Chapter 1 #2
The ripped gown clung to my sweat-slicked skin, barely covering my thighs.
Bloodstains bloomed across the pale fabric like dark, accusing flowers. I had to part my legs slightly to walk because bringing them together sent lightning bolts of pain through my core.
Each step was humiliation.
Each breath effort.
“I’m so sorry, Elena.”
Dario’s voice reached me faintly through the static in my hearing aid.
I turned my head toward him. His dark curls were pushed back from his forehead, revealing a fresh cut that dripped steadily down his temple. His shoulder was stiff where the bullet had grazed him.
His eyes, though—
His eyes were wrecked.
Guilt. Rage. Helplessness.
I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault.
But my voice was gone.
Eight months ago, in prison, they had taken that from me too.
Wrongfully imprisoned. Framed. Thrown into a cell where my aunt’s husband—Harlan, the corrupt cell officer who had always hated me—made sure I suffered. He’d sponsored a gang inside to “teach me humility.”
Beatings.
Isolation.
Forced silence.
They had choked me repeatedly, hands crushing my throat until black spots swallowed my vision. After weeks of screaming, begging, gasping—
My voice simply stopped working.
At first it had been hoarse.
Then strained.
Then nothing.
The doctors in the prison hadn’t cared.
“Psychological,” one had muttered.
But I knew better.
Something inside me had shut down.
Now I relied on mouthing words, on trembling hands forming signs, hoping someone would understand.
We stepped out into the night.
Cool air kissed my overheated skin. It should have felt freeing.
Instead, it felt unfamiliar.
A sleek black car waited near the curb—polished, immaculate, almost obscene against the carnage we’d just left behind. The emblem caught the streetlight.
A sleek 2026 Mercedes-Benz bus.
Recognition struck me immediately.
My pulse spiked.
I stopped walking.
Dario nearly collided into me. “Elena?”
I turned to him slowly and mouthed the words carefully, exaggerating each shape.
“Are we going to New York?”
He frowned, squinting as he tried to read my lips.
Confusion creased his brow.
I swallowed frustration and lifted my trembling hands instead, signing deliberately despite the pain in my wrists.
New York. Question.
Ethan stepped forward instantly.
“She’s asking if we’re taking her to New York,” he translated smoothly.
Relief flickered through me — at least one of my brothers understood sign language.
Dario’s expression shifted.
Softened.
But there was something else there too.
Regret.
He shook his head gently.
“No, Elena,” he said, voice thick. “We’re heading to Ruslan Baranov’s estate.”
My stomach dropped.
Dario dragged a trembling hand through his hair.
It was a habit he’d had since we were children.
His fingers snagged briefly in his curls, sticky with drying blood.
“We made an agreement with him,” he said carefully. “One we have to honor.”
The words landed like stones against my ribs.
“Without his resources, Elena... we wouldn’t have found you.” His voice thickened. “He pulled strings across three countries. Brought in intel we couldn’t access. Men we couldn’t reach. Weapons we couldn’t acquire fast enough.”
My chest caved inward.
It felt like ice spreading beneath my skin—slow, suffocating.
No.
No, no, no.
I shook my head violently, the motion sending dizziness spiraling through me. I tore my hands free from Dario and Ethan’s grip and stumbled back a step, nearly losing my footing on gravel slick with melted frost and blood.
The others watched.
They all smelled like smoke and iron.
Like battle.
Like the price they had paid for me.
I loved them for it.
But this—
This was something I couldn’t accept.
I could not go back to Ruslan Baranov.
The name alone felt like swallowing glass.
How could I call him my husband?
The man who had condemned me to prison for a crime I hadn’t committed.
The man who had known—known—I was innocent and still let it happen because he wanted revenge for his sister and late wife. He believed my imprisonment would finally bring him the peace he craved.
Not once had he visited me during the nine months of hell and torture I survived in prison.
Not the first week.
Not the first month.
Not when the bruises were still fresh and my voice was still intact.
Not when it disappeared.
I had written to him.
God, I had written.
Letters with shaking hands, ink smudged by tears I refused to let the other inmates see.
Please, Ruslan.
I’m innocent.
You know I am.
I had apologized for things I hadn’t done.
Begged for mercy I shouldn’t have needed to beg for.
And then—
The letter I never should have written.
I’m pregnant.
Our child.
I remember pressing my palm against my still-flat stomach in that cold cell, whispering to something I couldn’t yet feel.
Please soften your heart.
Please come.
Please protect us.
Some letters had been returned unopened.
Others never came back at all.
I understood later what it meant — I was disposable to him. He didn’t care that I carried his child, his blood. He wanted me destroyed, locked away and forgotten. And because of that obsession, I lost my baby.
And now they expected me to return to him?
Dario stepped closer, lowering his voice as if I were fragile glass.
“Elena, please,” he murmured. “Let’s get you somewhere safe first. Cleaned up. Treated. You need a doctor. Antibiotics. Rest.”
Safe?
