Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
JUDE GRAVES
The hallway opens into another section of the building, and the difference is immediate.
The luxurious elegance of the ballroom disappears, replaced by low neon lighting, heavy bass vibrating through the floor, the smell of alcohol, sweat, and drugs lingering in the air.
Women in barely-there outfits dance against men slouched in leather chairs.
Some of the girls move mechanically, eyes glassy, clearly high.
Others laugh too loudly, drunk enough not to care, or pretending to be.
I feel Adriana shift closer to my side as we step fully into the room, my hand still wrapped around hers.
Alexei approaches us again, that same serpent smile curling at the edges of his mouth. In his hands are two plastic cups filled with bright pink liquid and two small pills resting in his palm.
“Relax,” he says lightly. “Enjoy yourselves.”
I don’t take them at first. I just stare at him.
His expression doesn’t change. “Drink.”
I glance at Adriana. She looks back at me, already knowing we don’t have a choice. Slowly, I take one cup and one pill, handing the other set to her. We swallow them down under Alexei’s watchful eyes. The liquid is sickeningly sweet.
After he makes sure we actually swallowed the pills, he grins. “Good. Have fun.”
He disappears back into the crowd.
Adriana exhales shakily. “Oh shit…what did we just take?”
I scan the room, watching the slow movements, the glossy eyes, the loose bodies swaying under the lights. “Likely MDMA.”
She lets out a small whimper. “They fucking sold those girls, Jude,” she whispers. "The underage girls wore white."
My jaw tightens. “I know.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
I glance up just in time to see Vlad entering the room with another barely dressed woman on his arm, laughing loudly as he greets Alexei across the floor. His eyes sweep the room before landing directly on me.
Instinctively, my hand tightens at Adriana’s back, pulling her closer against my side.
The shift is unmistakable thirty minutes later.
Warmth spreads through my chest first, then down my arms, like something soft loosening muscles I didn’t even realize were clenched.
The tension in my shoulders dulls, the constant electric anxiety in my nerves quieting into a strange, floating calm.
The lights seem brighter now, colors bleeding softly into one another, the bass vibrating pleasantly through my ribs instead of rattling them.
Definitely MDMA.
A strong fucking dose.
Adriana is laughing softer than I’ve heard her in a long time. The rigid fear that’s been living in her face for days melts away as she moves beside me, her hands sliding up to my shoulders while the music shifts again.
“Maneater” by Nelly Furtado starts playing through the speakers.
She looks up at me, and even though some anxiety still lingers in her eyes, she’s trying to let go for a few minutes.
The drug makes everything feel like the world has been wrapped in a thin layer of static electricity.
Touch feels sharper. Breathing feels deeper.
The exhaustion in my bones fades enough that I almost forget where we are. And honestly?
Fuck it.
I lean down and kiss her. The rush hits me harder the second our lips meet, my chest flooding with a sudden, artificial swell of something that almost feels like affection, almost like safety, even though I know it’s chemical bullshit.
Then—a flash.
A face in my mind. A memory clawing forward. My body tenses instantly, a low snarl nearly rising in my throat.
Get out of my head.
Forget about me. Please.
Forget her forget her forget her...
I pull Adriana closer and kiss her harder, chasing the thought away, focusing only on the pulse of the music, the press of bodies dancing around us, the artificial euphoria trying to swallow everything else whole.
The lights strobe across the crowd, reflections flashing across glass and metal, people laughing loudly and touching freely.
It's not like they can actually save me. I know them. They might try, but they'll fail. And, eventually, give up. Or I'll die.
The song swells, bass vibrating through the floor, and for a few brief minutes, I let myself disappear into the noise, into the movement, into the warmth running through my bloodstream. Anything to keep the memories from breaking through. That life feels so far away now.
My mind and body seem to be disconnected entirely.
I glance around, watching the people around me dance and grind.
I've gone to some wild parties throughout the years, taking drugs I had no business taking, but this is the scariest shit I've ever been to.
Human slaves being sold off, while buyers take MDMA and whirl around one another without a care in the goddamn world.
The fuck is happening?
