Chapter 2
ELENA
When I woke, it wasn’t to concrete. It wasn’t to chains. It wasn’t to the smell of mold and rust.
It was cedar.
Expensive cologne. Polished marble.
My eyes fluttered open slowly.
A high ceiling stretched above me, recessed lighting casting a warm glow across intricate molding. Heavy silk drapes framed floor-to-ceiling windows.
The leather beneath my fingers was soft—cream-colored, impossibly clean.
For one terrifying second, I thought I was hallucinating.
Then memory snapped into place.
Ruslan’s estate.
My heart slammed violently against my ribs.
No.
No, no—
I pushed myself up too quickly. Pain ripped through my abdomen and hips, stealing my breath. My vision swam again but I forced it to focus.
A broken gasp clawed its way out of my throat—raw, uneven, barely more than a damaged whisper.
The room spun for a heartbeat before steadying.
A man stood several feet away, hands visible, posture deliberately nonthreatening.
Mid-fifties. Silver threaded neatly through dark hair at his temples. A tailored blue shirt beneath a white medical coat. Slacks pressed. Shoes polished.
A stethoscope rested around his neck like a quiet declaration of purpose.
He did not look like one of Ruslan’s men pretending to be a doctor.
He looked like someone who had operated in private clinics at three in the morning. Someone who had stitched bullet wounds without asking questions. Someone accustomed to silence and blood.
“My name is Dr. Markov,” he said gently.
His voice was calm and professional.
Behind the couch, my six brothers stood like sentinels.
They had changed clothes.
Gone were the blood-soaked tactical uniforms.
Now they wore dark suits—sharp, fitted, expensive.
Their hair was damp from rushed showers, but nothing could wash the exhaustion from their eyes.
Dario stood closest to me. Ethan slightly forward, angled protectively.
They looked polished.
But they were still braced for war.
I opened my mouth instinctively.
Tried.
Forced my throat to cooperate.
Nothing came but a ragged rasp that scraped like broken glass. Pain flared along the old damage, and I swallowed bile.
I signed instead.
I am not staying here.
My fingers trembled from weakness, but the message was clear.
Ethan exhaled heavily before translating. “She says she’s not staying.”
No one looked surprised.
They had watched me fight this battle in the parking lot until my body shut down.
Dr. Markov stepped forward slowly, raising a syringe filled with clear liquid.
“I need to lower your fever,” he said carefully. “You are septic-adjacent. There is significant infection. If we do not treat it immediately, it can spread to your bloodstream.”
His tone never rose.
But the warning was unmistakable.
My inner thighs still burned like live coals. Every subtle shift of my hips sent stabbing pain through muscle and torn skin.
My bent fingers throbbed in rhythm with my pulse. My legs felt detached from my body—weak, unreliable.
I shook my head again.
Stubbornness was the only thing I had left that felt like mine.
I signed slower this time.
I just want to leave this place.
Then I mouthed it too, exaggerating every syllable.
Leave.
Here.
The air inside this mansion felt heavy with memory. With betrayal. With ghosts of a woman who had once believed this house was home.
I would choose the street.
I would choose freezing pavement and open sky.
I would choose hell itself before willingly sleeping under Ruslan Baranov’s roof.
Before anyone could respond—
The double doors at the far end of the room slammed open.
The sound echoed violently off marble and glass.
Every muscle in my body seized.
Ruslan.
He looked like war.
Dark hair disheveled, strands plastered to his damp forehead.
His white dress shirt was torn at the shoulder, sleeves shoved to his elbows.
The fabric was soaked through—dark red stains splattered across his chest and arms.
Fresh blood.
His hands were still wet with it.
He hadn’t even bothered to wash.
The metallic scent reached me before he did.
My stomach flipped violently.
Our eyes locked.
My husband.
The word felt poisonous.
He crossed the room slowly, deliberately, boots leaving faint crimson smears across the polished marble floor. Every step was measured. Controlled.
Dangerous.
I turned my face away instinctively, expecting—praying—that my brothers would step between us.
They didn’t move.
Not one of them.
They stood tense.
Watching.
As though this was something they could not interfere with.
As though this was a battle that belonged only to us.
Ruslan stopped directly in front of me—close enough that I could see the shallow cut above his left eyebrow, the dried blood crusted along his knuckles, the faint tremor he was trying and failing to hide in his right hand.
His chest rose and fell in slow, measured breaths, as if he were holding himself together by sheer discipline.
His eyes were a storm contained behind glass.
“I killed Harlan,” he said quietly.
