Chapter 3 #2
To my surprise, they drag me into another room. Not the infirmary or the shower room but one where the lights are harsher. It smells faintly familiar but for some reason, I can’t place where I know it from. I’m forced down into a chair that sits behind a long, metal table bolted to the floor.
I blink slowly, letting my lashes flutter heavily like it takes effort to hold them open. There isn’t much to look at other than the table in front of me. Over by the door is another chair, dragged there to be some kind of observer over the room.
One of the guards steps forward, a younger man with flat, gray eyes and the kind of permanent, disinterested frown only someone paid to watch suffering without blinking could wear.
He crouches in front of me with slow, easy movement, his expression barely shifting as he reaches for the cuff around my wrists.
He clips one end of it to a steel loop bolted beneath the table, the metal clinking softly as it locks in place. His fingers brush my skin by accident, and I flinch before I can stop myself.
If he notices, he says nothing.
When he’s done, he rests an arm on his knee, staying close but just out of reach where I could swing a fist at him. It’s a calculated move, one I’m sure has been done consciously.
His voice is soft, almost conversational when he speaks. “Well. Look who finally cracked.”
I don’t answer. I keep my eyes fixed on my lap.
He chuckles low in his throat, leaning back just slightly. “I heard you want to speak to Mikhail. Is this true?”
His tone is still light, but there’s something sharper beneath it now, a weight behind the question that makes my stomach twist.
It seems I’m being put to another test. Though for what reason, I can’t even begin to guess.
Mikhail already told me to go to hell by making it abundantly clear he doesn’t negotiate.
That he doesn’t care whether I live or die or whether anyone else here does either, for that matter.
So what’s the point in dragging this out?
In rubbing salt into wounds that are already raw and festering?
What point is left to prove when I’ve already shown them what they wanted to see? That I’m broken beyond repair.
It doesn’t escape me that this might not be about strategy at all.
It might just be about cruelty. And if there’s anyone who’d orchestrate an entire charade just for the pleasure of watching someone squirm, it’s Mikhail.
He doesn’t need a reason. Sadism is his baseline.
He enjoys turning pain into performance.
Still, I nod anyway because what’s the alternative? If they’re moving me around by taking me to a different room to be questioned again, or paraded in front of another face I haven’t seen before, then something on the outside is shifting.
Even the smallest shift in routine could mean something. Anything.
The guard lifts himself back onto his feet. He crosses the room in a few strides, boots echoing softly off the concrete floor, then disappears through the heavy door with a muted click as it seals behind him.
I stay still, breathing slowly while counting each second in my head just to keep from unraveling. Three minutes pass, maybe four, and then he’s back.
But this time, he isn’t empty-handed.
He returns carrying something bulky and ominous—a black, boxy handset tethered to a large square encryption unit. Wires coil from the receiver to the machine in a tangled, almost colorful pattern, like someone tried to make it less threatening by giving it bright cords.
This is military-grade, secure and utilitarian, built to survive a war zone.
Both guards flank around me when it’s set down onto the table.
The younger one steps forward and lifts the receiver.
Without speaking, he brings it to my ear, hovering it there until I raise my free hand to take it from him.
My fingers tremble, but I grip it anyway, curling my hand around the cold plastic.
The moment I press it to my ear, static hisses through the line. It crackles and stutters, drowning out everything else.
And then I hear a voice on the other end of the line say, “Ivy.”
There’s amusement bubbling just beneath the calm surface, a cruel edge to every syllable, a mocking lilt in his tone that scrapes over my nerves like sandpaper. It’s subtle but unmistakable.
He’s enjoying this.
Of course he is.
I grip the receiver tighter, my knuckles whitening.
For a split second, the urge to hurl the phone against the wall is so strong I almost do it.
I can see in my mind the plastic shattering as soon as it hits the concrete, the cord snapping loose from the encryption box, the satisfying crack of it echoing through the cold room.
I almost do, but I don't because that’s what he wants. He’s waiting for me to lose it, testing me to see if I’m actually as weak as I’m pretending I am.
