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“Choose,tsarina, or I’ll choose for you.”
I can’t. I simply can’t. Not here, not in front of Sofia and Sasha and Ana, not in front of my stepdaughters. “Somewhere else,” I beg. “We’ll go to your room—”
“Here,” he says firmly. “Choose,tsarina.”
“No.” I swallow hard, shaking my head. “No, let go of me. Letgo!” I try to jerk free, twisting in his grasp, doing my best to ignore the pain as I swipe at him with my other hand, trying desperately to throw him off guard enough to get free. I know it’s fruitless, that there’s nowhere for us to go, nowhere to run, and what’s more, that I’ve only made things worse. That I’ve broken my promise to be willing, to not fight back, and I know he’s going to make me pay.
The panic takes over, and I writhe in his grasp, forgetting that Anika and Yelena are watching, that I need to worry about them, to protect them, to keep them from being frightened, that they shouldn’t see this. I hear Alexei’s grunt of frustration, but I don’t heed it for the warning that it is.
I don’t see the blow coming. When his fist strikes my jaw, it takes me completely off guard. So much so that I don’t even realize he’s knocked me out until I’m already sinking bonelessly into the bed, the room spinning around me as my vision throbs at the edges and then goes black.
---
When I wake up, it feels as if my head is splitting open. A jolt of pure panic washes through me because I remember this feeling from the cabin, how my head can feel as if it’s fracturing from the inside out. I start to try to sit up, grasp my head in my hands, push my fingers against my temples to relieve the pressure a little, but I can’t move my hands.
Oh god. Oh god. Fuck, fuck,fuck!
I can’t move my feet either. For one terrifying moment, I think that he’s paralyzed me somehow. I realize a second later that I’m tied to the bed, my wrists and ankles bound to the four corners of the poster bed.
We’re not in Alexei’s room. I don’t know what room we’re in. It’s not well furnished, just the bed in the center with nothing on my left side but a wall, and then when I slowly turn my head to look at the other side while trying to ignore the shooting pains in my skull, a scene straight out of my nightmares on my right.
There’s no furniture on the other side, either. Just a door that’s almost certainly locked, four blank walls, and a hook hanging from the ceiling, for all the world like a slaughterhouse.
And Sasha is hanging from that hook, her wrists bound and looped over it, her toes barely touching the hardwood floor as she whimpers, twisting her head as if she’s trying to see what’s happening even though her eyes are covered with a thick blindfold.
“Sasha!” I gasp out her name, and she lets out a small cry, twisting again on the hook.
“Caterina! Where are you—”
“I’m on the bed.” I try to keep my voice steady and calm, as if I’m not panicking. “What’s going on? Alexei knocked me out, and then—”
“He had his men take you out of the room.” Sasha’s voice is trembling, every inch of her shaking as she tries to keep some kind of purchase on the floor with her toes. “We didn’t know where you went, and then he grabbed me and dragged me in here—” I can hear the tears threatening in her voice, her breath coming in short quick gasps. “He blindfolded me, and—”
“Did he leave?”
Sasha nods, swallowing hard. “He said he’d be back, he said—”
The door opens, and her words die on a small, mouse-like squeak as she twists towards it, looking sightlessly in the direction of the footsteps walking towards her. It’s Alexei, striding into the room in slacks with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his collar open, a hunting knife in his hand. Two men follow him in, closing and locking the door as they take up a position on either side of it. Neither of them looks directly at us, as if they’d been ordered to keep their eyes forward—and knowing Alexei, they probably had.
My pulse leaps into my throat as he strides towards Sasha, not even bothering to look at me. I open my mouth to say something, to beg for her, but the words die on my lips as I realize with a sinking, acid feeling in my stomach that anything I say will only make it worse. And a moment later, Alexei confirms that.
His gaze rakes over Sasha, an anticipatory smile curving his lips as he takes in every inch of her, and then finally, he turns his head to look at me.
“Ah,tsarina. You’re awake.” He reaches up, pressing the tip of the hunting knife into Sasha’s chest, just above the neckline of the t-shirt she’d worn to bed last night. “You know,” he says conversationally, dragging the knife down so that it begins to cut through the fabric of her shirt, “Sasha is here because of you.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. I feel my body trembling, every muscle rigid, poised for a flight that I can’t take and a fight that I can’t participate in because I’m tied down. All the trauma from the cabin comes rushing back, the feeling of being bound and helpless, the memory of Andrei and Stepan’s knives biting into my skin bright and vivid, seeing Alexei pushing the hunting knife against Sasha’s skin. The blade must have been impossibly sharp because it’s slowly slicing through her shirt like tissue paper, with hardly any resistance.
“I thought of how I should punish you,” Alexei continues, dragging the knife down as he cuts her shirt open, the tip scoring her flesh just slightly, so that a raised pink line appears, small droplets of blood springing out like a leak. “I thought ofsomany creative ways, but then I realized something fundamental aboutyou, Caterina.”
His use of my name is startling, piercing me in a way that his mockingtsarinanever does. It feels familiar, intimate, and my stomach twists because it reminds me that hehasbeen intimate with me, that he knows the innermost parts of me now, and I can never change that. He’s indelibly sunk into my skin, whether I somehow managed to destroy him in this instant or not.
“What’s that?” I manage to ask it with some difficulty, my lips feeling numb and thick, my entire body shifting into a panic mode that threatens to overtake me.
“You’re brave when it comes to your own pain. I could threaten you all day long, punish you in the worst ways, and it would take a long time for you to break. I think you could endure more than some of my men.” He looks at me appreciatively. “In a way, I admire you, Caterina. Not many women have your strength or your bravery. But you see, I don’t really have time for all that. I need you obedient, pliant, because I have a business to run and deals to make. I can’t afford to spend time breaking you, as enjoyable as it would be to see how much you could bear before you started to beg me for mercy. And don’t mistake me, youwouldeventually. I can be very talented at torture when I put my mind to it.”
He slices through the rest of Sasha’s shirt, cutting it away from her so that it floats in white cotton ribbons to the floor. Almost absentmindedly, he shoves the knife into his belt then, reaching for the waist of the too-big sweatpants that she found. He jerks them down with one motion, baring her entirely as he pulls them off and tosses them aside, leaving her dangling naked from the hook.
“Your weakness, Caterina, is others. Those you care about, those you feel responsible for. You would let me torture you, but if I hurt someone dear to you, it will cut you more deeply than any knife, sear you to the very soul more than any brand. So I brought dear Sasha in here to punish instead, because by watching this, you will understand the severity of what you’ve done and how very serious I am.”
