His hand clenches, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“We arrived in Russia, at a vast estate. The leader was generous enough to host us in his home.”
He stiffens further.
“I didn’t like him. Something felt wrong from the start. The way he looked at me… The way he touched me, very subtle at first. I didn’t fully understand what it was.”
I stare at the wall as I continue.
“I never encouraged it. I swear,” I say, and he gently turns my face towards him.
“I know,” he grinds out, though the tension in his jaw betrays him.
“That night, I went to bed and fell asleep without meaning to. When I heard the lock turn, something in me tightened. I understood before the door even opened that it wasn’t right. No one should be entering my room at that hour.”
I stop.
“You know the rest… or you can infer it. I can’t say it aloud without being pulled back there. And now that I have you—now that I know what it feels like to feel something other than pain—I refuse to return to that nightmare.”
He presses a kiss into my hair.
“Then we went home. I never told anyone, especially after he showed me a video of my mother walking through a plaza in Italy, red dots trained on her chest. He said if I spoke a word…”
My voice cracks.
“After that, I didn’t share my body with anyone. I suppose… until you.”
I smile sadly. “I wish you’d been my first.”
He grips my wrist and turns me back to him, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“I fucking am,” he says. “And you were mine. The only first that counts.”
He attempts a smirk before adding, “Why do you think I even got myself caught up in that Tara nonsense, or whatever her name was? I never touched those girls, I never wanted to. But I had to maintain a front. I’d get a fake girlfriend, she’d sign a contract, and in public we’d play the part.”
I smile as tears slip down my cheeks, and he brushes them away with his thumb.
“I felt dirty all the time. As though something in me was ruined.”
He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “You are anything but dirty. You’re the purest soul I know.”
“That’s whenDeathbegan,” I say. “I hated what he was, the kind of man he was. So I promised myself I would kill as many of his kind as I could, so they would never hurt another girl.”
I swallow.
“And I was patient, waiting. My whole life narrowed to a single purpose, to kill Viktor.”
He kisses me gently and begins telling me of his childhood, of living with a monster, surviving in a house that should have protected him but never did.
It’s painful to listen to.
I don’t even attempt to stop the tears.
My chest aches for the boy he once was.
For the girl I used to be.
For everyone who suffered at that man’s hands.