The name struck like a blade sliding between my ribs.
“For you, Elena.”
The room seemed to shrink.
The marble floors, the vaulted ceilings, the glittering chandelier overhead—none of it mattered. All I could hear was the echo of that name in the hollow spaces of my skull.
Harlan.
The prison guard who made my sentence feel like a burial.
My aunt’s husband.
The monster who was meant to be family — and violated me not once, but twice.
I didn’t react. Not outwardly. I didn’t give Ruslan the satisfaction. I remained seated, spine rigid, hands curled in my lap, safe only because six men stood at my back—six brothers who would tear this mansion apart brick by brick if he so much as reached for me.
Harlan.
He had stalked the cellblock like a king surveying livestock. He’d lingered by my bars long after lights-out, his shadow stretching across the concrete like something monstrous.
“Such a fucking waste,” he used to murmur, fingers curling around the bars. “Pretty little thing like you, locked up in here. No cameras in the showers. Five minutes—that’s all it would take for me to bend you over and fuck that sweet pink cunt until you forget your own name.”
When I refused—when I turned my face away and pressed my hands over my belly instead—he’d smiled.
That was the worst part. The smile.
Then the punishments began.
Half-portions. Sometimes less. A spoonful of watery gruel tossed onto my tray like scraps to a dog.
I would swallow it slowly, forcing my body to believe it was enough. Sometimes they’d yank the tray away mid-bite, laughing as my stomach twisted in on itself.
I would sit on that narrow cot afterward, rocking gently, cradling the small swell beneath my palm.
“It’s okay,” I would whisper before my voice was taken from me. “Mama’s here.”
I scavenged crumbs from the floor once. Actual crumbs. The prison kitchen servers had stopped giving me food — following Harlan’s orders.
My pride dissolved the moment hunger turned into a living creature inside me, clawing and gnawing at my insides. I remember pressing my forehead to the concrete, sobbing silently as I picked up hardened bits of bread and dusted them off against my sleeve before eating them.
One night, I woke to warmth on my cheek.
Thick. Foul.
The cell erupted in laughter before I even understood what had happened. One of the women—Harlan’s favorite enforcer—had squatted beside my cot and defecated on me while I slept.
A message.
I scrubbed myself in the rust-stained sink until my skin bled.
Harlan leaned through the bars the next morning, eyes glittering.
“That brat in your belly won’t make it,” he’d whispered. “Not unless you spread those legs for me, sweetheart.”
I had looked at him then—really looked at him—and made a vow.
Over my dead body.
But vows mean nothing in hell.
The beatings started in my fifth month. Blows to the head. Repeated. Methodical. The world had begun to sound muffled, like I was underwater. Voices warped into distant echoes.
Then one morning, I woke to silence.
Total silence.
I screamed and heard nothing.
I lost my voice a month later. They crushed my throat during what they called a “disciplinary session.” I remember the crack of cartilage beneath a boot, the way my lungs burned as I tried to inhale around the swelling.
I clawed at my neck, trying to drag air inside.
No sound ever came back.
And then, the cramps began.
Sharp. Relentless.
I lay curled on that filthy cot for hours, bleeding into a thin mattress that already smelled of mildew and rot. No one helped me. No one cared.
I bit down on my lip so hard it split open, because even if I could have screamed, I would not give them that satisfaction.
And now Ruslan stood in front of me, offering Harlan’s death like a bouquet of roses.
“I didn’t just kill him,” Ruslan continued, voice rougher now. “I made sure he understood why.”
A muscle ticked in Luca’s jaw behind me. Vito’s breathing grew heavier. Even Dario shifted his weight, tension vibrating off him in waves.
Ruslan’s gaze never left mine.
“He begged,” he said quietly. “He cried. He tried to bargain. I broke every finger he ever used to touch you. I made him remember your name before I ended it.”
Was I supposed to feel avenged?
Was I supposed to collapse into his arms in gratitude?
My hands trembled—not from fear, but from something darker.
The doctor shifted uncomfortably to the side, forgotten.
Ruslan’s voice dropped lower. “That man who kidnapped you... the one who—” His jaw tightened. “The one who violated you repeatedly. He slipped away during the fight. But I will find him. I swear to you, Elena, I will find him.”
I looked at him then.
At the blood soaking his shirt.
At the rage barely contained beneath his skin.
At the desperation flickering in his eyes.
Was I supposed to thank him?
For executing one monster and swearing to hunt the one who escaped?
As if that erased the fact that he locked me away — even though he knew I had done nothing wrong?