“I know him better than you do.” I stood, walked around the desk, and crouched in front of her chair. I took her chin between thumb and forefinger in a firm but gentle hold and forced her to meet my eyes. “He filmed my mother,” I told her again, voice low and steady, watching her face for the break that hadn’t come yet. “But that’s just one piece of the rot. Your father doesn’t just deal in guns and drugs, Zoya. His real empire—his most lucrative business—is in flesh. Human trafficking. Girls like your staff, ones younger than you. He takes the broken and sad ones and drugs them so they are hooked and pliant, ships them off, and sells them to the highest bidder.”
She made no sound, but fat, beautiful tears rolled down her cheeks.
“And the snuff films? That’s where the big money flows. Videos of people dying slowly, screaming for the camera. He doesn’t do it just for the cash, though. It’s not just business. He gets off on it. The power. The cries. The way they beg until the very end.”
Her pupils blew wide, but she didn’t gasp or recoil. She’d already heard the core before… the part about my mother, the payment, the tape. The doubt was there, festering like an open wound, but surprise?
No, she knew her father wasn’t a good man. The bruises he left on her arms, the locked rooms he called protection. Yeah, those weren’t accidents. She’d rationalized the rest as mafia life, the kind you don’t look too closely at. But this? This was the underbelly she may never have suspected.
“You’re lying,” she whispered, but I knew she believed every word without fault. Saying it made this more ritual than belief for her.
I released her chin and stood. “I have the tape. I’ll show it to you when you’re ready to see what kind of man your father really is.”
She stared at me for a long beat, searching, calculating, like she was trying to find the bluff in my face. Then she whispered, “If you’re telling the truth… I know I said I wanted to see it… but never,” she whispered.
“Oh, you’ll fucking see it,” I snarled. “When I deem it necessary.”
Her expression cracked further as doubt sunk in. It was cold, heavy, and irreversible.
I didn’t chain her to the desk leg, not when I could easily catch her if she tried to run. My coat was still wrapped around her like a shroud. I stared at her for long moments, and then walked out. She wouldn’t go anywhere. She wouldn’t try to hurt herself to get out of this nightmare.
She’d sit there and let all the heinous shit I said about her father ruminate and fester inside of her until the poison took root.
The only antidote would be the death of Andrey.
Chapter 5
Zoya
Isat still and silent long after The Death Dealer left, my thoughts replaying over and over until they were a horror movie in my mind.
The chain was long enough to reach the small metal sink in the corner. I’d finished the bottle of water and bread Dmitry had left me, and although I hated coffee, I’d finished the thermos lid full because I needed to warm up.
I went to the small sink and let the water run for a moment before scooping some into my hand and taking deep gulps. It tasted like iron, but I drank anyway.
The office smelled of rust and age and something faintly chemical. Bleach, maybe. Every few minutes, the building groaned, wind and snow pushing through broken windows somewhere far off.
I kept the coat on. Not because I wanted anything of his but because the cold was vicious and my gown was thin and ruined.
I tested the cuffs, but metal bit into my already raw wrists. There was no give, no chance of escape. Where would I go anyway? I had no idea where I was, and even if I did, I couldn’t go back to the home I’d grown up in.
I sat back on the chair facing the space heater, knees to chest. I thought about my father. He’d always kept me in a separate wing at the dacha. Homeschooled me. Isolated life. Tutors instead of friends. Bodyguards instead of boys. Diamonds instead of freedom.
He didn’t love me. I’d always known that. I was a pawn in his bigger picture, born and raised to be sold off to a man who would ensure my father’s power increased.
And I hated him. But this? What Dmitry revealed… it made me sick to my stomach.
I pressed my forehead to my knees, but I didn’t cry. I was too angry, too horrified, to shed any more tears.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, but when the door opened again, the creak of rusted hinges pulled me from the haze. He came in carrying a paper bag, and a second later, I smelled something savory. My stomach twisted, a reminder that bread and water were prison food.
He took a seat behind the desk and started pulling fast food burgers and fries out of the bag; the wrappers crinkling in the quiet. “Bread and water only go so far,” he muttered under his breath as if reading my thoughts.
He leaned back in the chair, unwrapped one for himself, and started eating. He took slow, methodical bites while he watched me.
I didn’t move, but I met his gaze. Those winter-gray eyes, flecked with silver like his hair, held mine without blinking. He wasn’t as old as my father but decades older than me. And he was built like a wall with thick shoulders straining his black shirt.
Even if I had never said one word to this man, I could tell he was someone who’d survived things that would break most people. I could see it in the way he carried himself, like death was an old friend he’d made a pact with.
