The past nine years of hell tighten the noose around my neck a little more as I keep quiet while watching Boris as he sits behind the enormous desk that dominates the room.
His attention is fixed on documents spread out in front of him as if I am no more than a servant entering the room rather than his daughter.
I’ve never been his daughter. The only person who loved me is dead. I don’t even know what happened to her body.
Simi’s face flashes through my mind. Her soft, pink cheeks and dark eyes make her the spitting image of me.
Even though Anton is her father, he has ignored her existence because she’s not a boy.
My daughter’s future fills me with an ungodly fear. I’ve spent countless hours trying to come up with a plan to escape, but everytime I’ve tried, we’ve been dragged back. Boris separated us after my last failed attempt. As punishment, I was locked in the basement for a week while a recording of Simi crying was played on repeat.
It fractured my mind, and I haven’t been the same since.
My daughter is the only reason I’m still alive. Without her, I would’ve slit my own throat years ago.
Don’t do or say anything to upset Boris, so you can get your two hours with Simi before dinner.
It fills me with rage and heartache that Tanya is the one raising my daughter.
Just the thought of that vile woman makes my jaw tighten.
I know exactly why Tanya was chosen to care for Simi. She’s my father’s side piece, and she’d do anything he tells her.
Boris finally lifts his dead, soulless eyes. “Nina.”
The sound of his voice sends a familiar chill down my spine, the same cold feeling I have carried since childhood, since thefirst time I realized the man who should protect me is the one person in this world who has repeatedly broken me.
I keep my tone soft as I say, “You wanted to see me.”
It is the safest response, neutral enough that he cannot accuse me of disrespect, though I can feel tension coiling through my chest while I wait for whatever order he plans to deliver.
Boris leans back slightly in his chair and studies me with the same calculating look he always has when discussing shipments, deals, or rivals.
“You will go to a bar tomorrow night.”
The statement settles heavily between us, and suffocating dread begins to creep through my veins because I already understand what the order means.
Whenever he sends me somewhere, it always ends the same way. I’ll have to distract a man so the guards can overwhelm him. He’ll be brought to the basement, where he’ll be tortured. I’ll be forced to tend to his wounds until Boris has all the information he wants, then the man will be killed.
Many have begged me to help them. Most have slung curses and threats at me.
The shouts. The rage. The desperation. The sobbing.
I hear them all in my nightmares.
“You will approach a man named Georgi Torrisi,” Boris orders, drawing me out of my thoughts that are always dark.
Georgi Torrisi. The name doesn’t sound Bulgarian. Maybe Italian?
My father takes a slow drink from his whiskey before continuing, “He is Sicilian. One of the capos of the Cosa Nostra.”
My stomach tightens.
Cut off from the outside world and living inside this nightmare, even I’m aware of the Cosa Nostra. Boris has avoided them, so I find it weird that his focus has shifted.
“Torrisi is meeting with Atanas Perkov.”
Jesus. The head of the Bulgarian mafia.
