“That doesn’t tell me why you decided to take over this particular territory. You had to know when you did, especially if you were going to shut off the biggest moneymaker, you were going to be painting a huge target on your back. The locals would want you dead. Every shifter taking that money inside the lair would want you dead. Those cheating the books would definitely want you dead.We aren’t even talking about any of them aspiring to be the leader of the lair. And then every single person doing business with Rivel you shut out. Most likely, they’ll put out contracts on you.”
“I considered that. In fact, Donovan made that very clear. He didn’t offer me the job at first. He wanted one of my tougher cousins. Timur would never leave Fyodor. Sevastyan wasn’t about to leave Mitya. Neither ever aspired to bevor.They’re security and they like it that way. I told Donovan I’d do it. Rogue and I needed action. We were getting too close to insanity. I thought the mental and physical action would be good for us.” He sighed and rubbed at his beard. “I was wrong.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t realize that using violence would bring that need out in both Rogue and me. I began to crave it all over again.” He didn’t hesitate to tell her the truth. “I had tried to suppress that part of me over the years, but it’s part of who I am, and it isn’t ever going away. Like I told you, either I was born that way, or Patva and his friends made me into a sadist.”
Again, her blue-green eyes studied him. “I doubt you’re a true sadist, Gorya. If you were, you wouldn’t have been able to keep from harming others or humiliating them.”
“No? Just kill them.”
“Perhaps they needed killing.”
Gorya pressed his palm to his chest when his heart reacted with that strange, unfamiliar pressure, as if it were being squeezed in a vise. Was this how Fyodor felt when he had gone to Evangeline’s bakery for all those months? Feeling she might be his only chance at salvation? And Sevastyan? Had he known all along that Flambe would find a way to redeem him? The man Gorya knew who was closest to sharing his sins was Gedeon. He believed Meiling was his miracle. He understood Gorya and Rogue because he had been on the verge of ending his existencebefore his leopard, Slayer, could kill an innocent. That time had been approaching very fast.
“I think it’s possible you’re my own personal miracle.” He murmured the thought aloud, not truly believing in redemption for someone like him, but if there was a way, she might be the path.
Her expression changed to absolute rejection. She drew back. Tears even shimmered in her eyes. She shook her head several times and then burst out laughing. The sound was low, but very close to hysteria.
“Is that what you think? Your own personal miracle? Like saintly Meiling? That’s what Gedeon said. Is that what everyone thinks? Expects?”
She was in such distress it felt as if he had tortured her. The emotions came off her in such strong waves that it was all he could do not to go to her and pull her into his arms. In his entire life, Gorya had never had such a reaction. He’d seen women in tears. He’d seen them in life-or-death situations. He’d seen them lose loved ones, but not once had he been affected the way he was by Maya’s reaction to his statement. He couldn’t even believe it.
Her breathing was ragged, as if her lungs burned for air and she couldn’t find it in the spacious room despite all the plants.
“I can’t even save myself, Gorya.” Maya sounded hoarse, her vocal cords shredded, as if she’d screamed and screamed where no one could hear her. The shadows in her eyes increased. “What you see isn’t real. There isn’t one single thing real about me.”
“Maya—” He broke off. What was there to say? She couldn’t hear him. She was so upset she looked broken. Absolutely broken.
“The Amurov family raided our homes and killed my father and brothers. They took my mother, sister and me when I was barely two.” A visible shudder went through her body. She wrapped her arms around her middle androcked herself gently in a self-soothing manner. Her eyes had gone almost completely gray-blue as she turned inward, recalling the terrible nightmare of her childhood.
Gorya remained silent, needing to hear the trauma his family had caused this woman—the one he was certain was destined to be his partner—and her leopard, Rogue’s mate. He found it difficult not to go to her. Heneededto go to her. Still, he held himself rigid, inwardly cursing his uncles, wondering who had ripped her life apart. If any lived, he would hunt them down, destroy their lives and then kill them for her.
