Chapter 9
Zoya
Iwoke to the hum of ventilation and the low burn of the propane heater. The air tasted of metal and concrete, which had a weird scent of sterile, contained air that was devoid of anything real.
My father had always preferred sterile things. Clean negotiations, ledgers, and exits. Mess was for lesser men. But apparently, that was all just for show. He preferred things dark and messy and heinous when no one was looking, unless they paid for it.
I pushed myself upright on the narrow bed, blanket slipping from my shoulders. My wrists were still raw where the cuffs had been the night before, thin angry rings of red that throbbed when I flexed my hands. The door was bolted shut from the outside, but strangely enough, I’d never felt safer.
Dmitry hadn’t locked me here because he was afraid of me.
He’d kept me here because I was a variable that needed to stay in one place while the world adjusted around me.
Another part of me whispered he had to have a semblance of gentleness in him to put me in this safe room where all my comforts and needs were met.
Time passed strangely underground. There were no windows here, no sky to trace the light or noise from staff. Only the steady mechanical breath of the vents and my own thoughts.
I ate a protein bar and finished a bottle of water, and after a shower and changing into a new set of clothes, I heard the scratching of the padlock on the door.
The bolt snapped back and the heavy door swung open with a groan and the scrape of steel on concrete.
Dmitry stepped inside, filling the small space with broad shoulders, cold air, and control.
“Did you get what you needed from my father?” I asked.
“Not yet. It’s been twenty-one hours,” he said. “He has three left.”
I nodded but remained silent. If my father didn’t send what was demanded of him within twenty-four hours, Dmitry’s hand would be forced. I heard it myself.
Velvet box. Ribbon. Pieces of me.
Although, a strong part of me didn’t believe Dmitry would actually mutilate me. Or maybe it was hopeful thinking that my life wasn’t in someone else’s hands.
My father hadn’t asked if Dmitry was bluffing. He had asked something far more telling: whether I still had value.
I sat on the cot as Dmitry watched me. He stared at me to see how I handled pressure. Men like him didn’t mistake tears for weakness or composure for strength. They knew both were tools.
“Come on,” he said in a tone that sounded softer than normal, unusual for how cold this man could be.
I followed him out of the room and up the staircase that led back toward the slaughterhouse levels.
The icy temperature dropped the higher we climbed, and by the time we reached the old office, I was shivering again but had been smart enough to bring a blanket with me and wrap it around my shoulders.
The office felt colder than the bunker below. Dmitry pushed the door open and let me step inside ahead of him. The howl of the weather creeping through the cracks and broken windowpanes of the building vibrated up from the concrete floor as if the building still remembered what it used to be.
A laptop sat on the metal table with its lid already open, and the closer I moved toward it, the clearer the screen became. An encrypted notification blinked in red at the bottom corner.
Dmitry didn’t speak as he sat down nor did he tell me to move.
He let me stare at the screen and experience all of this chain-free.
He tapped a few keys, and the encrypted attachment expanded across the screen in neat blocks of cipher and code.
There were no men here to run interference, no subordinates to handle the technical side.
Everything Dmitry did was done with his own hands.
I realized then why people feared him. He didn’t need an army. He was one.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the layers to peel back.
When the last shell dissolved and raw data finally flooded the screen, I stepped closer despite myself.
Three warehouse IDs appeared, along with mapped locations, shipment manifests, inventory spreadsheets, and contact numbers that looked like another language to me.
Dmitry exhaled without looking away from the monitor. “Disposable,” he murmured to himself. He moved through the tabs with the same precision he’d used the night before when he made me speak into the phone.
A second tab showed lists of clients. Some names I recognized as associates of my father. I’d even met many of them; their grimy, greasy gazes always locked on me as if they were stripping away layers of my clothing.
“Is that everything you asked for?” I asked quietly.
The chill in the room now came from Dmitry. “He’s still calculating how much of you I’ll keep intact if he feeds me trash.”
The words should have cut, but they didn’t.
They only confirmed what I’d learned over the course of my life and especially since I was taken.
