Jhene
TWENTY-FOUR
Everything I was afraid of has come true, and I have no one to blame but myself.
The irony is, I thought I was saving Eva. Instead, I lost the few good things I did have.
The room they’re keeping me in is small and barren, with cream-colored walls and a narrow bed and a single window that offers little to nothing in terms of a view.
There’s a bathroom attached, barely bigger than a closet, and a chair in the corner that’s uncomfortable and collects dust.
I guess it’s still nicer than the cages. But a gilded prison is still a prison.
I’ve been here for about a week now. Seven days of staring at the same four walls, eating the same tasteless gruel they serve three times a day, and replaying every mistake I’ve ever made on an endless loop inside my head.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
I did what Fedorov asked. I spied on the Callahans and fed him intel, betraying the people who took me in and treated me like family.
All because he promised me Eva. I foolishly believed him when he said he’d let her go if I did this one thing for him.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
Now I’m back in his clutches, and Eva is... I don’t even know where Eva is anymore. They won’t answer any of my questions; they won’t do the bare minimum and tell me if she’s still at the estate at all or if something else has happened to her.
The icy blond guard who brings my meals seems to take particular joy in my suffering, smirking every time I ask about my sister and then walking out without a word.
I’m starting to think she isn’t here at all. That maybe she hasn’t been here for a long time. I really have been played for a fool, and this was nothing but a cruel joke to begin with.
Fedorov knew once I escaped the cages the only way to rein me back in was to use my baby sister against me.
As for Killian...
I squeeze my eyes shut as his face flashes through my mind, unbidden. It’s ridiculous and repetitive at this point, yet I can’t help myself.
I keep imagining the last few moments between us and agonizing over how we’d gone from content and close to the coldest strangers imaginable in only a matter of minutes.
All of it my fault. All of it my doing.
Maybe the biggest mistake of my life.
I don’t know how I ever let myself believe I could make it okay. That I could be in contact with Fedorov like I was and still convince Killian I wasn’t a traitor.
He was the one I wanted to be with. His side was the side I was really on.
But Fedorov had Eva, and so I had to do the things I did.
It made sense in my head at the time, even if it sounds crazy now.
Thoughts of him bring an instant ache to my chest. It’s an indescribable pain in my heart that’s somehow different from the one I already feel missing Eva. Yet just as intense. Equally as deep and paralyzing…
Sometimes, I focus only on the good times. I have to in order to keep myself sane.
I remember our Sundays at the grocery store and the flirting we did at the Banshee and that last afternoon together riding coaster after coaster at Coney Island.
If you gave me the opportunity, I’d relive those days a thousand times over. Those were the happiest days I’ve ever known, and I threw them all away.
Warm tears slip down my cheeks as I curl up on the bed, hugging the flimsy pillow close. I don’t bother wiping them away. There’s no one here to see, and I’ve cried so much this past week it barely even registers anymore.
His championship fight against Sharapova must be coming up soon. He’s been training the entire summer for it, what will be a major career milestone as a professional boxer.
I hope he wins. I’ll be thinking about him every moment, even if I won’t be able to be there by his side.
No matter what happens to me, I’ll never forget him. I’ll think about Killian Rourke until the day I die.
However soon that might be…
The lock on the door clicks, the first real sound I’ve heard in hours.
I sit up on the bed, swiping at my face to erase any trace of tears.
The door swings open, and the blond guard steps inside, carrying the same chipped bowl he always brings. The gruel inside is gray and lumpy, with the consistency of wet cement.
The smell is even worse, making the insides of my stomach swirl. It carries a putrid sour note mixed with a weird doughy scent that vaguely reminds me of Play-Doh.
I’ve only scarfed down spoonfuls here and there, doing so out of survival. Otherwise, I’d let myself starve.
He sets the bowl on the small table by the bed, his pale eyes fixed on me with a glint of cruel satisfaction. I’d expect nothing less of him or his twin brother (when he was alive).
He’s tall and lean, with ice-white blond hair slicked back from his flat, reptilian-like features. It only makes him creepier to look at and be around.
“How is Myshka feeling?” he asks without an ounce of concern. “Is she ready to atone for her sins?”
I glare at him, hardly hiding my disdain. “What sins?”
“The sovietnik has plans for you, little mouse,” he answers. “If you believe you have escaped your punishment, you are sorely mistaken. You will suffer untold amounts of pain.”
A chill racks through me that robs me of the air in my lungs.
I’d like to say I act unfazed, but that would be an outright lie. How can I when the threat is coming from Fedorov?
The same man I’ve witnessed scoop eyeballs out of sockets and strangles his pets when they misbehaved and he was tired of them.
My mind goes back to one of his girlfriends when I was first made a pet. The rumor was, he had strangled his old favorite because she talked back in front of his men, and so he had her delivered to his chambers.
Then he murdered her slowly, squeezing the life out of her while grinning in her face.
A threat from Fedorov Raguzin should always be taken with utmost seriousness.
“Get out,” I manage, my throat hoarse.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “What is the matter, Myshka? Does knowing your fate upset you?”
With his free hand, he reaches up and slides the glasses off my face.
My surroundings go blurry without them, his features melting into an indistinct smear, but I can still feel the weight of his gaze.
“You have always hidden behind these,” he says, turning the frames over in his hand. “Perhaps to disguise that you are really a beautiful woman. But we have noticed, little mouse. We have watched you grow. As we have done with Eva.”
