Chapter Forty-Two #2
I stared into the flames dancing in the fireplace, watching them blur behind the tears gathering in my eyes.
“At first, I refused to answer to it. As long as I held on to ‘Sabrina’, I believed they couldn't truly change who I was. It was the last piece of myself that belonged to me.”
I took a slow breath.
“But months turned into years, and eventually I hadn't heard my own name in so long that it stopped feeling like mine. Sabrina became someone I remembered instead of someone I was. A little girl who'd existed before the black van, before Russia, before Ivan.”
A tear rolled down my cheek.
“That was when I realised he hadn't just kidnapped me.”
My eyes drifted around the room, meeting the devastated expressions of the people who had spent years searching for me.
“He was erasing me.”
The silence that followed was almost unbearable.
“The name he gave me was Diabola. Every lesson, every punishment and every day in that place buried Sabrina a little deeper until even I struggled to remember who she had been.”
I lowered my head, trying to steady my breathing.
“One day, I realised I hadn't thought of myself as Sabrina for weeks. Then weeks became months, and eventually I stopped waiting for someone to come and save me because, in my mind, there wasn't a little girl left to save.”
For a long moment, I simply stared into the fire, letting the silence settle over the room before another memory surfaced.
“I met Asher and Mario when I was eleven.”
My voice was barely more than a whisper, and as the words left my lips, the living room slowly disappeared.
Cold clung to the damp concrete walls as I pulled the thin blanket tighter around myself.
It did little to keep out the freezing air, but I'd long since stopped expecting comfort.
Every bruise from training ached as I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
I didn't know how long I'd been in the punishment room anymore.
After five months in Russia, I'd stopped trying to count the days.
Shouting echoed through the corridor, followed by the heavy thud of boots. At first, I ignored it. Children screamed every day inside the compound, and eventually those sounds became part of the background. This time, though, the voices grew louder until the lock scraped against the metal door.
It flew open.
Two boys were shoved inside before the guards slammed it shut again behind them, laughing as they walked away. The boys stumbled across the floor before scrambling to their feet. They couldn't have been much older than me. One had messy brown hair, the other dark, and both looked completely lost.
They immediately threw themselves at the door, shouting for someone to let them out, but when no one answered, they finally noticed me sitting silently in the corner.
“There's someone here,” the dark-haired boy said.
The other turned towards me before cautiously walking over. He crouched a few feet away, careful not to come any closer than necessary.
“Hi,” he said with a small smile. “I'm Asher. That's Mario.”
I didn't answer.
“You don't have to talk,” he said gently. “I just thought you shouldn't have to be alone.”
I stared at him, unsure what to do with his kindness.
The next morning, Asher was the first one awake. He looked across at me, hesitated for a moment, then smiled.
“Can I ask you something?”
I gave a small nod.
“What's your name?”
The question caught me off guard.
For months, I'd heard only one name. Diabola. It was what the guards called me, the only name anyone in that place knew. It took me longer than it should have to remember my own.
“...Sabrina.”
Asher's smile widened.
“It's nice to meet you, Sabrina.”
Something tightened painfully in my chest. No one had called me that since the day I'd been kidnapped.
Over the next few days, we talked whenever the guards weren't around. Asher told us stories about home, Mario laughed at almost everything he said, and for the first time since arriving in Russia, I laughed too. For a little while, the punishment room didn't feel quite so empty.
Then the guards came for Asher.
Mario fought to hold onto him until they were forced apart. When Asher returned the following day, he barely spoke. The smile that had greeted me on the first day was gone, and no matter what either of us said, it never came back.
A day later, they took Mario. When he returned, the same emptiness filled his eyes.
After that, none of us talked about going home anymore.
The Russians kept trying to separate us, but somehow we always found our way back together. If Asher was sent to the punishment room, Mario and I made sure we were punished too. Sometimes it was for hesitating during training; other times it was for answering back.
None of us ever admitted why we did it.
We didn't need to. Being punished together was still better than surviving alone.
Almost a year passed before the door opened again.
A little girl with long black hair was thrown onto the floor. She didn't cry or beg. She simply lay there, staring at the concrete as though she'd forgotten how to feel.
