Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Xeniya Morozova
Present
Idecided to let them think they had trapped me. Let them think they had won before I took everything from them.
Severin was a hunter, but to me he was just prey, and it was time to strike.
The wind howled outside, and its whistle set an ominous tone. Artificial light streamed through the warehouse windows, along with the cascading light of the full moon. Beeping from cranes and trucks sounded at a constant tempo outside.
The docks never slept. Especially not the Bratva’s docks. Kaz was efficient. There was a reason his empire rivaled Severin’s. But ultimately, it all belonged to the Brotherhood.
Inside, pallets of packages stretched in uneven stacks.
Some boxes were massive, while others were the size of a music box.
This was one of their legitimate warehouses stocked with low-priority cargo.
Miroslav had been assigned here on purpose.
It was the kind of place they could afford to lose in a gunfight, or worse, and considering that I might have soaked it in lighter fluid, it was a smart call on Kazimir’s part.
I wanted to leave an explosive imprint on Severin’s kingdom.
What could I say? I’d gotten far more dramatic with age.
I waited, tapping my fingers on a box, invisible in the shadows. It wasn’t 11:11 p.m. yet, and I didn’t want to ruin our tradition. After all, I had visited Miroslav every third Thursday for the last year.
It wouldn’t be kind to disappoint him. A girl was committed to her torments.
Yes, I probably should have stayed away. Severin was setting his trap for me. He’d discovered my pattern and was hiding in the shadows like a tiger readying to pounce.
I knew it all, yet I couldn’t stay away.
I was a curious little cat.
And it was time for Severin and the Fury to meet face to face. Time for our first official showdown.
Nerves tangled in my stomach. My lungs clenched tight, and anticipation made acid lick the lining of my esophagus. It was infuriating.
You’d think being dead would stop all of these body sensations… but if anything, it only heightened them. They were so fucking annoying because I never faltered—never felt hesitant. I was a vengeful spirit, and no man could ever hurt me again.
And yet…
Severin Volkov broke every single one of my rules.
He’d always had.
And probably always would.
A black trench-coat dress clung to my curves.
It had a slit that ran all the way to my upper thigh, showing off my toned legs and nearly giving a glimpse of my red lace underwear.
I didn’t wear an undershirt, so the coat dipped low over my chest, exposing my lace bra and all of my cleavage.
I topped the look off with sky-high stilettos.
The heels were sharp metal knives with a cap on the end to help me balance.
Last but not least—and only because I didn’t want Severin to see my face yet—I wore a hat with a thick black lace veil obscuring my features.
My hair was styled in loose silver waves. I didn’t bother to dye it for this—not that dye held in my hair. At most, it stayed for seven days. My hair always turned back silver anyway. It was useless to fight it.
Part of being a Fury, I guessed.
At 11:10 p.m., I walked slowly toward Miroslav, my heels clinking with every step. Shadows clung to my body as I made my way closer and closer to my target.
The clocks I’d placed throughout the warehouse chimed, and the cuckoo birds sprang from their nests and sang their alarms. And at exactly 11:11 p.m., I appeared in front of him like a ghost, my body solidifying inches from his.
Because I was indeed an actual ghost—well, not a ghost per se; I was a Fury. A vengeful spirit back from the dead, seeking justice.
“Hello, Mirko. Miss me?” My voice was a haunting song. “I’ve missed you.”
And without preamble or warning, I kicked him in the balls. He crumpled to the ground in front of me, a pathetic, weak man.
“How does it feel to be their sacrificial lamb?” I asked, stretching my hand out and placing a KA-BAR knife against his throat.
“He’s going to end you,” he panted through a pained breath, still clutching his groin.
“Perhaps.” I smiled like a black widow before it devoured its mate. “But either way, you won’t make it out alive.”
A click sounded from behind me—the telltale sign of a safety disengaging.
“Put the knife down,” Severin said with a dark whiskey voice.
I pinched my eyes closed for a moment. Of course, I’d heard his voice as Keira. I’d spent many hours and days with him in the last month, but this was the first time hearing him as Xeniya, the Fury.
As myself.
It was a lot to take in.
I kept my back to him and my body positioned toward Miroslav as I sucked in a sharp breath. “I’d rather not.” I modulated my voice just slightly to try to keep him from discovering my true identity.
We weren’t ready for that yet.
I hadn’t spent seven years in acting classes for nothing.