“Thepakhanseemed to hate my mother more than anyone. He wanted something from her, but she wouldn’t give it to him, no matter what he did. He gave my sister to his men. They did horrible things to her in front of my mother—and me. I can still hear her screams. Sometimes I wake up hearing her screaming. He tortured my mother. He let his men torture her. One man was so angry with my sister for fighting back when he tried to rape her, and the men laughed at him when she managed to kick him in the balls. She was only four. He beat her badly and began cutting her legs with a knife. He dragged her out of the house, with a bunch of other men egging him on. We never saw her again. Thepakhangrabbed another little girl and skinned her alive in front of my mother, telling her he was looking for her leopard. I was next if my mother didn’t give him what he wanted.”
She choked on her silent sobs. “I was two, almost three. I remember him looking at me after she died. She was on the floor in a pool of blood, her eyes glassy, and I knew when he looked at me he meant what he said. My mother hadn’t made a sound. Not one single sound.” She choked again and jammed her fist into her mouth as if that would stop the tears from falling down her face or the silent screams she refused to allow anyone to hear.
He heard. Gorya heard. Not through Rogue. Just as hehad been aware of Maya when he’d entered the hallway, just as his entire being seemed to be tuned to her, he could hear the screams of anguish, and it tore at him as nothing else could. He despised where he had come from. If he could have torn that part of him out of his body and mind, he would have.
“He told my mother that he would train me himself to please his guests. He would let his men use me. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, eventually I would. Right there, with that little girl lying dead on the floor, he attacked me. He was deliberately brutal, and he hurt me. His men laughed. I didn’t make a sound. Inside, I screamed, but outside, I didn’t make a sound. That only made him angrier.”
Gorya could well imagine. In thepakhan’smind, he’d been defeated by a child. He would retaliate in ugly, vindictive ways.
“I was raped constantly by his men and by him after that. Then one day he became so angry with my mother that he whipped me with a thin wire on my back until I was so bloody no one could hold on to me. He killed her the way he killed that little girl. I was taken to a house where there were several women and girls. He would sell them to outsiders as brides or allow his men and guests to use them. That was more hell for me.”
She bit her lip and lifted her gaze to his. Once again, he could see she was deep in the past. “A couple of days after my fifth birthday, several men came in and they gang raped me. Then the door opened and more came in. They were some of the worst, thepakhan’sguards. They really liked to hurt me and the other women. I just felt like I couldn’t take any more. I was going to fight them and force them to kill me.”
Gorya’s heart dropped. His breath left his lungs in a long rush, leaving him frozen, staring at her in shock. He shared images in her mind—all too familiar images. Thatmoment she was sharing with him was the exact moment that had changed his life. Evidently, it had changed hers as well. He’d temporarily lost all sanity. Rogue had as well.
Gorya was in his teens and the men he’d arrived with were used to bullying him, beating him and treating him as if he were one of the sex slaves instead of one of the ruling members of the Amurov family. They paid no attention to him as they began to join in on the fun the guards were already having.
Gorya’s gaze had been instantly riveted to the child with the platinum-blond hair. She was so tiny, her body smeared with blood. The men surrounding her appeared monstrous. Evil. Gorya forgot all about hiding who and what he was. He didn’t think to hide his superior gifts or what the cost to him would be. The men in that room weren’t human beings. They were depraved demonic beasts and had to be destroyed.
He used a curved blade, one that he had concealed in his sleeve, slashing throats and arteries as he moved through the enormous room with blurring speed, killing every man in his way. He saw a pattern in his mind and had already marked each target for maximum efficiency with the least amount of effort or risk to him. Most were dead before anyone knew their friends were falling.
Rogue and Gorya shifted back and forth—one moment the leopard ripping throats out, the next the knife slicing through insides of thighs and driving into the backs of skulls as he pulled the men off the child. He found the room eerily silent as he kicked the dead bodies away from her, adrenaline rushing through his veins.
The other women in the room said nothing. Although one just looked at Gorya and shook her head. It was Rogue who warned him. He spun around to find that the little girl had picked up a knife and was about to cut her own wrists.
