I move closer, slowly, the way you'd approach a wounded animal. "Look at me."
Nothing.
"I said, look at me." It comes out sharper than I’d like for it to, but we don’t have time. If I’m found down here like this, Imightbe able to talk my way out of it, suggest that it was animal impulse, the desire of a man to further destroy something already broken. Iosef might buy it. But it’ll certainly bring any chance of me finishing what Ilya sent me here for to a grinding halt. He won’t be pleased, and I’ll have accomplished nothing. If I’m actually going to help this woman, we need to move quickly.
Maybe it's something in my voice—not the cruelty she's expecting, but a command nonetheless. Authority. She responds to it instinctively, her head lifting and her eyes fluttering open.
The world stops.
I know this face.
I know these eyes, even dulled with pain and exhaustion. I know this woman.
Svetlana Morozova.
I see her face, almost as if I’m seeing it for the first time all over again, this time bruised and crusted with blood and worse, and the memory hits me like a physical blow.
The first time I really saw her was years ago, at a Boston gala. The ballroom was glittering with crystal and gold, a holiday party for the elite that Ilya had been invited to. He’d mentioned that there was a woman he was meant to meet that night, somebusinessman’s daughter who was being shopped to him as a potential wife, and that he had a passing interest in—for her father’s connections, naturally.
I'd been standing near the bar, watching the room the way I always do, when she'd entered. Ilya had gone to meet her at the door, and every conversation in the room had faltered, just for a moment.
I couldn’t forget that moment in a thousand years, not even if I tried. She stepped into that room, and it was like the world froze briefly. I’d never seen anything more beautiful. She was like a work of art, porcelain poured into a one-shouldered champagne gown that showed off the line of one leg, high heels that bent across the graceful arch of her foot, her blonde hair done in old Hollywood waves and pushed to one side. Her mouth had been a slash of red that I’d dreamed countless times after of wearing around my cock.
I’d never wanted a woman so viscerally, so entirely, than I wanted her in that moment, like being struck by lightning.
And she was meant for Ilya. ThePakhanof Boston. My boss.
I can count the number of times I’ve ever spoken to her on one hand. I’m Ilya’s enforcer, his bloody right hand, and there were very few times that I was ever required to say something to Svetlana Morozova. But I helped her into a car once, and when she touched my hand, met my eyes, what I felt was more arousing than any woman I’ve fucked has ever been.
I remember going home that night and dreaming about her, getting off with the same hand she’d touched, lusting after her in a way that felt vicious, primal. Now, seeing her curled in this cell, broken and used and bloodied, I feel a sweeping wave of guilt for that… and so much more.
The contrast is obscene. That woman in the champagne dress, diamonds glittering at her throat, moving through aballroom like a queen—and this woman, this broken thing curled in the corner, covered in filth and blood.
What have they done to her?
What havewedone to her?
Because I was there that night when everything fell apart, when Ilya and I swept in guns blazing to save Mara from Sergei Kima, and found Svetlana there, too. When I wanted to go to her, to help her, Ilya told me to stop. When he told her to get out, without caring about what happened to her next, because she’d angered him, hurt Mara, the one thing that he can’t forgive.
And I obeyed. I had no idea what happened to her after that.
I have no idea what could possibly have caused her to come to this. To behere, instead of in Boston.
I have no idea how long she’s been enduring this torture, this degradation.
3
SVETLANA
For a moment, I think I'm hallucinating.
The cold does that sometimes. So does the hunger, and the pain. My mind conjures up faces from before, ghosts of a life that doesn't exist anymore. I've seen my father standing in the corner of this cell. I've heard my mother's voice calling my name. I've felt phantom hands that were gentle and kind, from other men who touched me before all of this, before I opened my eyes and remembered where I was.
So when I see Kazimir Orlov standing in the doorway of my cell, backlit by the dim corridor light, I think he must be another ghost. Another cruel trick my broken mind is playing on me.
But ghosts don't breathe or stare like they’re seeing one of their own. They don't have that coiled readiness that always made Kazimir look like he was one second away from violence. They don't swallow hard, fists clenched at their sides, brows furrowed as if thinking through what to do next.
He's here. He's actually here.
