He led me to the corner cot. It was bolted to the concrete like everything else in this tomb and looped the chain around the leg. Years of planning, this was the sum of it: me, chained to his revenge.
“Sleep,” he said, already turning.
“Why here?” My voice scraped. “Why not the freezer again?”
He stopped in the doorway, lantern raised. The light carved his face into something bloody and biblical. “Because corpses don’t bleed pretty.” The door shut. The lock thudded home.
I lay down, dragging his coat over me like a shroud. Gun oil. Smoke. Worn leather. His scent sank into my lungs, and I hated how it settled there. It was familiar, almost safe. I hated that it didn’t make me gag.
Darkness pressed in, broken only by the thin glow under the door. Sleep never came. Instead, I pictured what was on the tape: my father’s laughter, young women screaming until they weren’t women anymore. I hadn’t watched it. I didn’t have to. It lived inside me, anyway.
And then there was Dmitry. The Death Dealer. Old enough to be my father. Scarred. Ruthless. Nothing like the monster who’d raised me. And everything like him in the ways that mattered. He wanted blood for blood. I wanted… something. Freedom. Justice. His throat under my nails. I still wasn’t sure.
Even chained. Even in the dark. For the first time, the choice felt like mine. I closed my eyes and dreamed in shades of red. Time bled together.
Three times a day he brought food. Bread, cheese, canned soup heated on the burner upstairs. Simple. Filling. And every time he was silent.
He unchained me long enough to use the restroom. Then the cuffs clicked shut again. No words. No cruelty. No mercy either. I watched him anyway.
The way he moved was silent, economical, and lethal. The scars on his knuckles were like a map of every fight he’d won. The tattoo that crawled out of his collar when he turned his head. ?? ??????.I do not forgive.
I wondered who he’d never forgiven. I wondered if I’d ever be able to.
On the next day, he brought more than food—clean clothes. He set them down, unlocked the cuffs, then turned his back. Not respect. Just certainty I couldn’t hurt him.
I stripped. Washed. The water ran gray and pink. It felt good. Maybe too good. I hated him for giving me even that small mercy.
When I finished, I quickly dressed in the fresh shirt and sweats—both too big, both his.
“Why?” I asked.
“Filth dulls the blade. I need you sharp.” He turned back around, clicking the handcuffs back on my wrists. But his gaze snagged on the strip of skin above my waistband as the shirt fell. One second. Two. Then he was gone.
On another day, he dropped a book on the cot. It was old and dog-eared. Dostoevsky.Crime and Punishment.
I snorted. “Really?” He said nothing. Just sat at the desk and started sharpening his knife. The whetstone sang against steel. It was slow, rhythmic, and somehow obscene. I opened the book. Pretended to read.
But every scrape of blade on stone sank into my pulse like a promise. I waited. For the hate to curdle. For the fear burning cleanly. For the moment I stopped wanting to kill him… and started wanting something worse.
Something that would destroy us both.
Chapter 7
Dmitry
The days dragged by in silence thick as old blood.
Zoya ate every scrap I brought her. She ate bread that I ripped apart by my hands, swallowed the soup straight from the dented can, and drank water from a chipped tin cup. She never complained. Never refused. When exhaustion finally won, she curled into herself under my coat as if it were the only thing standing between her and me.
No tears. No begging. Just pure, quiet hatred wrapped tight around her ribs until it felt like armor. I knew that shape too well. I’d lived in it for thirty-eight years.
I showed her the truth she’d been raised beside. I pulled the cell from my coat, thumbed the screen awake, and set the phone flat on the low table between us. It was close enough that my hand never left its reach. The screen caught the lantern’s weak glow, already paused on the frame where Andrey’s laughter first slithers out like poison.
No warning. No mercy. I hit play.
The sound filled the concrete box instantly. It was soft, pleading whimpers that built into raw, animal screams. Andrey’s voice rolled underneath, calm, almost amused, like he wastasting something expensive. I didn’t look at the footage. The images had carved themselves behind my eyelids years ago.
I watched Zoya.
