PROLOGUE
LEKS
If I was a monster before, this god-awful place only made me worse.
Fuck it all.
Punishments, interrogations, mind games, impossible-to-follow rules. For a full decade.
The manual labor and hypothermia wasn’t the worst of it. Not even the electroshock therapy. Pain, I can handle. The isolation was the real torture. Nothing but a windowless cell and your own desperate thoughts rattling around in your head.
Now the Ivanov Center is headed where it belongs. The fiery depths of hell.
I lifted a lighter from a careless guard two days ago. Scheduled one final session with Yulia to avoid the nightly search, hating myself even as Idid so.
Then I joined the unlucky newbies who’d been assigned to the forest. It’s not like anyone checks the damn roster, because no one is volunteering to do back-breaking logging work. This kind of hard labor is a punishment.
The second they shoved the axes into our hands, I disappeared into the trees.
Ten years have left me with enough sense of direction in that forest to know how to get back here. Years of special treatment, extra rations, have made me stronger than they realize, but the run is still hard.
The Ural Mountains aren’t exactly flat.
I make it back just in time, my muscles screaming at me, my mouth dry, but I’m satisfied by what I see.
I was right.
The facility boss, Anatoly Ivanov, is visiting tonight. He never shows up to this place without an army of guards.
Every person here would stick a knife in his back with no regrets. We have nothing to lose. We’re already in hell.
His well-founded paranoia means there’s a fleet of vehicles out front. Big trucks to carry his private military guards. A couple of armored SUVs for Ivanov and his aides.
All well-stocked with fuel.
All I need is one good spark.
My hand itches to reach for the lighter in my pocket and just do it, blow the place skyward.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I stay under the cover of the trees as I watch the asylum. Knowing that Yulia’s inside with no idea what’s about to hit her, probably sucking up to Ivanov the way she always does, gives me a twisted sense of satisfaction. She thought she had me wrapped around herfinger, but I was using her just as much as she was using me, every time we were together.
I wish I could see her face when she learns what I’ve done.
She did say I seemed unstable during our last session.
“Increasingly manic.” Those were the words she used, hiding behind her clipboard and checking boxes to categorize me.
Boxes that deny that this place, andher, are ninety percent of the reason I’m so fucked up.
Well, maybe not ninety percent… but I’d credit them with at least half of my fucked-up brain.
From the quiet of the forest, I slow my breathing and focus on what’s happening outside the center.
There’s a team guarding the vehicles, but they’re keeping watch on the building. They know locking up the Bratva’s most inconvenient secrets under one roof is a recipe for disaster. They never so much as glance in the direction of the forest as I approach silently.
The energy that throbs through my veins is pure desperation. My pulse skips a beat when one guard reaches for his gun, then adrenaline spikes through my veins.
Instinct takes over. My body hasn’t forgotten the Bratva’s lessons. How to anticipate my opponent’s next move. How to disarm in one quick sweep. How to take rage and brute force and use it for calculated lethality.