The word almost made me laugh.
Safe in Ruslan’s estate?
In that sprawling marble fortress where every hallway echoed and every guard reported directly to him? Where loyalty was currency and affection a liability?
I would rather sleep on concrete again.
I lifted my hands and signed sharply, ignoring the way my wrists screamed in protest.
I am not going to his house.
Ethan translated immediately, his voice steady but firm. “She says she’s not going.”
Silence fell.
Dario’s shoulders sagged.
“Elena...” he tried again.
I cut him off with another set of urgent signs.
He let me rot. He knew I was innocent.
Ethan’s jaw tightened as he relayed it aloud. “She says he’s evil.
No one contradicted me.
Because they couldn’t.
I scanned the dim lot, shadows stretching long across cracked asphalt. My eyes searched instinctively for Ruslan’s towering figure.
During the fight, I had caught glimpses of him—cutting through men like a storm given flesh. There had been blood on him, but not enough to know if it was his.
A dark thought flickered.
Had he been hit?
Had a bullet found him?
Had the masked man gotten lucky?
Part of me hated myself for the way that thought didn’t horrify me.
Part of me wondered if the universe would balance itself that way.
But even if he were dead—
Forgiveness wouldn’t come.
My child would still be gone.
My voice would still be missing.
“Ruslan?” Dario asked quietly, following my gaze.
I looked at him sharply.
“He went after the one who escaped,” Dario explained. “The masked bastard. Took three men and chased him personally.”
My stomach twisted.
Of course he did.
Ruslan didn’t delegate revenge.
He owned it.
A swirl of emotions tangled in my chest—dread, fury, something darker.
Let him find him.
Let him tear that monster apart.
Let him make him beg.
Let him make him bleed for every second I had endured.
If Ruslan did that—if he dismantled the man who had drugged himself in front of me and laughed while I lay bound—
Would that redeem him?
No.
Nothing could.
But it would be something.
Dario stepped closer again, lowering his voice further.
“Elena, listen to me. This isn’t about forgiveness right now. It’s about survival. You have infections that could turn septic. You’re still bleeding. You can barely stand.”
As if to prove his point, my legs trembled violently.
Ethan moved subtly closer, ready to catch me if I fell.
“Elena, your legs are shaking...”
Dario’s voice reached me through a veil of static, soft but edged with urgency. I hadn’t noticed at first. I’d been too focused on breathing. On staying upright.
Ruslan Baranov’s estate.
The name alone felt like a verdict.
I looked down.
My knees were trembling violently, knocking together beneath the torn hem of my gown. Not from cold—the night was mild. Not even from exhaustion alone.
It was fear.
Pure. Primal. Bone-deep.
The sleek black Mercedes idled a few feet away, headlights casting long beams across the ruined lot.
The car looked pristine, untouched by the carnage behind us. It didn’t belong in this scene of smoke and blood.
Just like I didn’t belong in his house anymore.
My foster brothers stood in a loose semicircle around me—six solid figures forming a barrier against the world.
They were walls.
But even they couldn’t block what I felt pooling in my stomach.
“Elena,” Dario tried again, stepping closer. His tone changed—gentler. “We’ll stay with you. A couple of days, that’s all. We’ll figure out how to annul the agreement. We’ll find a way to move you clean.”
His hand hovered near my elbow but didn’t touch.
“But right now...” He exhaled slowly. “We can’t just disappear. Ruslan’s men are everywhere. He has eyes on every road out of this city.”
Of course he did.
Control was Ruslan’s greatest addiction.
I shook my head slowly.
No.
The movement hurt. My last two fingers on my right hand—swollen, bent at grotesque angles—throbbed violently in protest. A prison souvenir. Harlan had slammed a metal door on them during a so-called routine inspection. I still remembered the crunch. The laughter.
I lifted that hand anyway.
No.
My legs bore their own history. Scars layered over scars from ankle to thigh. Thin silver lines from old beatings. Angry red welts from whips and chains. Dark bruises still blooming fresh beneath torn fabric.
I widened my stance, ignoring the fire that shot through my hips.
I would crawl through broken glass before I walked willingly back into Ruslan’s house.
Dario’s jaw tightened.
“Elena, please.”
I signed with shaking hands.
I won’t go back there.
Ethan translated quietly.
Exhaustion hit suddenly—like a collapsing building.
Two months of captivity.
Fresh assault.
Untreated infections simmering in my bloodstream.
Constant burning pain between my legs that felt like acid poured into open wounds.
My vision blurred.
The night tilted sideways.
“Elena—” Dario’s voice sharpened.
My knees gave out.
Strong arms caught me instantly—Dario and Ethan at my sides, Luca’s uninjured arm wrapping around my waist, Marco steadying my shoulders. Nico and Vito moved behind me, bracing my back before I hit the asphalt.
Their voices overlapped, muffled by static.
“She’s burning up—”
“Get the car—”
“Easy, easy—”
Darkness swallowed me before I could protest.