“You’re trapped in here,” Severin said. “You can’t escape, and I have a gun pointed at your head.”
“No.” I paused, stringing out the moment, keeping his attention attached to me. “We’re trapped in here.”
He let out a low sound, but I couldn’t quite decipher it, especially with my back toward him.
“Are you going to shoot me, Severin?” I tilted my head to the side, letting him see the edge of my face. My platinum-silver hair swayed with the motion and caught in the moonlight streaming through the industrial windows.
“Yes.” Anger radiated from behind me, but Severin still didn’t pull the trigger. Not that it would matter. He couldn’t hit me.
I sighed. “But you won’t put us all out of our misery until you have answers.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a harsh statement.
“Then tell me why you are targeting my men and me.”
A low, wicked laugh escaped my lips. “Is, because I can, not a good enough answer?”
Severin took a heavy step toward me. Menacing and angry. “I will shoot you.”
“Not without torturing answers out of me first.”
Severin grunted.
“But the question then becomes: can you capture me before I slit your man’s throat…
and that truly is a riddle I cannot solve.
” I pivoted on my feet and took a step closer to Miroslav’s side so I could see my enemy instead of having my back to him.
“But here is what I cannot understand: why would you care to save such a despicable man?”
“By whose definition?”
“Mine. Obviously.” I shook my head. “Well, it’s rather rude of us not to include Miroslav in our conversation, don’t you think?
” I ran my fingers through Miroslav’s hair, grabbed him by the nape of the neck, and forced him to look up at me.
“Perhaps he should tell you just how despicable he is… There is a little piece of information he left out of your little interrogation.”
Severin’s eyes darkened and landed on Mirko, but the other man clamped down on his jaw.
I laughed harshly. It was time to lay my cards on the table and watch Severin figure out why I was after him. He shouldn’t be surprised.
His family trafficked in the worst of human nature, and Severin was the heir, groomed to take it all over.
“Be honest, Mirko. Tell him.” I leaned down, petted his cheek, and placed my lips on his earlobe, biting down before whispering, “Perhaps leave out my name. I’m far more forgiving than he is.” In a louder voice, so Severin could hear, I said, “Tell your boss what you did to me.”
“I… I…” He stumbled on his words.
“Oh, come on, Mirko, you weren’t this bashful with your dick.”
A guttural growl sounded from across the room.
“Go on, tell him.”
He gritted his teeth and forced it out. “I raped her.”
“Oh, don’t be shy, tell him the rest.” I glided the knife across Miroslav’s jaw, barely nicking the skin. “Tell him why I come at 11:11 pm.”
“Because that was the time I always fucked you.”
“That was a very interesting way of phrasing that.” I clicked my tongue and shook my head.
“Because that’s not how I’d explain it. I’d say it more like this: On every third Thursday of the month, for six months straight, you’d tie me to my cot in a prison cell.
You’d fill my room with cuckoo clocks—entire walls of them, every single surface—and then, at exactly 11:11 p.m., when you set the clocks to sing, you’d force your cock inside of me.
Then, as you raped me, you’d choke me until I nearly died.
Once you even had to have the on-call doctor resuscitate me because you took it too far.
” I swallowed hard. “Did I forget anything?”
“No,” he grumbled, his gaze locked on a seething Severin.
“Now, I personally think my treatment of you has been reasonable.” I smiled from behind my veil and faced Severin fully. “What do you think?”
Severin was a wall of rigid muscles.
Silence danced between us. Tentative but razor-sharp. His gaze traced the outline of my body and then the knife that still pressed against his man’s throat. Rage dripped from him like spilled wet paint down a canvas.
I furrowed my brow. He seemed genuinely surprised.
Surprised.
It didn’t make sense. Severin sold me to be trafficked. He told his father to get rid of me, and two days later, I was kidnapped, imprisoned, and turned into the plaything of a sadistic cult.
I’d trusted him. He had pretended to be outraged by violence against women. He’d pretended to protect my honor and body. But it was all a lie. The Volkovs and the Brotherhood trafficked women. Sold them into torture, rape, and death.
Sold them to the Lethean Order.
Sold me.
I’d never known Severin at all.
He was a part of it all. I had the proof.
But this man standing before me was… shaken. Or he was an Academy Award-winning actor. The latter seemed far more likely, but…
My blood rushed to my head, and confusion spiked in my stomach.