“They tell me you aren’t doing well. Is that true?” he asks. Each word presses harder against the bruises that he left on me the last time I stupidly let myself believe, even for a moment, that he might listen.
My jaw tightens as rage swells in my chest, dark and all-consuming.
I want to tell him to go to hell. I want to spit every vile, furious thought I’ve been choking down since the moment he took Leo from me.
I want to scream that I hope whatever reckoning is crawling its way toward him drags him down screaming, and that I pray I’ll be there to watch it happen with nothing but satisfaction burning in my heart.
I swallow the fire in my throat and carefully say, “I want my son.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line followed by a laugh. It’s a rich sound, filled with a strange kind of delight I’m not expecting. It seems whatever part he thought I was going to play is the exact one I nailed.
“Straight to the point. No dramatics. I can appreciate that in a person,” he muses.
“I want him back. Whatever it takes.” The words leave my mouth before I can second-guess them, heavy with desperation. I don’t care how it sounds. I don’t care what it costs me. I just need my son back.
Mikhail doesn’t respond right away. On the other end of the line, there’s only silence for a long enough moment where I’m terrified the line has disconnected.
Then a soft, thoughtful sound rings down the line.
“And what are you willing to do for that? Because you of all people should understand that everything has a price.”
My fingers tighten around the receiver. “Tell me what you want.”
Mikhail lets out a low chuckle. “You sound tired but you don’t sound completely done.
I like that about you, Ivy. It tells me you’re an honest person, one I can trust to relay this message properly.
I want something simple. I want Maksim’s Bratva.
Of course, that’s not something you can give me. Which is unfortunate.”
My throat tightens.
“So,” he finishes, “you’ll stay right where you are until Maksim finally sets aside his pride and gives me what I’m owed.”
Helplessness surges in my chest, but I swallow it down.
I don’t know why it hasn’t truly hit me until this moment, why I’ve been so stubbornly blind to it.
Maybe I didn’t want to believe someone could go this far, could stoop this low.
All along, I thought Mikhail had taken Leo and me out of revenge.
To settle an old score and punish Maksim for what happened to his father.
And while that may have been part of it, it isn’t the whole truth.
This isn’t just about vengeance. It’s about reclamation.
Mikhail doesn’t just want to hurt Maksim.
He wants to replace him. He wants the Bratva not as a trophy, but as payment.
As inheritance. As something he believes is owed to him like he said.
He wants to watch Maksim bleed and then take everything he’s built, his power, his name, his legacy. Somewhere in all of this, Leo and I became tools to leverage that final blow.
A sudden, sad realization comes to me.
“He’ll never agree to that,” I say.
He’s worked too hard to preserve what he’s built. He spent five years taking down his enemies, his own kin, in order to maintain the vision he had for the Bratva’s future. While he may want Leo and me back, we aren’t worth throwing away all that work.
Especially if his inner circle has anything to say about it.
They would never, ever, allow him to step down. They’d sooner drug him and put him on a plane back to Russia before watching him concede to Mikhail.
Mikhail speaks again, his tone untouched by emotion.
It’s serenely cruel. “There is no bargaining with me beyond that. If he chooses to let you go in order to keep the Bratva, then that is his choice. You are, and always will be, collateral damage when it comes to him. While you may not agree with it, that’s exactly what you signed up for when you jumped in bed with a Pakhan. ”
Tears blur my vision. I knew that, of course I did. It’s not lost on me that every step I took back then—every stolen glance, every kiss, every night I let myself fall deeper into him—was a choice. A choice to be part of something I didn’t fully understand until it was too late to walk away clean.
The moment I found out he was still alive, I knew it could end like this, but I was naive and let myself believe things could be different. I allowed myself to be seduced back into this life and his arms. And now it’s going to be the death of not just me, but my son, too.
Tears leak out of my eyes.
What do I do?
The question spirals in my head, louder than Mikhail’s voice, louder than the hum of the static still faintly bleeding through the receiver.
A memory crashes through the panic like a flare in the dark.
Last night. The nurse.