Chapter 1
“Are you ready now?”
Of course not. The man standing in front of me knows that I will never surrender. I won’t break. No matter what he does to me. No matter how many days of torture he forces me to endure before my heart finally gives out and I die, I will not break.
I think that’s what Nikolai Volkovich gets off on the most.
Even though it’s a futile endeavor that he’s undertaking, the bastard has always been a sadist. He likes hurting people just to see them scream. Something about him craves blood. Whether he’s inflicting bruises on his opponents in the boxing ring or with full out torture, he loves it.
I swear the bastard is circling me with a predatory half chub in his black slacks.
Not that I can see much of a bulge there. Guess that he’s not packing much inside of his pants. It would make sense that all his bravado and violence are a result of needing to compensate for a shrimpy, small dick.
I smirk. I can’t help it.
The very action makes my eyes water with pain - the one that isn’t swollen shut anymore.
Nikolai stops his circling appraisal of the carnage that he’s inflicted on my suspended body. My hands chained up above my head have been numb for at least the last hour, maybe two. Every breath that I suck in feels like I’m inhaling shards of glass. But if thinking about the likelihood of him being lacking in the manhood department keeps me sane? Who cares?
“Something funny?” Nikolai asks as he grasps my chin in his beefy hand so hard I wince.
“No, of course not.” I wheeze.
Nikolai snarls and releases me with so much force that I spin in a half circle where I dangle.
He’s got to have at least seventy-five pounds of muscle on me and he’s a good three inches taller than my six foot one. I have always been fast on my feet, but he’s a brick shithouse. It really wouldn’t even be match a fair match between us if I wasn’t chained to the ceiling of his rank ass basement. Those stains on the floor? Not just my blood. It’s rude, really, to bring me of all people into a room that he’s already tortured somebody in before.
At least bleach the floors or something.
I, Alek Ivankov, deserve a little more flourish at the very least. A private torture room isn’t too much to ask for. It’s not like the rich bastard can’t afford one with all his blood money.
Now my mind’s eye switches to a delusional scenario where I’m being led down into Nikolai’s basement and being shown various torture rooms like they are the finest hotel suites for me to take my pick before being shoved into one.
That thought makes me laugh out loud. The action might cause my bruised ribs to puncture my lungs. Only one of which is working right anyway. It’s been what - two weeks that he’s had me down here? With the lack of natural light everything blends together.
Nikolai hates when I laugh at him.
Sometimes, I think that my own defiance of him is going to break him first. What’s that saying again? Topping from the bottom? Does that apply here? Torture from victim or something? It’s just so funny that I can’t seem to stop.
At least until Nikolai’s brick fist collides with my kidneys and my laughter shifts to a spurt of blood from my mouth. That’s not so funny anymore. I gasp and strain to breathe. My feet don’t reach the floor so the very tips of my toes try to steady myself just enough to lift up to relieve pressure on my lungs as I swing in place. It doesn’t help.
“Much better.” Nikolai gloats before the chain holding me up is suddenly dropped and I collapse into the puddle of my own sweat, blood and drool on the ground. The chain from my wrist shackles is instantly shifted to the thick iron band around my neck that makes it almost impossible to hold my head at a normal angle - and I’m chained to the wall all over again.
Everything hurts.
No, this is something more than hurt. This is something that doesn’t stop. There’s no abating it. Nothing I do seems to make it better. I want to say something snarky to piss him off again, but I’m seeing double as it is. Vision swimming, consciousness only hanging on by a thread here. It’s not looking great in my world.
“Have it your way.” Nikolai speaks in a voice like razors. He swaggers toward me, full of false bravado and overwhelming ego. He squats down to talk to me, to relish in his little victory with a wry smile on his annoyingly chiseled face. “Tomorrow, you will tell me where that bitch is, or I’m going to start taking limbs.”
I believe him.
It still won’t be enough to make me tell him what he wants to know. I would rather endure his torture than tell him where my sister Helena is. My loyalty runs deep. If this is the very last thing that I can do for her, I’m happy to pay whatever price is asked of me.
My only acknowledgement that I’ve even heard a word that he said is a deep groan of pain as I struggle to roll onto my side so as not to choke to death on my own blood.
The sheer force of blood rushing back to my abused wrists and hands is painful enough that I almost don’t register the kick in my ribs that Nikolai finishes today’s session off with before he spits at the ground by my face. I don’t even have the impulse to flinch before he turns his heels, muttering under his breath in heated Russian, and slams the door to my prison.
Leaving me in darkness once again.
I’m not delusional enough to think that I’m ever going to see sunlight again. I know that I’m going to die in here.