Time slows, and my vision blurs. I'm not here.
An hour later, I’m sunk deep into one of the low velvet couches along the edge of the room, my body heavy and loose in a way that almost feels unreal.
Adriana started talking to one of the other women, so I settled here for now.
My headphones are in, the bass of “WASTE” by KXLLSWXTCH vibrating directly into my skull, the song looping over and over until the rest of the party sounds muffled and distant.
The roll is strong now. My head tips back against the couch, eyes half-closed as the music floods through me.
For the first time in what feels like forever, my body actually reacts to something—a faint spark of arousal, dulled for weeks by fear, torture, and exhaustion, suddenly flickering back to life under the drug’s influence.
It feels foreign. Artificial. But still… there.
Weight settles onto my lap.
I don’t even open my eyes at first. Whoever it is smells sweet, fruity perfume drifting down as her hands rest lightly on my shoulders. It feels good...the simple warmth of another body. And for a few seconds, I let it happen, letting the music drown everything else out.
My eyes finally flutter open. A blonde woman in black lingerie with perfect makeup and a perfect smile. She’s beautiful. But she’s not…
My chest tightens.
No. Don’t think of her.
Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Across the room, Adriana is watching me.
She doesn’t look angry or jealous. She’s just…
watching. Gently, I shift the woman off my lap, giving her a small grin and a playful squeeze to her ass so she laughs instead of feeling brushed off.
She spins away easily, already disappearing back into the crowd.
I stand, slightly unsteady but functional, and move toward Adriana. She doesn’t ask anything when I reach her. I just tilt my head toward the exit.
Her eyes flick there, then back to me before nodding.
We slip out without anyone stopping us, and the cold hits immediately.
Snow is finally falling—thick, slow flakes drifting through the air, coating the streetlights in a soft glow that makes the entire city look beautiful.
Moscow’s gold lights pour onto fresh white sidewalks, the distant sound of traffic muted by the storm.
I’m still high, warmth spreading through my bloodstream despite the freezing air. I pull out a cigarette, light it, and inhale deeply, the smoke burning pleasantly in my lungs before I exhale a slow stream into the night.
“WASTE” is still playing in my headphones, the chorus repeating again and again. For some reason, it’s calming me. I don’t think of changing songs...I just let it keep looping over and over.
Adriana walks beside me without speaking. She doesn’t seem bothered by the cold at all. In fact, her cheeks are still flushed with the last glow of the drug.
A black car sits across the street, and I notice Erik and Aiden sitting in the front. Watching. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I glance down.
Erik:
Come to the car after your little walk.
I don’t respond. I just slip the phone back into my pocket, take another drag from the cigarette, and stare out over the glowing city lights while the snow continues to fall around us.
Days stop lining up. Morning isn’t morning anymore.
It’s just whenever someone opens the curtains, and the gray light crawls across the floor.
Sometimes it’s noon. Sometimes it’s still dark.
Sometimes I wake up because my ribs hurt and I can’t remember why until I move.
Sometimes I wake up because Erik is nudging my shoulder, telling me to get dressed. Since torture has all hours of the day.
They give Adriana and I pills now, too. Sometimes Alexei hands them to me himself, smiling like I’ve earned a treat or some shit. I don’t even know what the fuck they are, honestly. They don’t feel like oxy.
But I always take them.
At first, Adriana just watched me swallow them, but eventually, she started taking the cup from Erik’s hand before it even reached me, and swallowed them dry.
We sleep at strange hours, sometimes collapsing in the middle of the afternoon, sometimes wide awake until sunrise, talking about nothing, staring at the ceiling.
Sometimes we don’t talk at all—just lie there, her head on my chest, both of us pretending the silence is peaceful.
Even now, I don’t even know what time it is.
All I know is that it’s dark outside. My phone has been dead for god knows how long due to my neglect.
We still haven't had sex, and I'm grateful for it.
I wonder if I'm broken in that way now after everything my body has been put through.
No matter how much she snuggles up to me at night, I feel nothing.
She hasn't tried anything because I think she's probably feeling the same way as me. I sigh and roll over, feeling Adri’s presence beside me.