Chapter 2 #4
I can’t save them all right now. I can’t do very much about this until I bring the information back to Ilya—and I don’t even have the information he sent me here for yet.
I should turn around. I should go back upstairs, do my actual job, forget about this woman I've never met.
She's not my problem. She's not my responsibility. I'm here for Ilya, not for her.
But I think about what Evan said earlier. That he beat her. That her face is damaged. That he left his cum on her and threw her into the hole.
Whatever is happening to all of these women, it seems that this one’s defiance is earning her their wrath more so than the others. I could save her.
I could get her out of here, extract us back to New York, and let Ilya know what’s happening here. Let him give me new orders. We can raze this place and get whatever information we need as we’re doing it.
A plan starts to click into place as I turn and quietly make my way back upstairs. I can’t bring all of my things with me—someone might notice. But we won’t make it far in what I’m wearing right now with the bitter cold outside, and I doubt this woman is wearing anything warm.
I go up to the room that was set aside for me, passing guards as I do. Their patrols are spaced out the same as before, which is good. That tells me what windows will allow me to get back downstairs undetected.
I change into warmer clothes, throw on a parka coat over it, and tuck a coat under my arm, putting my gun and extra ammo into the pockets.
My hunting knife is strapped to my thigh.
I shove a pack of cigarettes into the front pocket of my jeans in case I’m seen and questioned about my clothing—I can say I was just going outside to smoke.
Carefully, I make my way back down to the basement.
I manage to avoid the guards, slipping into the darkness.
There are no guards down here—clearly, they don’t think that any are needed.
No one except Iosef and his men and the women comes down here.
He’d never expect anyone to try to break them out.
I pad down the hallway and stop in front of the metal door, my jaw clenched and my thoughts working quickly, going over a semblance of a plan. There’s a door to the outside at the far end of the hall with the cells. If there’s a guard when we head out, I’ll take him out quickly. I can do this.
I need to do this.
The lock on this door is more difficult to pick, but I manage it. The door swings open with a creak that sounds too loud in the silence, and I wince, looking into the darkness as I try to let my eyes adjust.
The smell hits me first—blood and sweat, human waste, and fear. The room beyond is tiny, barely big enough to lie down in. There are no windows. No light except what spills in from the corridor behind me, faintly, from the security lighting along the ceiling.
In the far corner is a shape. A woman.
She's curled into herself, her back against the wall. Her clothes are torn and filthy. Her hair is matted with blood and dirt. She doesn't move when the door opens, doesn't even seem to notice the light.
I step inside, and she flinches. Just slightly, but I see it.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I say quietly.
She doesn't respond or look up. I can see her breathing, shallow and rapid. She's terrified. Trying to make herself small as if she can hide that way.
I move closer, slowly, the way you'd approach a wounded animal. "Look at me."
Nothing.
"I said, look at me." It comes out sharper than I’d like for it to, but we don’t have time.
If I’m found down here like this, I might be able to talk my way out of it, suggest that it was animal impulse, the desire of a man to further destroy something already broken.
Iosef might buy it. But it’ll certainly bring any chance of me finishing what Ilya sent me here for to a grinding halt.
He won’t be pleased, and I’ll have accomplished nothing.
If I’m actually going to help this woman, we need to move quickly.
Maybe it's something in my voice—not the cruelty she's expecting, but a command nonetheless. Authority. She responds to it instinctively, her head lifting and her eyes fluttering open.
The world stops.
I know this face.
I know these eyes, even dulled with pain and exhaustion. I know this woman.
Svetlana Morozova.
I see her face, almost as if I’m seeing it for the first time all over again, this time bruised and crusted with blood and worse, and the memory hits me like a physical blow.
The first time I really saw her was years ago, at a Boston gala.
The ballroom was glittering with crystal and gold, a holiday party for the elite that Ilya had been invited to.
He’d mentioned that there was a woman he was meant to meet that night, some businessman’s daughter who was being shopped to him as a potential wife, and that he had a passing interest in—for her father’s connections, naturally.
I'd been standing near the bar, watching the room the way I always do, when she'd entered. Ilya had gone to meet her at the door, and every conversation in the room had faltered, just for a moment.
I couldn’t forget that moment in a thousand years, not even if I tried.
She stepped into that room, and it was like the world froze briefly.
I’d never seen anything more beautiful. She was like a work of art, porcelain poured into a one-shouldered champagne gown that showed off the line of one leg, high heels that bent across the graceful arch of her foot, her blonde hair done in old Hollywood waves and pushed to one side.
Her mouth had been a slash of red that I’d dreamed countless times after of wearing around my cock.
I’d never wanted a woman so viscerally, so entirely, than I wanted her in that moment, like being struck by lightning.
And she was meant for Ilya. The Pakhan of Boston. My boss.
I can count the number of times I’ve ever spoken to her on one hand.
I’m Ilya’s enforcer, his bloody right hand, and there were very few times that I was ever required to say something to Svetlana Morozova.
But I helped her into a car once, and when she touched my hand, met my eyes, what I felt was more arousing than any woman I’ve fucked has ever been.
I remember going home that night and dreaming about her, getting off with the same hand she’d touched, lusting after her in a way that felt vicious, primal. Now, seeing her curled in this cell, broken and used and bloodied, I feel a sweeping wave of guilt for that… and so much more.
The contrast is obscene. That woman in the champagne dress, diamonds glittering at her throat, moving through a ballroom like a queen—and this woman, this broken thing curled in the corner, covered in filth and blood.
What have they done to her?
What have we done to her?
Because I was there that night when everything fell apart, when Ilya and I swept in guns blazing to save Mara from Sergei Kima, and found Svetlana there, too.
When I wanted to go to her, to help her, Ilya told me to stop.
When he told her to get out, without caring about what happened to her next, because she’d angered him, hurt Mara, the one thing that he can’t forgive.
And I obeyed. I had no idea what happened to her after that.
I have no idea what could possibly have caused her to come to this. To be here, instead of in Boston.
I have no idea how long she’s been enduring this torture, this degradation.