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“I think you only pissed it off,” the far guard observes, speaking about me like I’m the kind of beast they treat me no better than.
The first one snorts. “What’s he going to do? Spit on me?”
If only my mouth weren’t as dry as a desert. I can’t remember the last time I was offered a drink, let alone food.
“Come on. Let’s go. This fucker’s heavy,” the first guy grunts, hoisting Maks’s shoulder higher.
His companion does the same. And as they carry my last clan brother unceremoniously from the cold, dank dungeon that resides deep beneath Mikhail’s estate, I find myself utterly alone.
Mikhail took many Veles men prisoner that day—on our day of reckoning. He collected every living brother of mine from the bloody battlefield that I ordered Pyotr to flee from. And my one small victory is knowing my pakhan made it out alive.
I know because of the rants Mikhail has unleashed toward me and my fellow prisoners on the rare occasion that he graces us with his presence. Only now, I’m the last of us. The lone survivor.
I can’t say if anyone else got away, besides Pyotr. I imagine a few must have.
But of the men Mikhail did take captive… that’s been a whole new kind of slaughter.
No one thought I would survive my injuries—least of all me.
But apparently, Mikhail paid a lot of money for a surgeon to keep Pyotr’s men alive at any cost. The doctor patched up over twenty of us. Removed the bullet from my lung and drained the fluid from my chest.
Still, it was touch and go for a while.
Dani is the only thing that pulled me through. Visions of her coming to me when I was struck with feverish hallucinations, dreams of her on the rare occasion they let me sleep. I saw powerful visions of those captivating dimples that make my pulse quicken, her striking blue eyes that change color with the shifting of her mood or the lighting.
Sometimes, I still think I can hear her laughter, the way it bubbles warmly from her lips. And when I think of her, the way she so effortlessly seems to understand and appreciate the world around her, the joy and vitality with which she lives life, it fills my chest with a warmth that chases away the cold, the excruciating pain.
Others were not so lucky.
Of the number of wounded taken from the battlefield, only ten survived the surgeries.
Then, once a man became stable, that’s when his real torture began.
I think the ones with the least grievous injuries died first and quickest, before Mikhail’s men realized they wouldn’t be able to get the information they desired from a dead man. Still, within what I reckon was a month of the initial ambush and slaughter, six of the remaining survivors were dead. Bringing our total alive down to four.
It was around that time that I was well enough to join them.
And since that day, I have been cursing my very existence, wishing they would put a quick end to this agony or at least give me a chance to fight back. But instead, they keep me chained up like a dog so they can flog and beat me to their hearts’ content.
But they won’t just let me die like the others, the men like Maks, who they slowly drained of life and strength, putting them through the most agonizing of torture.
Mikhail seems particularly intent on keeping me alive, however—as he’s expressed on several occasions. I suspect it’s because he knows I was in the room with Pyotr far more than the rest. I have the information he wants.
But he’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead lips.
My knees give out suddenly, at their limit after standing for far too many hours straight, and I sag heavily against the cuffs confining my wrists. The thick metal bites into my flesh, drawing blood, and I groan as my shoulders scream, the joints straining from the unexpected weight of my body.
Then comes the searing pain of my still-healing bullet wound.
While the worst of it has stitched itself back together, I can feel the tenuous nature of my body’s work threatening to come undone. And though my legs are knotted with charley horses, I force them to straighten once more.
I shiver, my muscles trembling uncontrollably from the strain. Nobody is meant to hold this position as long as I have. By my estimation, I think it’s been several days. But it’s nearly impossible to count the passage of time this far beneath the earth.
I know we’re far down because of the inherent dampness, the smell of earth all around, and the walls carved out of foundation with rocks roughly stacked to form graystone siding.
I might have lost consciousness several times throughout my initial surgery and recovery time, but I’m still confident I’m beneath Mikhail’s mansion in Upstate New York. A perfect place to lay a trap and capture all the prisoners he might hope to make sing.
Only none did.