But perhaps the pause was the truth settling deep inside him. Maybe he was just realizing that his family business was coming back to haunt him—realizing that he wasn’t invincible.
The words that eventually came out of his mouth struck me like a punch to the chest. “I don’t think you’ve done enough.”
“What?” Because how could that possibly be his answer?
Severin clenched his fist, took another step forward, and I suddenly wanted to retreat.
“I’d kill him… slowly.” Anger poured from his lips. “Cut him limb from limb and feed them to a snake in front of him.”
I let out a confused sound, my heart hammering at my temples. What the fuck was happening? It was an act, right?
Right?
I wanted to escape, to run away and process what was happening, but I couldn’t. I had Miroslav under my knife.
“Make him watch as the snake ate one of his eyeballs.” Severin’s voice was an untamable wildfire. “Then I might cut off his cock, cook it, and feed it to him, and even then it wouldn’t be enough.”
A whimper escaped my lips, and I had to turn my face away from him.
His words could not be real. It just couldn’t be. He was playing me. Severin was a cunning, conniving fox. He knew how to twist words and manipulate people. He was simply telling me what I wanted to hear.
What I longed to hear every day of my three years of confinement.
I wanted him to save me, avenge me. Care for me. Come for me. Comfort me.
But none of that ever happened, and it never would.
Severin was a practiced liar.
And I needed to get away.
My chin quivered, and my hand shook, the knife jerking against Miroslav’s neck.
I had set this trap for Severin. I wanted this face-to-face.
I was supposed to show him the monster coming for him—let him know that he’d never escape a Fury.
But I had underestimated him and his emotional and manipulative hold on me.
I was the rabbit caught in the snare. Not him.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Get control of yourself, Xeniya.
I pinched my eyes shut for a moment and swallowed past the lump in my throat. Then, without another thought, I sliced my knife across Miroslav’s throat, blood squirting out as I hit his arteries. It sprayed across my veil, neck, and dress.
A normal person would have been disgusted, but I had killed my first person at age fifteen. Blood was commonplace in the mafia.
Miroslav crumpled to the ground, choking and dying.
And I couldn’t even appreciate it. I was too rattled.
It was time to leave.
But my limbs were too heavy, and my feet were glued to the spot.
“When did this happen?” Severin asked softly, killing the final distance between us.
The knife slid between my fingertips. My skin prickled at his nearness, and I answered without thinking about it. “Twelve years ago.”
“And you’ve been hunting and taunting him ever since?”
“More or less.” My nostrils flared as Severin’s hands reached out and steadied my waist. My eyes snapped up to him.
“What did you mean by prison cell?”
“Stop asking questions,” I bit out.
Gentleness circled in his dark azure eyes like he was trying to reach out and touch a lost puppy. Sympathy?
The last thing I needed was sympathy.
I averted my gaze to the dying man and the pool of blood we were standing in.
But when his hands slid up my waist slowly, deliberately, my gaze jumped back up to his.
I inhaled sharply, my heart pounding like a war drum in my ears.
Every muscle in my body was as taut as a harp string.
I held my breath and my tears back, my cheeks hurting from the strain of withholding my emotions from him.
But I would be solid. Diamond. Unbreakable. Unshakable. Impenetrable.
He would not know my pain.
He reached my collarbone and the hem of the fabric covering my face, keeping him from finding out the full truth. His fingers danced at the fringe, but instead of lifting it, they dove under the fabric and circled my neck. Tightening and leaving indents in my skin.
“Are you going to kill me?” My nostrils flared, and I sank into him, closing my eyes for a moment and feeling his calloused hands around my delicate neck.
He said nothing, his dominant frame towering over me—easily able to end me.
“Do it,” I whispered.
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his fingers squeezed for a moment, as if testing how easy it would be to kill me.
But as soon as he pressed down, he released my neck, instead curling the lace veil between his fingers and beginning to lift.
But as much as I wanted him to see my face, to lay eyes on my hollow, empty features, see the damage he’d done, it wasn’t time for that.
So I disappeared into nothingness, and he was left holding a veil no longer attached to anyone.
I had become a ghost.
Truly.
My physical form faded into the astral plane, my body no longer solid or visible.
The Lethean Order didn’t just violate me, torture me, and brutalize me. They also killed me.
I never made it out of my prison alive.
I died ten years ago. And now I was a Fury, like the violent spirits from Greek mythology; I was an undead monster who hunted the worst of this world.
I was a wraith.
At least some of the time.