His stare felt heavier than the chains that kept me bound.
“Eat,” he said, nudging a wrapped burger and a carton of fries across the desk. No plate. No ceremony. Just an order.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off. To shove it back at him. But my stomach growled, betraying me, and the cold had already sapped what little strength I had left.
I reached for it with handcuffed wrists; the links rattling like a warning. The burger was cheap and greasy but warm, and I knew it would taste like heaven. I tore into it, not caring that he watched every bite.
Hunger won over pride.
Dmitry didn’t speak while we ate. Just chewed, eyes on me like I was a puzzle he was deciding how to decipher. The silence stretched, broken only by the wind howling through the cracks somewhere above and the faint sizzle of the heater’s low flame.
It was still cold up here in this office but warmer than in the freezer room so my fingers thawed enough that I could feel the ache in my wrists where the cuffs had rubbed them raw.
When I finished, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and pushed the empty wrapper and carton away.
“Why?” I asked. “Why feed me like this? Why not let me starve a little more? Break me faster?”
He set down his own wrapper, leaned forward on the desk, elbows resting on the scarred metal. His face was close enough that I could see the faint lines around his eyes and a scar that nicked his brow.
“Because breaking you isn’t the point,” he said, voice gravel-rough. “You’re leverage. I need you alive and talking. Scream if you have to. Dead girls don’t make fathers pay.”
I swallowed, the burger sitting heavy in my stomach. “You think he’ll beg? For me?” I shook my head. “I’m just another piece of property for him to use.”
He tilted his head, studying me as if he could see through my bones. “He’ll beg. Men like him always do when you take what they think is theirs.”
“I want nothing to do with him anymore,” I whispered. “Not after what you told me.” The words hung between us, heavy and real and scaring the hell out of me.
I’d spent the last several hours turning this situation over in my mind. The story about Dmitry’s mother, the truth about what my father actually did, who he actually was, was a pill I could never swallow.
Drugs and guns I could wrap my head around. I’d seen the aftermath of blood on his shirts, late-night meetings, and the way he’d come home reeking of gunpowder and whiskey. But this? Trafficked girls? Films of people dying for money… for pleasure? It made me want to scrub myself raw in that rusty sink.
“I don’t want to believe you, but I know it’s all true. Even now, I’m putting pieces together. The girls who worked at the dacha… orphans who had no family, were barley of legal age, and were afraid of their own shadows. They’d be there one week, gone the next. He’d say they quit, but their rooms were cleared out like they’d never existed.” I squeezed my eyes shut because I’d been such a fool.
“Trafficking is the foundation with girls from Ukraine, Belarus, and the Balkans. Shipped like cargo. Broken in basements like yours. But the snuff? That’s where the real money flows. And for Andrey, like I said, it’s not just profit. He gets off on it. The control. The cries. The way they look at the camera when they realize no one’s coming to save them.”
I hated that he told me again, like he wanted to drill that last one home. I flinched, a shiver running down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. “Stop,” I whispered. “I get it.”
“Do you?” He got up, his chair scraping the floor as he rounded the desk and loomed over me. “Your life was all built on that. Every dress. Every ballet lesson… you’re covered in that blood money.”
I pressed my lips together, fighting the nausea rising in my throat. “Will I survive this when it’s all said and done?” I whispered, afraid how he’d answer.
He was silent for a long moment. “I want you to know who he is. What he is. So when I take him apart, you’ll watch the way I had to see my mother taking her last breath.”
I was crying then, silent tears tracking down my cheeks. “I don’t care if he dies.” I felt a white-fiery rage fill me. Dmitry noticed it. There was a subtle shift in his expression the longer he looked at me.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t blink. “I’m not sure you’ll want to watch as I kill your father, but we’ll see.”
The words hung between us, thick and heavy. I stared at him, and there was a faint flicker behind his cold eyes. It was something dark, something curious, like he was seeing me for the first time, not as leverage but as something else.
A mirror to his own rage.
Chapter 6
Zoya
He tugged the chain, a short yank. “Stand.”
I rose slowly, purposefully, letting the coat slide farther off one shoulder. Bare skin caught the cold air. I didn’t cover myself. Let him look. Let him memorize every inch he planned to ruin. If I were his weapon, I’d be the kind that cut both ways.
