I had memorized every crack in the ceiling, every stain on the floor, every shadow where men stood and watched.
Where he stood and watched.
The masked man.
Even now, I could feel phantom traces of his presence—like oil on my skin that would never wash off.
“You should have known better than to reject me, Elena,”he had hissed one night, crouching in front of me while I knelt tied to a pillar. His breath seeped through the fabric of his mask. “So you will pay.”
My stomach twisted as memories clawed up my throat.
The filthy floor beneath my cheek.
The ropes cutting into my wrists.
His hands.
The laughter of his men circling like vultures.
No privacy. No mercy.
When it was over, I would bleed onto the concrete, red pooling beneath me while they watched. He would shove me aside with his boot, like discarded waste.
“Look at Baranov’s precious wife,” one of them would sneer. “Doesn’t look so precious now.”
I never screamed.
Sometimes because the gag stopped me.
Sometimes because I refused to give them the satisfaction.
It began the night the masked man tore me away from my six brothers. We were on our way to New York—my so-called fresh start after prison. I had barely tasted freedom when he took it from me again.
One second, I was surrounded by my brothers’ protection. The next, I was dragged into darkness.
That was two months ago.
Two months of silence. Of chains. Of learning how much pain a body can hold without dying.
And then the rescue came.
Not gently. It came like a storm ripping through hell.
At first, I thought it was another trick. Another performance meant to terrify me.
But then the explosions began.
I felt them before I heard them—deep concussive shocks that rattled my bones and made dust rain from the ceiling. The ropes around my wrists trembled as the ground shook.
Men started shouting.
Boots pounded.
Gunfire erupted.
My hearing aid screeched uselessly, overwhelmed by the chaos, reducing everything to broken noise and static. But I didn’t need perfect sound to know what was happening.
Someone had come.
