Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Xeniya Morozova
It was Target Practice Tuesday.
The day of the week when I liked to chain up my dolls and throw knives at them while they whimpered and begged me to let them go.
At the moment, I had seven dolls I liked to dress up, dismember, and play with.
They, however, were not very fond of our tea parties. I wasn’t really sure why. I’d made them drink the equivalent of three cups of prune juice once, and they only shit their brains out for a couple of hours.
I’d done far worse than that to them.
Aleksandr, for instance, now had to pee with a catheter.
Luckily, my partner in crime was Neeve Callahan, an Irish mafia princess and doctor who had also been taken, raped, and tortured by the Lethean Order. She made keeping them alive much easier.
They’d held us for months that felt like years, and years that felt like an eternity.
It was time to return the favor.
“Oh, they don’t seem happy today,” Neeve said, staring at the three men we had tied to the opposite wall, each affixed to a dartboard.
My other four dolls were chained to chairs along one side of the room, gagged, and forced to watch Target Practice Tuesday.
“In fairness, they don’t seem happy most days,” I said, picking up a knife from a tray and examining it.
“Well, you cut off four of their dicks last Target Practice Tuesday and made the others watch.”
Now I only had two dolls with their penises still attached because I’d cut off Aleksandr’s. I had to be clinical when I removed his, so I could send it to his son. I still laughed about that bit.
Usually I tended to keep the dicks—kind of like my serial killer trophy. So the other four were in my refrigerator like little flesh balloons.
To remove them, I’d thrown my knife at their crotches. Perfect bull’s-eyes. Neeve applied tourniquets to the base of their penises before we performed the final surgery. The result was little dick balloons, which were much better than little dick sludge. Have you ever seen a broken penis?
It was not a pretty sight.
I’d learned that the hard way.
I bit my lip and turned to Neeve. “Aww, well, that was an accident.”
“You accidentally threw your knife and cut off four men’s dicks?” Neeve shook her head. “Everyone knows you have perfect aim, Xeniya. You never miss unless you want to, and even then, can you really call it missing?”
“I do recall you throwing one of those knives.”
“Well, yes, because you taught me to have fair aim.”
I laughed. “Right. You did accidentally put the knife in his thigh first.”
I examined my blade before closing my eyes and throwing it at my dartboard. I grazed one man’s butt cheek.
“Is there any particular part of their body you’re aiming for tonight?”
“I could always use fingers.” I smiled widely as the basement door creaked open and two sets of heavy footfalls descended the stairs.
There were seven rooms down here, but the main room off the stairs was where I held group sessions, so whoever ventured down would be in for a show.
This visit was curious, because neither my guards nor the Callahan men came into my torture chambers often. They had some of their own in the main house.
A moment later, the second door swung open. Cormac Callahan, patriarch of the Irish mafia, walked in, followed by his heir, Callum—Neeve’s father and brother, respectively.
“We received an invitation from the Russians,” Cormac said, walking in nonchalantly, as if watching seven men being tortured—one of them the head of the Bratva—was no stranger than reading the Sunday morning newspaper.
Callum slid his hands into the pockets of his designer suit. “They want to iron out an alliance, probably in the wake of Aleksandr’s disappearance.”
“They are in a very vulnerable position.” My focus returned to my knives as I chose the next one to throw. “Intentionally so.”
Severin Volkov and I were playing chess. I had maneuvered him until his only option was to seek stability and alliances. A pact with the Irish would put him in a perfect position.
And I was counting on him to make that move. Little did he know that, in seeking aid, he was bringing in his own Trojan horse, one that would wait inside his gates and eventually lay waste to his castle and men.
But all in good time.
“What do you think he’s going to offer?” I asked.
“I think he’s gonna give us exactly what we want.” Cormac nodded, his gaze falling on the former Russian Pakhan. “He’s going to offer us the trade routes we lost when the MacKennas betrayed us—in exchange for our support, our intel, and possibly a bride.”
“You think he wants a marriage alliance?” Neeve grimaced, picking up a knife from the table.
She did not want to be a sacrificial lamb. She hadn’t been able to stomach a man’s touch since she’d been kidnapped—even after five years of therapy.
“I won’t do it.” Neeve’s voice broke. “You’re going to have to offer up Isolde instead.”
“I won’t be offering up anyone. Especially not your baby sister—”
“She’s twenty-three, Dad. She’s not a baby.”
“That very well may be, but I am not offering up anyone. You are going to pretend to be a choice, but Severin Volkov will never choose you when Keira is on the table.”
Neeve’s attention snapped to me. “You’re putting yourself up as an option?”
Keira was the alias I’d used since moving in with the Irish as a cover while I hunted down the men on my list.
I nodded, my composure thinning at the thought.
Confusion lit Neeve’s face. “I am not sure that will work. He was betrothed to me before. How do you know he’ll choose Keira?”
“You were engaged on paper, but he broke it off for a reason.” This time, Callum spoke. “Severin never wanted to marry you.”
I sucked in a tight breath. I didn’t believe that. Once, Severin had betrayed me and chosen Neeve. He’d broken my heart, dumped me, and signed an engagement agreement with the Irish.
I still didn’t know what had made him change his mind. Why had he refused to marry Neeve?
They’d even gotten to the altar. It took three years to do so because Severin kept stalling, and then, at the altar, he left. Jilted her in her wedding dress.
It happened when I was confined in my torture chamber.
No one knew why he broke it off. He just did. Three weeks later, Neeve was kidnapped and given to the cult as well, but she was kept in a different location altogether from me.
I never met her until the day I rescued her. By that point, she’d spent nine months being raped, tortured, beaten, and scarred.
Nine months.
“How can we be so sure?” Neeve asked.
I cleared my throat. “We can’t be, but it doesn’t matter who he chooses—if it’s you or me. No one is going to marry Severin Volkov because I am going to kill him.”
I threw my knife at my next target, landing precisely where I’d aimed—Klaus Mieser’s fingers. Two came off.
They hit the ground with soft thuds—one after the other.
Klaus howled in pain, but the sound died behind his gag.
“Are you ready for this?” Cormac stepped closer and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
No.
My heart drummed in my ears, but I faced the man who had been like a father to me for nine years and lied. “Of course I am. I’ve trained for this day. I’m ready.”
I was not ready. There would never be enough training or time to prepare me to meet Severin Volkov again. But I needed to infiltrate the Russian mafia for the next stage of my plan to succeed.
So I would do it, and I would do it well.
“When is the meeting?” I asked, throwing yet another knife at one of my dolls.
“Friday night.” Cormac tapped his fingers against his suit jacket. “I invited them to Nemain Manor so we could host them on our terms.”
My mouth twitched. That was good. Nemain Manor was our private club in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen.
Now all I had to do was practice my British accent and my amenable little personality. Keira was bright, playful, and very British.
I was… well, I didn’t know anymore. I was a patchwork quilt made of hundreds of masks. I was the masquerade, wearing whatever face the moment required, telling whatever lie got me closer to my goals.