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“Now trot along,” he concludes.
“This is bullshit!” Aleksei shouts as he leaves. “This conversation is not over!”
He slams the door hard enough to make me jump.
“Anya, take a break,” Viktor says, his eyes on me.
She scurries away before being asked twice.
As soon as she’s gone, he sits on the edge of the bed next to me. He pushes a strand of hair away from my face and watches me tense. “I apologize on behalf of my brother. He is a violent man. Unnecessarily so. And he hates women.”
My nostrils flare at the pain I’m trying to suppress.
“Tell me, Rosalind. How did you remember so well?” Now that I know Aleksei is his brother, I’m surprised he doesn’t mention the fact that I killed his father when that’s all Aleksei sees in me.
I frown up at him, but I don’t dare not answer. “I don’t know.”
“Are you a genius?”
“Most likely,” I reply in all honesty. No one ever checked.
He nods silently and brings his thumb to his lower lip, thinking deeply. “I want you to remember a few things for me. We’ll start small and see how it goes.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see,” he smiles. “You’ll be staying in my section of the compound from now on, not Aleksei’s.”
I nod, a sense of relief filling me despite knowing I’m not out of danger.
He gets up and looks down at me, smiling. “As soon as you’re better, Anya will show you to your new room.”
He turns his back to me, and I call out. “You know who I am.”
I don’t need to ask. He must know.
“I do.” He looks back at me.
“I killed your father,” I remind him like I’m suicidal. “He was right in front of me, holding my brother and ready to kill him. I shot him without an ounce of hesitation.”
“And for that, I will never let you go,” he tells me calmly. “Solitude will haunt you, and you will miss your loved ones. I am going to use that little gift of yours. You will work for me, and that’s all you’ll ever do.”
He rearranges his tie and looks up again.
“Nevertheless, I will not hurt you. I will not rape you. I will not let my brother get close to you. You are free to do as you please in this compound, and you will be under my protection. I promise you.”
And as he said only a few hours ago, his word means everything.
I step away from the door I know leads to Anya’s infirmary. I start my walk along the hallway again. One door. That’s all it took to throw me back to the day I met Viktor.
Not long after our conversation, Aleksei was banned from entering Viktor’s mansion in their compound. It’s composed of quite a few houses, but there is only one Aleksei doesn’t have access to. The one I was in. Just as Viktor promised, his brother never hurt me again.
But I didn’t just work for him. It’s not all I ever did. No, with time, we grew closer. Whenever I was outside Viktor’s house and Aleksei tried to come near me, he was there. It made me fall for him, that protection he held over me. The fact that he was the first person to keep a promise.
I know now it actually was just for the work I could do for him, only it didn’t seem like it back then when I was scared. It didn’t seem like it when he held me close and whispered how special I was. It just seemed like he was falling for me too, not grooming me into being his little personal soldier.
Back then, it didn’t cross my mind that I could ever escape this place. I was too broken, too afraid. Too thankful to Viktor for saving me from Aleksei.
But I did end up escaping.