I think maybe it would have been a mercy for Daniel Colombo to have killed me. His visit last week was unexpected to say the least. Was it only a week ago? Perhaps it was longer. Time has been blurring together. Maybe this is all just a nightmare. Still, his mug was yet another face that I never thought that I would see again. He has more of a reason to want me dead than Nikolai does. After all, Daniel thinks that I killed his sister, Lilian. I forgot how much they look alike. Looked. Nikolai had offered me up to Daniel in exchange for making some sort of deal with him. I couldn’t hear the terms of whatever it was that Nikolai wanted from him. But I do know that Daniel refused him and went on his way without taking my life. Talk about character growth. The Daniel I knew before, he swore he would kill me with his bare hands the last time we spoke.
The image of Lilian’s face swims to the forefront of my mind’s eye. And, for a moment, all the pain in my body disappears. Her lovely visage floats there, her smiling, laughing at something dumb that I said. And then it shifts to the portrait of rage that she was wearing the last time I saw her and the pain returns fast.
I’m almost thankful when oblivion pulls me under.
The black inky unconscious nothingness might be kinder still than the thought that maybe… just maybe… I deserve everything that I’m getting.
Time loses meaning so quickly.
There’s no way to know how long I’m passed out for. Even with my eyes open it’s dark enough in this little room that it’s hard to tell where the floor meets the wall apart from when the occasional sliver of light appears under the door. It’s not constant. They don’t feed me on a schedule, so unless I want to start obsessively counting the seconds, I have to let the concept of time fade entirely.
It could be hours, or maybe it has been days before the door opens again.
At no point does my body stop hurting. The gnawing in my stomach is just as bad. Never mind the rest of the bodily functions that I’m pointedly ignoring.
I don’t expect Nikolai to come back too soon - but when the door opens again I am ready with a sarcastic quip that doesn’t leave my lips because the body standing in the doorway is far, far too small to be Nikolai.
Something dark and anxious flops in my stomach.
For all the death jokes that I’ve been making to myself during my lovely stay here, I certainly didn’t think that I was actually going to die.
The silhouette of a woman that can only be described as heavenly comes quickly into the room. The little sashay of her hips is all I can make out of her features until she comes closer to me – the light behind her is so brilliantly bright that I can hardly even look at her for more than a second before my eyes burn.
The woman stops in front of me, and I can make out stunning olive skin and exotic features with a metal box in her hands.
She speaks, but in my delirious state I can’t really understand what she’s saying.
What game is this? Some new fresh hell, or have I died and this is it. An angel has come to patch up all the hurt.
“Am I dead?” I don’t even really recognize my voice as I speak because it sounds so much rougher than I expected it to. “Finally kicked the bucket?”
The angel smiles. A light all of its own.
Water - cool and crisp runs over my lips and I flap my mouth like a fish on land trying to guzzle every bit of it down. Moments later her cool, soothing touch is on my forehead before she replaces it with a damp cloth as she fishes around in her metal box of healing for something to help patch me up. I try my best to remain still. I don’t want to scare her away. It doesn’t matter to me if she’s real or not - or if she’s only helping patch me up with the express intention of hurting me all over again. If this face is the last one that I ever get to see, it will have been worth it.
“Stay with me.” She says in a sweet voice as she blots up blood and gingerly dabs salve on my bruises. Normally I detest physical touch but I’m far too weak to do anything but appreciate the soothing contact as she tends to me.
The angel asks me to stay with her, and I want to. I want to do anything she says. And anything is better than the state that I’ve been in until now. Except eternal sleep, which would certainly be the easier. But there is still a lot of work left for me to do on this mortal coil.
“I’m sorry if this hurts…” She mutters in a voice full of compassion as she tries to dip that same ointment from her kit between the ruined skin of my wrists and the thick metal of my cuffs. I watch as she eyes the thick band around my neck with what I can only assume is pity. She lifts her hand to touch it, and I flinch away. “...I’m sorry.” she mutters again.
I catch her hand, something my body protests violently, but I am shocked by how real she feels. I stare at the place where I’m holding her wrist in disbelief. My thumb passes over the inside of her wrist, seeking her pulse because I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like. I need to know if she’s real or if she’s an angel to carry me into the afterlife. I don’t think I would fight her. It would be better passing than I could have imagined myself worthy of.
“You have to let me go if you want me to help you.” She teases with a hint of a smile on her voice.
My blue eyes finally lift to her and study the fine details of her lovely face. “Help me?” I ask in disbelief. “Angel, I’m beyond helping.”