasha eventually. All of this would have happened sometime. It’s not my fault, but—”
Things had been good.
I can’t say it out loud because it hurts too much. But it’s true. Marriage to Adrik had been… nice, for lack of a better word. For a moment, I had hope that things would work out. That we would make this marriage work. At least for a little while.
“That’s what you get for hoping,” I mutter.
“Oh, I don’t know,” a deep voice next to me rumbles. “I think hope is a beautiful thing.”
I swallow down my rising scream—barely—and press myself against the stone wall. “What the—Who was that? Who’s there?”
A man limps forward from the darkness of the cell next to me. Even in the dim light, I can see years of badly healed injuries and ugly, twisting scars crisscrossing over his face and arms. His eyes are foggy, pained. When he smiles, his mouth is full of rotten teeth.
“I’m Pietro,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest and bowing slightly in a move that suggests he lived a very different life at some point. “And you are just the godsend I’ve been waiting for.”
I blink at the man, too stunned to process what he just said. “Who are you?”
“Pietro,” he repeats. “A fellow prisoner. I heard you join my ranks twelve hours ago.”
“Do you have a clock around here?”
He smiles and taps his temple. “Counting keeps my mind strong. I don’t have much else to occupy my time.”
“How long have you been down here?” By the looks of him—not to mention the smell—I’d guess… forever. But I don’t want to say so.
“Even I can’t count that high,” he says with a laugh. “But I started counting when I heard you arrive.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t much use if we were both stuck down here. But now that you’re free…” He rattles the door of his cell. “Mind unlocking mine, too?”
His hands are warped and misshapen. The skin is riddled with burn marks and silvery, jagged scars. More scar than skin, actually.
“Why are you down here? What happened to you?”
“Adrik Tasarov killed my sister,” he says, his voice turning acidic.
“And then locked you up?” I ask. “Why would he do that?”
“Because emotional torment wasn’t enough. He had to physically torture me, as well,” he says. “That’s my belief, anyway. But no one truly knows the mind of that monster.”
The accusation stings even after what Adrik has done to me.
Part of me still doesn’t want to believe that he could be so bad.
He told me he’d killed people. He made it clear to me on many occasions that he would do whatever he needed to do to protect his own interests and look after his Bratva.
But I never really thought that would result in… this.
This is horrifying.
“Do you know how to escape?” I ask. “Do you know a way out of here?”
The man grins again, though I wish he wouldn’t. “If you get me out of this cell, I can get you out of this dungeon. I swear it.”
I take a deep breath.
“I don’t know you,” I say. “But I apparently don’t know my husband, either. So whatever you might do to me can’t be worse than whatever he has planned.”
His milky eyes widen. “Is that a yes?”
I pull out my knife and slide it into the lock. “You might want to go ahead and start counting. This could take a while.”