My father had never loved me, not the way daughters were meant to be loved.
He’d invested in me and protected me because I was a valuable object that gained interest when properly groomed and rarely damaged.
Dmitry remained silent as he kept working, clicking through additional tables and compressed directories.
His focus never wavered, and the longer I watched him, the more I understood why his name had been whispered with the same reverence other men reserved for saints and surgeons.
He wasn’t just deadly; he was also damn smart.
The way he dismantled my father’s data was deliberate and methodical, like he was cutting into infected bone and removing the rot piece by piece.
Then he reached the footer, and I knew whatever was in that one inconspicuous line buried at the bottom of the manifest must have slipped through whatever filtering my father intended.
route_black_sea → genoa → sicily → buyer_group_rossi
I knew what that was… who that was. My breath left me all at once, and I covered my mouth with a trembling hand. Rossi. Of all the names my father hid, that was the one he never let slip. The Rossis weren’t street players or even warehouse operators.
They were at the top of the food chain, the type of people who bought screaming women inside of shackled crates.
I didn’t realize I’d moved until the edge of the desk pressed against my thigh. “God,” I whispered.
Dmitry finally looked at me. He didn’t appear sorry or even surprised. His expression was that of a man who had seen too many fathers weaponize their bloodlines to be shocked by it anymore.
“You think he’s sparing you from being sold like those women?” he asked. “No. You’ll just bring a much, much higher price than them when he sells you.” His words weren’t cruel, just precise, truth without anesthetic.
Something inside of me clicked I didn’t shatter.
Didn’t explode or scream. It simply tilted into hatred and pivoted with quiet certainty, as if a lock inside of me found the right key.
For the first time since Dmitry had taken me, my father wasn’t the most dangerous man in the room. He was just the most desperate.
My gaze returned to the buyer line on the screen.
Rossi. I swallowed hard. “I know that family,” I said, almost to myself.
“Lucia Rossi. The only time I wasn’t homeschooled was when my father—along with armed guards he insisted I have—allowed me to go to school in Milan.
That’s where I met her. I was there for two years.
She was kind and gentle. She’s the kind of girl who always had ink stains on her fingers from marking up her classical literature books.
” The memory tugged at places I didn’t expect.
“She used to sneak pastries into class and pretend she’d bought too many on accident so no one felt embarrassed to take one.
We weren’t best friends, but she was the closest thing I ever had to someone genuine in my life. ”
I exhaled, dazed by how easily the past resurfaced.
“Her mother hosted charity luncheons. Her father smiled too much. Like a slimy salesman who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. But Lucia never talked about any of that. She was kind and sweet, and I could tell she was a good person.” I didn’t realize I was crying until warm tears tracked down my cheeks.
“She’d go quiet whenever anyone brought up where her family’s money came from.
Looking at this…” I gestured to the footer on the screen, bile rising.
“I refuse to believe she knew about this.” My voice cracked on the last word.
“Either she’d been left in the dark like me or she learned how to pretend it didn’t exist. I don’t know which is worse. ”
Dmitry didn’t answer. He didn’t mock me for saying it nor did he offer any comfort. He just listened, and somehow, that had more of an impact than cynicism would have.
Before I could say another word, the burner vibrated across the table. Dmitry picked up on the second ring and set it to speaker.
“Well?” my father spat out. “You have your list.”
Dmitry didn’t take his eyes off me. “Partial.”
“It’s a beginning.”
“It’s an insult.” Dmitry’s voice even.
My father’s breath scraped through the line. “You got what you asked for.”
Dmitry’s tone didn’t waver. “I asked for the buyers.”
There was a pause, one long enough that I felt the calculated hum through the line. “I want proof she’s alive and untouched.”
Dmitry didn’t gesture toward me. He didn’t need to. I cleared my throat before speaking. “I’m here,” I said, voice steady. “Alive. Untouched.”
