Chapter Twenty-Four
In which Oksana was found, then lost, then found again.
Vadim…
Fourteen years old…
Four days. Four fucking days of cutting me and whipping me, beating the shit out of me with fists and boots and breaking my bones.
Sometimes, for information that I would never give them, sometimes, because they felt like it. I never doubted that my family would come. In fact, it surprised me more that they knew my grandfather was Alexi Turgenev, the Angel of Death and yet they still made this suicidal move.
They never took me back to the cells after that night.
I thought about the girl all the time. Was she alive?
Could I keep my promise to her? She'd talked to me all night, helped me forget the agony of my wounds, she made me believe everything would be okay.
I hope I did the same for her. When my family comes, I will get her out of here.
On the fifth day of captivity, I lay bloody and senseless on the floor of Grishchenkov's lounge.
It was filled with expensively dressed whores and pelts of animals I knew he didn't kill.
He never made his identity a secret, he was proud to tell me who he was, bragging how he would kill my parents in front of me before I joined them.
Grishchenkov kept me chained there for the entertainment of his guests.
His piece of shit son, Yakov, would strut in to boast to his father about torturing the girl, how, if her father wouldn't ransom her, she'd be docile enough soon to sell to a "collector."
I knew what that meant.
Running my tongue over my teeth, I realized I was missing a couple in the back.
Then, I heard it. A whistle. To anyone else, it would have sounded like a thrush nightingale, there were so many in this part of Russia.
It was precise. But I knew the cadence, the up down, and up down again. I smiled, baring my bloody teeth.
My family was here.
It started with an explosion in the back of the mansion to draw his troops there.
Plaster rained down from the elaborate murals on the ceiling, cracking the scenes painted there into pieces.
Windows shattered, and women screamed, dropping their wine glasses and scurrying back and forth, bumping into each other, trying to find shelter.
Boots pounded down the hallway towards the back and gunfire erupted.
I could see fire roar up through the windows, all the cars and trucks immolated.
Grishchenkov panicked, the fucking coward.
He pulled out his knife - a meat cleaver - and came at me.
"They're not getting you back!" he screamed, his voice high and shocked, like he couldn't imagine this would happen.
He looked ridiculous, a dozen gold chains swinging from his neck and sweat stains staining his silk shirt.
"Fuck your family! I'll kill them all! They will not save you! "
I didn't move, letting him think I was still unconscious until he was on me, his cleaver in his fist.
Closer… He'd want to see my face when he carved me up.
He dropped to his knees, his cleaver swooping in an arc toward my neck and I swung my chain up.
His mouth was open, screaming at me and I jammed the loop between his teeth like a horse's bit, twisting the ends behind his head.
Each rotation ground the iron links harder against the hinge of his jaw.
I could hear the crack of teeth and three fell from his mouth.
Payment for mine. His blade glanced off my thigh, slicing it, blood pouring out.
I twisted it again, and again, as his eyes bulged and his knife dropped from his hands.
I kept the chain tight with everything left in me, wrapping my legs around him while he was gasping for air, thick fingers reaching for his throat.
The cleaver was next to us; the blade covered in my blood. I grabbed the handle and I sliced against the side of his neck, across his chest, and his neck again, then his eye. I was still hacking and slicing when the door blew open, and there was my father, a smoking gun in each hand.
"Moy syn…" he choked out.
I saw his expression. I knew what I looked like. A demon, rising from the underworld, covered in Grishchenkov's blood and mine, my hand gripping the chain around the bastard's neck.
My father had me loose in seconds, dropping Grishchenkov's corpse with a thud and picking me up like I was a child again.
"Let's get you out of here," he said urgently.
"Every one of these ublyudki, these motherfuckers is going to die.
We'll keep just enough of them to torture for a good, long time.
You need to show me which ones deserve it most."
Adrenaline can do a lot. I was hobbling on my own two feet by the time we got to the courtyard.
Most of the outbuildings were on fire, holes ripped through the high stone walls surrounding the estate, dead guards everywhere.
The survivors were kneeling on the ground.
Most of them had bullet holes and stab wounds, ugly burns from the explosions.
They all wore the same stunned look that Grishchenkov had.
They really had thought he was invincible.
Even with the coughing and groaning, and the flames ripping through the house, I could still hear it: splashing. Desperate splashing, like hands slapping water.
