Chapter 9
Ican’t look away.
I don’t want to see this. I know that the only reason that Nikolai is doing this in the first place is to hurt me. He wants to make me suffer for daring to touch something that he thinks belongs to him. You can’t own a person. It doesn’t matter what he makes her say. It doesn’t matter what he does to her or the hollow words that he’s forcing her to say. They mean nothing.
She doesn’t have a choice.
Not really.
Stay in that cell and rot with me, or do what he says.
I’m glad that she chose the option that’s going to hurt less. I can’t imagine how Nikolai can stand to leave such welts and marks on such perfect skin in the first place. Anya is the sort of woman that needs to be put up on a very well-deserved pedestal and treated like the angel that she is. Nothing less.
This is the opposite of that. How she wound up with a monster like Nikolai in the first place blows my mind. I cannot fathom it in the slightest.
Make absent promises or get beaten. Everything about this perverse performance is to gloat - to rub it in my face that he can do anything he wants to anybody he wants. What the hell did Anya ever see in him?! The kindest, most gentle soul that I’ve ever met with that monster.
She shouldn’t be with him. She should be with…
The thought dies in my mind as hot rage takes over. He’s treating her like an object. No less of a prisoner than I am. That’s why he’s doing this. We both know that he’s only doing this because he wants to show me what I will never have. Stuck in this room while he gets to bury himself inside a pussy that likely feels like damned nirvana. Unworthy bastard. That’s what he is.
I scream at the screen above my door - hoping that somehow my voice will magically carry over to the room directly beside mine. That somehow, she will hear me telling her not to, that I don’t want this… begging for him to stop, offering up wild promises as she’s stripped bare and beaten. Debased and objectified right in front of my eyes.
I nearly rip both of my shoulders from their socket.
I scream at that screen until I have no voice. Pull and tug at my chains until my limbs are numb and blood runs down my arms.
Nothing makes a difference. Nothing helps her. Nothing saves her poor skin from his ‘claiming’.
Nothing will spare her, as much as I try.
Just like nothing spared Lilian. Just like Helena was forced to plummet to what should have been her death out of terror of the man in the room beside me. The women closest to me all lived in terror. Helena was forced to run to another country in the vain hope that she could get away. She was shoved out of a fucking window and left to bleed out in the cold winter snows of Moscow. By fate, my sister was saved. Even then she knew that she could not stay in the country that she loved. She had to get away. Get anywhere that she thought that he could not reach. As if there was anywhere far enough from Nikolai that she could run in this world to get away from him. Nothing gets away from Nikolai. Nothing will stop him coming after what he wants. Does Anya know that’s why they relocated to Texas? So that he can finish the murder of my sister and everything that she loves and holds dear?
I grind my teeth so hard that I swear I feel something crack.
Guilt consumes me. This is what he does for thinking that his wife has so much as spoken to another man? Or was it just because it was me? I will never forgive myself for this, for inflicting this upon her.
I should have never spoken to her.
Never gotten to know her.
I should have made sure that she left and never had anything to do with me again. I should have frightened her into leaving just so that I could spare her this.
I certainly never should have kissed her. I should have never crossed that line.
If Nikolai ever finds out, I don’t know what he will do. I fear to even think about it.
I’ve never felt this useless in my entire life. Stuck only feet away and I can’t do anything but watch. I have no way to take this pain away from her. I don’t have a way to ease her suffering or make it better other than to witness her debasement and hope that on some level, she knows that she’s not alone, even if a thick concrete wall separates us.
I make a silent promise to myself, and to Anya.
Nikolai will pay for this. If it’s the last thing that I ever do.