“Good.” Relief threaded in my father’s tone, not because I still breathed but because untouched meant unspoiled. Meant marketable. “Now listen carefully, Zoya. This man—”
“No,” I interrupted, and even I was startled by how steady the word sounded. “You listen. If you stall again, he won’t send ribbons and velvet boxes. He’ll send something big enough to bury.” The silence that followed wasn’t outrage. It was recalibration.
My father had spent my entire life crafting me into something polite and quiet. He’d never once considered that I might grow teeth.
Dmitry didn’t smile or nod, but something in his posture shifted. I wanted to believe it was his approval.
“Twenty-four more hours,” Dmitry said. “This time, you send the buyers.” My father inhaled, and for the first time since this began, fear curled beneath his anger.
“You don’t get those,” he whispered. “Those men don’t tolerate exposure. They’ll kill us both.”
Dmitry didn’t blink. “That’s not my problem.” He ended the call without ceremony.
The wind howled against the building all around us, and the laptop hummed as the data continued to scroll. My pulse slowed from frantic to deliberate. I half expected him to take me back downstairs, bolt the steel door, and make my world small and quiet again.
Instead of shutting down the laptop and ordering me to stay upstairs, Dmitry closed it with a quiet, final click and stood. “We’re done up here.”
He didn’t raise his voice or look at me to confirm I was following. He just walked toward the door with the kind of certainty that didn’t need permission.
I didn’t hesitate to follow him. The office was freezing; the concrete and steel holding on to old winter, the wind outside hissing through busted window panes like a warning.
Dmitry would never have admitted it, but keeping me up in that draft was never an actual consideration. He could pretend he didn’t care if I froze, but the choices he made already betrayed him.
He led me down the same concealed staircase as earlier, farther down past rusted meat hooks and grated drains from the slaughterhouse days. Farther still, past the cold rooms where carcasses once hung, and finally down to the reinforced bunker he had carved out beneath all of it.
Once inside, the warmth hit me. It wasn’t excessive but just enough to make my skin prickle as blood returned to places the office had numbed.
He waited until I stepped inside and the heavy door thudded shut behind us. “The buyers come tomorrow,” he said. “I need you rested. You’ll speak again, and he’ll listen differently.”
There it was. No more “leverage.” No more “asset.” No more language that reduced me to a bargaining chip. He didn’t call me important, either. Dmitry simply treated me like someone who needed her strength for what came next.
I nodded once, and it surprised me how natural that felt. Not obedient or submissive. Just aligned.
Outside these walls, war was already moving with brokers recalculating risks, soldiers shifting positions, financiers preparing exit strategies, and men who profited off other people’s daughters, deciding whether the margins still justified the blood.
But down here, the world was quieter, cleaner, and less complicated. And for the first time, I wasn’t just the object they were fighting over. I was an instrument.
I thought of Lucia Rossi with her ink-stained fingers and pastries wrapped in napkins. I wondered if she slept soundly in whatever villa or penthouse the Rossis called home. I wondered if she had any idea her family dealt with refrigerated containers and crates that screamed when they were loaded.
Dmitry must have read my thoughts rushing across my face. “The Rossis don’t involve themselves unless the margins are exceptional,” he said, checking the vents and the heater as if he’d done it a hundred times.
“If Lucia knows,” I murmured, “she’d never say it out loud.” But I refused to believe she knew or approved of that.
“And if she doesn’t know,” he replied, switching off the overhead light so only the low lamp glowed, “she’ll learn.” A simple truth but a brutal one. In our world, innocence wasn’t preserved. It was delayed, used, and then destroyed.
He moved toward the door, but his eyes lingered on me before he opened it. Something crossed his face. “Get warm,” he said, voice lower now. “You’ll need your strength for what’s coming.”
The door didn’t slam. It didn’t even fully close at first. It lingered for a breath, as if he were waiting to see if I’d break or shatter or beg. When I did none of those things, I was sealed inside.
The heater hummed, and the room smelled faintly of detergent and cedar. I curled onto the bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I thought I knew but realizing nothing had been true. My life had been a lie.
But my eyes were open now. I was done being afraid of the unknown. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel small.
I felt dangerous.