Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sabrina
By the time Olga opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the hotel.
The basement was dimly lit, the only light coming from exposed bulbs hanging from the concrete ceiling. Shadows stretched across the floor, broken only by the chair positioned in the centre of the room.
Olga sat tied to it, her wrists secured behind her back and her ankles bound tightly to the chair legs. For a few moments, she remained motionless, her breathing slow and uneven as the effects of whatever Mario had used to knock her unconscious gradually wore off.
I leaned against one of the support pillars with my arms folded, watching her.
Asher wandered over carrying a bucket of water.
“So...” He glanced between the bucket and Olga. “Can I throw this on her?”
Before I could answer, a dagger flew through the air.
Thunk.
It buried itself in the wooden beam above Asher's head.
He slowly looked up at it before turning towards Lillian.
“Was that necessary?”
Lillian calmly lowered the second dagger she'd been holding.
“You were about to wake her.”
Asher looked at the bucket in his hands.
“That was the point.”
“And you were going to make a mess.”
“It's a basement.”
“It's still a mess.”
Mario didn't look up from his laptop. “Can we please just wake her up without destroying anything?”
Asher sighed.
“Fine.”
The room fell quiet again.
A few moments later, Olga stirred. A groan escaped her as she slowly lifted her head. She blinked several times, trying to focus, before instinctively attempting to move.
The restraints stopped her immediately.
Confusion flickered across her face as she looked around the basement. Her gaze landed on Mario first, then Asher, then Lillian before finally settling on me.
The colour drained from her face.
“No...”
The word barely escaped her lips.
“This is the end.”
I pushed myself away from the pillar and walked towards her, each measured step echoing softly through the basement.
“So,” I said calmly, stopping a few feet in front of her, “you've heard of me.”
She swallowed hard before giving the smallest nod.
“You are Morana.”
“I am.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“Sergei Volkov will have his revenge. You murdered his father.”
“Ivan?”
Her jaw tightened.
“He'll make you suffer for what you did.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“Ivan had it coming.”
She glared at me, but uncertainty had already begun creeping into her expression.
“He made one very unfortunate mistake. He came for a little boy called Dario.”
The name hit her immediately. Her expression froze.
“...Dario?”
Her eyes searched mine as though she was trying to piece together something that didn't make sense.
“No...”
“Was Ivan's death because of that little boy?”
For the first time since entering the basement, I reached up and removed my mask.
“Yes.”
Olga stared at me, recognition slowly spreading across her face.
“...Sabrina.”
A smile spread across mine.
“Hello, Moody Margaret.”
She recoiled against the chair.
“No...”
“You've finally worked it out?”
Her eyes travelled over my face again, desperately searching for some sign that she was wrong.
“Morana...” Her voice cracked. “...is Sabrina.”
“The very same little girl you threw out of your orphanage.”
She looked as though the ground had disappeared beneath her.
“Ivan died because he thought he could take Dario,” I said evenly. “He thought he could turn him into another weapon.”
I took a slow step closer.
“The same way he turned me into one.”
Silence settled over the room.
“I wasn't about to let that happen.”
I closed the remaining distance between us, smiling without warmth.
“So I killed him. And just to make absolutely certain he wouldn't decide to crawl back out of the ground one day...” I let the sentence hang for a moment. “...I carved his heart out.”
Olga visibly flinched.
“I figured it was the safest option.”
The only sound in the basement was her increasingly uneven breathing.
“You know,” I continued conversationally, “he looks surprisingly peaceful six feet underground.”
I shrugged.
“Well... peaceful might be pushing it.”
A quiet chuckle escaped Asher somewhere behind me.
I never looked away from Olga.
“Sergei has made exactly the same mistake his father did. He decided he wanted to finish what Ivan started, which means he'll be joining his father sooner rather than later.”
I crouched until we were eye level.
“As for you...” I said softly, “for your loyal service to Sergei, you'll be joining him too.”
Panic finally broke through her composure.
“Oh...”
I paused, pretending I'd only just remembered something.
“I almost forgot.”
A sweet smile crossed my face.
“Your darling Yuri.”
Her eyes snapped towards me.
“I couldn't possibly separate the two of you.”
The sarcasm in my voice was unmistakable.
“It would be so cruel of me.”
I rose to my feet, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from my sleeve.
“So don't worry. You'll both be seeing each other again very soon.”
Olga didn't respond. She simply stared at me – not at Morana, but at Sabrina. The little girl she'd thrown away, the little girl she'd believed was powerless, had returned wearing the face of the assassin the entire Russian Bratva feared.