Evan's grip loosens as he staggers back, a strangled sound escaping his throat. For one beautiful, perfect moment, I'm free. I'm not a victim. I'm not broken.
Then his fist connects with my face.
The world explodes into stars and pain. I taste blood, hot and coppery on my tongue. My knees buckle, and I hit the concrete floor hard, the impact jarring through my already-injured ribs. I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything but curl into myself and wait for the next blow.
It comes. And the next one. And the one after that.
When Evan finally stops, I'm barely conscious. Blood drips from my nose and my lip, down my chin. Everything hurts. Everything is pain and darkness and the certain knowledge that I've made a terrible mistake.
"Stupid bitch." Evan's breathing hard, his voice ragged with rage and pain. "You think you can fight back? You think you have any power here?"
He grabs me by the hair, dragging me up to my knees. I try to resist, but my body won't cooperate. My limbs feel distant, disconnected, like they belong to someone else.
His hand fumbles for his belt. “Kiss it and make it better,suka.”
When I do nothing, he slaps me again. He’s hard now, the violence working for him despite the fact that I kneed him in the balls. When I can barely open my mouth despite the pain, he works himself instead, holding my face against his groin until a different warm fluid joins the blood smeared across my cheek and chin.
Breathing heavily, he drags me out of the room by my hair. I can’t fight back any longer. I’ve gone limp, and I let him pull me along. There’s no point in anything else.
The hallway outside my room is dimly lit, lined with more doors just like mine. I wonder if there are other women behind them. I wonder if they can hear me. I wonder if they're glad it's me and not them.
Evan hauls me down a flight of stairs, then another. We're going deeper into the compound, into parts I've never seen before. The air grows colder, damper. The walls here are older and rougher, like this section was carved out of the earth itself.
He stops in front of a heavy metal door and shoves it open. The room beyond is small, smaller even than the one I've been kept in. I’ll be able to lie down, but barely. There's no cot here, no window. Just concrete walls and a drain in the center of the floor, and a darkness that I know will be utterly blacked out once he closes the door.
"Maybe a few days down here will teach you some manners." Evan throws me inside. I land hard, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. "Iosef's guest will have to enjoy someone else. You're in no condition to be seen now."
The door slams shut. A lock clicks into place.
Then there's nothing but darkness.
I lie on the cold concrete, trying to breathe through the pain, trying to think. But thinking requires energy I don't have. So instead, I just exist, suspended in the black, waiting for whatever comes next.
Time passes. I don't know how much. Without light, without sound, there's no way to measure it. My body grows colder. The pain in my ribs sharpens with every breath. I'm so thirsty my tongue feels swollen, my throat raw.
I think about my old life. It feels like remembering a movie I watched once, a story about someone else. That girl who danced, who modeled, who dreamed of being a photographer—she's gone. She died the moment I failed, the moment I became worthless to the only person in my life who was supposed to love me. The moment I became goods to be sold at a loss, a thing to be punished, because I didn’t do the one thing I was supposed to do.
I was supposed to make a powerful man marry me, and I didn’t. Now different powerful men are using me instead. It’s enough to make me wish for a marriage that I hadn’t even really wanted.
But more than anything, I wish I could be free again. I wish I could breathe fresh air. See the sky. Step outside, alone. Make a choice for myself.
Everything I once took for granted.
My mind drifts back to the man I was supposed to marry. He chose the woman he loved over me when I needed him the most. I don't blame him for loving her—how could I, when I saw the way he looked at her, like she was his entire world?—but I can't forgive him for leaving me to this fate either. He knew what my father was. He knew I could be in danger when our marriage was called off. And he walked away.
And Kazimir walked away with him.
Kazimir Orlov. Ilya's enforcer, his right hand, his most trusted man. I remember the first time I saw him, at some party Ilya brought me to. He stood in the corner like a shadow, all hard edges and dangerous energy, watching everything with those cold blue eyes. He barely spoke to me that night, barely acknowledged my existence.
But I felt his gaze on me. I felt the weight of it, the heat of it, even as I stood beside Ilya and played the role of the perfect girlfriend. I remember thinking that he was the most beautiful man in the room, and how dangerous that thought could be if I allowed it to take root.
I told myself I imagined it. That I was projecting, looking for something—anything—to make me feel less like a transaction and more like a person someone might actually want. I focused on my job. On the marriage I was supposed to secure. OnIlya.
But sometimes, in the months that followed, I'd catch Kazimir watching me. His expression never changed, never gave anything away. But his eyes did. They burned.
It didn't matter. When everything fell apart, when Ilya chose the other woman, and my father sold me to monsters, Kazimir didn't step in. Didn't try to help. He just followed his boss and left me behind.
So no. I don't think about Kazimir Orlov. I don't think about the way his hands looked, scarred and strong. I don't think about the rough sound of his voice or the way he moved, all controlled violence and barely leashed power. Like a predator—deadly and beautiful and monstrous.