It's her. They're killing her.
I forced myself into a run, turning the corner around to the back, and she was there. The sweet girl who had talked to me that night. She was kneeling in front of an elaborate marble fountain, hands flailing desperately.
I recognized the bastard holding her, one of Grishchenkov's sons, Yakov.
He had her wet hair gripped in his fist and the other hand on her neck, shoving her under the water as she thrashed wildly.
He'd been drowning her every day during her captivity, calling them "conditioning sessions," never stopping until she finally lost consciousness.
She told me about it that night in the cell, weeping softly and hopelessly.
This time, he wouldn't stop. He needed her dead.
It's almost fortunate that he wanted to take her out this way, instead of shooting her in her cell, it gave me my chance.
I took three giant steps and I was on Yakov, smashing the hilt of my knife down on the thin bone at his temple, cracking his skull.
He dropped like a sack of meat to the ground, groaning in the churned mud like the pig he was.
I was looking forward to torturing him for what he'd done to her.
Hauling her out of the fountain, I held her, sitting on the marble edge.
"It's okay. It's okay. It's me. Remember?
No one's going to hurt you ever again." She was barely there, so light the wind could carry her away, wearing a torn and bloody school uniform.
Her huge eyes were silvery gray, like the wing of a seagull, staring up at me sightlessly.
"It's me," I said again. "I told you I would take you out of here. "
Her eyes looked through me. I don't know what she saw but her thin hand gripped my bloody shirt with all the strength her shaking fingers had. "You," she whispered. "It's you. You lived." She turned her head and heaved up a huge gout of water, splashing my gore-covered clothes.
My father hurried over, along with Nikolina, one of my favorite female guards. "I'll take her over to our trucks," she said gently.
My arms tightened around the girl and she made a desperate noise, hiding her face against my shoulder, still clinging to my shirt.
"Son, this way, she doesn't have to see anything else," Father says gently.
"When your mother is finished out back-" Another explosion rocks the courtyard, cracking the winged angel sculpture in the fountain.
"When she's finished," he continued with a slight smile, "I'll have her sit with the girl. She'll be safe while you do your work."
"I'll watch over her," Nikolina promises, her expression heartbroken.
Reluctantly, I handed the girl over to her. "She needs blankets," I said. "They've been drowning her." Nikolina's face hardened and she nodded before carrying her away.
Nikolina didn't understand the difference between watching over someone who understood what happened, who desperately wanted protection and someone who was still in shock.
The girl only knew that she wasn't being drowned or chained, and that this was her chance.
Ten minutes later, Mother raced over to me, face pale. "She's gone, the girl."
"What?" I roared. "You and Nikolina, you were going to keep her safe!"
"I am sorry," Nikolina stepped up next to her. "The responsibility is mine. I covered her with the only blanket we had and told her I was going to the other truck to get more, that she was safe and not to move." She's shaking. She should be. "The girl was right behind me -"
"Find her!" I shouted. "I promised her I would get her out of here!"
Eight guards scoured the compound, searching for her in the ripped-apart house and the ruptured gardens and outbuildings that were not already demolished. I wrapped my arm around my grandfather's neck and he took me through the warped and shattered gates. The road was empty in both directions.
It finally took pulling the security camera feed from the still-standing guard house at the gate to see what happened.
A minivan, a bit battered, squealed to a stop and a woman stepped out of her car.
Three children were staring curiously out the back window.
She hurried over, speaking urgently as my girl knelt in the dirt, thin shoulders heaving.
The woman looked up the drive of the estate and saw the fires and destruction and her eyes widened.
She helped my girl up and put her in the car, pulling out in a cloud of dust.
Grandfather and I took one of the jeeps and followed her to make sure that she was returned to her family. The woman took her to the local police, and hadn't they been a fucking help all this time, but they did contact the Vasilievs and the officers rushed her to a hospital.
"Do you want to go in and speak to her?" he'd asked.
"No." I looked down at myself, bloodied and battered. I'd scared my own father when he'd seen me. "No. She's safe now."
I'd seen pictures of her over the years since then, society photos. Carefully presented images of her rich and powerful family. Oksana smiled in all of them, but that blank, unseeing gaze in her silver-gray eyes never quite went away.