Asher was the first to move. He knelt beside her, his voice as gentle as it had been when he'd first spoken to me.
“Hi. I'm Asher. That's Mario... and she's Sabrina.”
For a long moment, the little girl didn't respond.
Then she slowly lifted her head.
“...Lillian.”
It was barely a whisper.
None of us asked what had happened to her. The answer was written across her face. Instead, we made room beside us.
Somewhere inside a place built to destroy children, the four of us became a family.
I blinked, finding myself back in the living room.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Every face was turned towards me, the silence so heavy it almost seemed to press against my chest.
“How?” Uncle Marco asked at last, his voice thick with disbelief. “How did you all escape?”
A sad smile tugged at my lips as I glanced towards Sean.
“That's where Sean comes in.”
I gestured towards him before looking back at the rest of my family.
“For months, Asher and Mario kept telling me the same thing. ‘He'll come for us.’ Every time they said it, I wanted to ask how they could still believe someone was coming. I'd already forgotten what hope felt like.”
Drawing in a slow breath, I continued.
“Then one day, everything changed.”
My mind carried me straight back to the compound.
“There was shouting everywhere. Gunfire echoed through the corridors, guards were running in every direction, and nobody knew what was happening. Then, through all the chaos, I saw someone running towards us.”
A quiet laugh escaped me.
“The first time I met Sean, I held a gun to his head.”
Several heads turned towards him.
Sean smiled faintly before rubbing the back of his neck.
“I've replayed that moment more times than I can count,” he admitted. “You had a gun pointed at me, but your hand was shaking so badly I wasn't even sure you could hold it.”
He paused, searching for the right words.
“You looked terrified. There was fear in your eyes, but there was something else too. For just a second...” He looked across at me. “...I swear I saw relief.”
“I've spent years wondering why,” he continued. “You had every opportunity to pull the trigger.”
“But I didn't,” I finished quietly.
Our eyes met.
“Because when I looked at you, I didn't see one of Ivan's men.
I saw the same kindness I'd seen in Asher and Mario from the day we met.
They'd spent months telling me you'd come for us, and I'd convinced myself they were wrong.
Then I looked into your eyes... and I knew they'd been right all along.”
The room fell silent again.
“For the first time since I'd been taken, I knew we were safe.”
Sean lowered his head, blinking rapidly before I continued.
“We escaped with dozens of other children. By the time it was over, Ivan had disappeared. We'd survived. We were finally free.”
I let the words hang in the air before quietly shaking my head.
“Freedom doesn't erase what happened. It just means no one is hurting you anymore.”
I looked down at my hands, remembering all the nights I'd spent staring at the ceiling.
“Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in Russia. I was chained to a wall, covered in bruises, listening to children scream while we were forced to do things no child should ever have to do. We killed because we were ordered to. If we refused...”
The words caught in my throat.
Before I realised she'd moved, Lillian rested her head against my shoulder. She didn't speak, and she didn't need to. The quiet comfort of her presence reminded me that I wasn't back there anymore.
Across the room, Sean gave me a small nod.
I drew a shaky breath before forcing myself to continue.
“Leaving Russia didn't mean I escaped it. It followed me. I couldn't sleep. Every night I woke up convinced I was still there.”
I let out a humourless laugh.
“One night I found alcohol in my foster parents' kitchen. I'd heard people drank to forget, so I tried it. For the first time in years, I slept through the night.”
The words left a bitter taste in my mouth.
“But when the nightmares came back, alcohol wasn't enough anymore, so I turned to drugs. They didn't make me happy. They didn't fix anything. They just made me feel... nothing.”
I swallowed hard.
“And after everything I'd lived through, nothing felt better than hurting.”
The room remained silent.
“When I was thirteen, a few months before Dario was born, I hit rock bottom. I'd spent two years trying to outrun my memories, and I was losing. Every night I closed my eyes, I was back in Russia. Every morning I wished I hadn't woken up.”
I drew in a shaky breath.
“The alcohol stopped working. The drugs stopped working. I was exhausted. Tired of existing. Tired of carrying everything I'd done and everything I'd seen.”
I paused, my fingers tightening together.