A wave of nausea passes over me and forces bile up my throat. I keep it down with lips pressed tight, my breathing labored.
“It would be a shame,” he goes on conversationally, “if the sovietnik damaged this pretty face of yours. If he mutilated you the way he has done so many others.”
He tosses the glasses beside me on the bed and pivots on his heel for the door. I snatch them up with trembling hands.
“Enjoy your meal, little mouse,” he calls over his shoulder. “While you still can.”
The door slams shut behind him, and the lock clicks back into place.
I release a stuttered breath, my first in what feels like over a minute. Since before the blond arrived with more gruel.
Whatever Fedorov has planned for me, it can’t be good.
I have a horrible feeling I’m about to find out exactly what it is…
At least another day passes before I see anyone other than the blond enforcer.
I’ve lost track of the exact date, but I’m pretty sure tonight’s Killian’s championship match. He’ll be fighting Ivan Sharapova for the heavyweight title.
My eyes close as I lie in bed and let myself pretend I’m with him at Madison Square Garden. We’re still together and things have never been better.
The past week has been nothing more than a nightmare I woke up from.
The door snicks open, and I sit up expecting the blond. It must be time for supper.
A figure worse than the icy soldier enters my room. The last person on this planet who I want to be trapped inside this room with.
Fedorov strolls in with his cane serving as support and his unsettling gaze already focused on me. Even in his old age, he’s still an imposing man sheerly based off his height. One of the qualities he gave to his prized son, Rurik.
It’s obvious when he was younger, he was a man who dominated rooms on his physicality alone.
These days, it’s from the visceral demented aura he carries. The embodiment of evil itself.
He has silver hair and the unsettling gaze of a shark. His calculated smirk could make the devil proud, and he still dresses in expensive suits, no matter how poor his health has become.
I urge myself to sit still. For me to at least put up a tough front.
But parts of me start quaking against my will. My insides and my hands and even the breath that rattles out of me.
It’s a terrifying prospect to even meet his gaze. To realize we’re alone as he lets the door drift most of the way shut.
“Myshka,” he rasps in his deep, gravelly voice. “How I have missed you.”
I press myself back against the headboard, putting as much distance between us as the small room allows.
It isn’t nearly enough.
The entire Atlantic Ocean wouldn’t be enough.
“I was so pleased when you agreed to work for me again,” he muses. “You were always my favorite, you know. So clever. So obedient and smart. I had such hopes for you.”
He takes a step closer, the cane tapping against the hardwood floor.
“But then you disobeyed me. You interfered where you should not have.”
…to protect Eva.
“You ran from me when you know what happens to traitors.”
…you kept me in a cage.
“I chose to give you a second chance, Myshka,” he lectures, regarding me like you would a child.
He pins me with an austere look as if I’m his pupil who’s been naughty.
“But once again you proved disobedient. You decided that you would rather listen to Irish thugs than respect the man who has given you everything.”
“I want nothing more to do with you,” I blurt out. “Just leave me alone. Please.”
He takes several more steps toward me. “That is not possible. Not when I have done so much for you and your family. Do you believe you would have survived without me? That Eva would be alive today if I had not given her the treatment she needed?”
Only a foot separates us, his musky cologne filling the air I breathe and suffocating me.
I scoot even further back, pressing myself up against the headboard though there’s nowhere else to go. There’s nowhere to hide, and that realization makes me dizzy.
“You owe me everything, Jhene,” he says plainly. “The blood in your veins. The heart that beats inside your chest. The very air you breathe. All of it belongs to me.”
“Then just do it—get it over with and kill me. Just leave Eva out of it. She’s never done anything to you.”
He smirks, studying me as if I’m endlessly fascinating. “You remind me so much of your mother. Did you know that, Myshka? So defiant. And yet so powerless.”
He reaches out and strokes my cheek with the back of his long, cold fingers. I shudder violently in response, my body recoiling from his touch.
“Why are you still so afraid of me?” he murmurs. “You know my touch so well, Myshka. You once enjoyed being my pet. Do not deny otherwise.”
…never. Not even for a second. I was, and am, terrified of you.
“Just end it,” I beg, voice barely above a whisper. “Put me out of my misery. I can’t do this anymore.”
He caresses my cheek softly like a lover. “I would never do that. Do you know why?”
I let silence answer him. I’m too shaky and sick to my stomach to even make an attempt.
“Because,” he goes on indifferently, “even the pain you feel is mine, Myshka. Every tear. Every scream. Every last moment of suffering. It all belongs to me.” His thumb traces along my bottom lip, slow and taunting. “I intend to extract every ounce of it from you myself.”
I close my eyes so not to be forced to look up at him. So he won’t see the tears misting my eyes and know the fear that lives in them.
But he can sense it anyway—it’s infected every part of me as he strokes my cheek and tells me so lovingly how he’ll make me suffer.
An alarm goes off and disrupts the moment. The loud blaring sounds out of nowhere, so shrill and jarring I flinch in place.
Fedorov’s head snaps toward the door, his expression hardening into cold fury. Through the crack in the door, guards zip past with their weapons.
They’re moving with a sense of urgency. As if an emergency situation has popped off.
There’s been a security breach.
Fedorov straightens, his hand falling away from my face. He turns from the bed and uses his cane to stride for the door.
“Do not fret, Myshka,” he says as he pauses a final time. “This interruption will not save you. Your fate has already been sealed.”