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He moves to the table and wraps some gauze around his middle finger. I only got the top third of it, but I know it had to hurt like a bitch. Small victories are everything in war, after all. I look at Damien’s dad, seeing the monster he really is.
“Why did you kill them?” It’s the question I’ve wanted to ask for years.
“Your parents?” He chuckles a demonic sound. “They wouldn’t give you to me you. I needed you, needed to break you, to break them all. I thought killing his wife would be enough. But no, Boris still pushed through. It was a real tragedy that my wife and Ivan’s died in that accident as well, but all things happen for a reason.” He walks to the table of tools, examining them.
“I planned to break you and then send you back to Boris as a spy. Get you to kill Alexi for me. When that didn’t work, I tried to have Alexi killed on the island and we planned to frame you. I wanted to set up a beautiful scene of a double murder with you and Boris, so that I could finally take control of the Bratva.”
He walks to Adrik's side then. My heart threatens to explode in my chest as all of these revelations come to light.
“This was all so we could take over. Adrik here has been working for years to infiltrate mafia and criminal organizations all over the world. We have spies in nearly half of them just waiting on the word. You, my dear, were our ticket to the largest mafia ring known to man. We saved you, groomed you, and then you went and ran away.”
He shakes his finger at me as if I’m a petulant child and walks over to the television screen on the wall. I know these rooms now that I’ve had time to take in my surroundings. We are in the underground bunker just outside of Siberia, near the mountains.
Shit, we are underground.I move my wrist, my tracking bracelet still intact. I need to get above ground so it works. But there is one question that’s been nagging at me since Havoc came to the island.
“Why did you make me lose the challenge?” I ask my uncle. He looks at me with a sneer on his face, but ever the lover of the sound of his own voice, he answers.
“A woman is not meant to rule over men. Plus, those men never would have taken kindly to you being over them. You could never have formed an alliance or gotten close. Because they would have known being below you was not their place. You needed to behumbled.”
My jaw drops at his admission. The same words his Shades had spoken to me about women in the organization running through my head. They didn’t believe those things on their own, he taught it to them. He’s the real misogynistic asshole behind everything.
“We found the tracker in your pocket,” Rostya says as he grabs a remote. “Not to mention, we also foundthem.”
A screen lights up and three rooms come into view. Three rooms and three faces I’d know anywhere. Three sets of eyes that stare right into the camera, straight through my soul. I want to cry out, to scream, as panic like I’ve never known grips my heart. But I won’t give them the satisfaction. I can’t. There has to be a way out of this.
Alexi is tied to a cross, lashes marring his broken and bloody body. Lev is floating in water, a tether tied to his leg that has a lever on it, slowly pulling him under while his hands are tied behind his back.
Damien is in a cage, metal bars lining the walls and electrodes falling from the ceiling, zapping him anytime he so much as breathes. These aren’t just torture rooms, they’re kill rooms. Rostya laughs as he watches his son squirm in agony.
“They thought they could come save you. They thought we weren’t leading them right into another trap. It was childish, really.”
Adrik comes to my side, his face dangerously close to mine as he whispers, “This is what happens when you bring home pets, Little Warrior. You will learn that I’m the only one on earth you will follow, or everyone you come to care for will die at your feet by my hands.”
For a moment, I have hope. Hope that somehow Boris will find us and save us. Hope that Laney will be able to hack into the systems in the bunker. Hope that we can all make it out of here alive.
I know my uncle can smell it—the hope. He takes a deep breath and wrenches my hair back to look at the screen, then grabs a radio and calls out, “Kill them.”
I try to turn away like a coward; I do everything I can not to look when Alexi’s screams pierce the air. Adrik pries my eyes open with his fingers.
“You will watch because this is your fault. This is what happens when people love you. Theydie.”
The sounds coming from Alexi’s mouth don’t even sound human, just pure agony in all senses of the word. They cut his bindings and he falls to his knees. His beautiful blue eyes look up at the camera at the same moment a knife is plunged into his side, and I scream.
I scream for him, for the injustice, for me and my life. I scream as I watch blood pool around him. I scream as I see them pull Lev under, his white hair floating around as he wiggles and tries with all his might to get in a breath. All too soon, his lungs are filled with water and the light leaves him. And another piece of my heart leaves this world.
Rostya has the audacity to cover his ears over the noise . A look of pause crosses his features before he gives Adrik a nod.
Then, I scream again for Damien as they turn up the voltage and every muscle on his body seems to go tight. He seizes within the sea of electrodes and falls to the ground convulsing until there is nothing left.
Nothing left of them and nothing left of me. Then, there is only silence.
“I told you,” Adrik says as Rostya smiles at the screen, “I would break you.”
My chest heaves. I don’t think I can take another breath. Without them in this world, my lungs have no reason to keep breathing. There is no reason to keep pushing through the pain. There is no reason to live. Everyone I ever loved is gone, there is nothing worth fighting for anymore.
As my body forces me to inhale a breath, I decide I’m done. I’m done fighting, done hoping. I am done with life itself.
I didn’t break after my parents were murdered in cold blood while I watched. I didn't break when I was beaten and starved. Not when I was brutally raped and tortured. Even when I was bullied and believed that the men I cared for had turned their backs on me. I didn't fucking break when I found out the only man that I trusted for eleven years, my own blood, was the one who betrayed me.
