by Jane Henry
I don’t know how long I laid on the ground, my lungs constricted and vision blurred, the world distant and hazy as I fought my way back from the dead, breath by brutal, agonizing breath. When I made it to the bridge, they were gone. I knew they would be. But I wasn’t dead, and that was a start.
At first, I assumed the men who took me weren’t properly trained. A bullet to the temple and proof of my death would’ve been a much more efficient way to kill me.
But the loyalty of the brotherhood runs deep, and one does not kill fellow Bratva easily, even for a payout. The men who took me knew who I was.
It’s been three months. Three fucking months. Ninety-one days, to be precise. I’ve counted every one of them in my relentless pursuit to find her, and I will find her.
I gave up nearly everyone who meant anything to me. I had to. A connection to me would jeopardize too much. I let them all believe I was dead—my sister, my brothers. Hell, my entire brotherhood, even Rafe and Laina.
There was only one I trusted—one I risked, and even now, I wonder if I made a mistake.
I bought a burner phone and called my father. And I told him everything.
How Marissa Rykov was sold for auction by her traitorous motherfucking father, one of the most high-ranking members of our brotherhood. My father’s friend, now my lifelong enemy.
How I took her and ran, to save her.
How they found us.
How they tore her from me and left me for dead.
How I escaped.
The sounds of her screaming my name have haunted me since the day they pulled her out of my grasp. The sight of her terror-filled eyes—Khristos.
Sometimes I imagine seeing those eyes in the rows of women brought forward for auction. But none hold the brilliant light that only Marissa owns.
The irony burns. My one job for the past four years has been to protect her, to keep her safe, and now that I’ve done just that, I’m excommunicated from the brotherhood. We can’t even prove that Myron was the one that took her, though his story implicates him. He told my father she was killed in a car accident, and went as far as to fabricate details of the story. Technically, Myron did nothing worthy of punishment from the Bratva. We have no means of proving what he did.
Yet.
And we don’t know how deep his traitorous, despicable behavior runs. He sold her to pay off a debt, that much I know. Selling her meant he was in deep with the Thieves, our rival brotherhood. And if he owed a debt, there was a reason for that. Unraveling the lies that bind this story will be a complicated process.
Under my father’s instruction, I changed my identity. And with his blessing, I pursued Marissa.
I underwent the slow, arduous task of removing the tattoos that marked me as Bratva. The lasers hurt, but I’m used to pain. It was the physical reminder of my death to the brotherhood that ached, that tore the fibers of my heart into pieces, and drove a wedge between my soul and my body. A necessary evil. And I’ve spent these past months deep in the trenches of the human slave trade in America’s underground. Hoping. Searching. I will not give up.
I run a hand across my brow and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“May I get you a refill, sir?”
A pretty young woman on stilettos, wearing the customary tight black skirt and skin-tight white top holds a silver tray by my side.
I shake my head and hold the drink in my hand, dismissing her with a scowl. Kindness is a dead giveaway, but being an asshole makes me unremarkable.
Bowing her head, she walks to the next self-important bastard at the table to my left.
I sip the dregs of my drink, ice hitting my lips, and scan the crowd. I observe every detail. There are clues, but each trail I’ve followed has left me empty-handed. Tonight might be no different, but one day will be. I will not rest until I find her.
My father honored my request to treat me as if I were dead, and to my surprise, cut me the sum total of my buy-in with the American contingent. I took some of the money and used it to form a new identity. I invested, some of my investments far more ethical than others. I’ve purchased women—so many goddamn women—in the hopes of finding one who will give me a clue to her whereabouts, earning me a reputation as one of the underground elite, one of the buyers. But I’ve not found any information from the women I’ve taken. Some are tight-lipped, others beaten into submission, but the majority are ignorant of the inner-workings of their traders.
One day, I will find a clue that leads me to her. One day, I will end the lives of the men that took her. One day, she will be mine again, or I will die trying to find her. Whichever comes first.
And something tells me tonight is different.
After I’d gotten myself onto solid footing under my new alias, I hired a private investigator to look into the men I suspect are responsible for her abduction. He found nothing until this week, but what he discovered… there’s promise.
My phone rings and I answer before the first vibration stops. Eager to hear what he’s found.
“Yeah.” A casual word meant to deflect attention, when I want to say, “Tell me everything. What did you find? Where is she? How can I find her?” My pulse races, my body stilling with instinctive knowledge that this call is the one I’ve been waiting for.
“I have good news and bad news.” I grip the phone tighter. Jacobs is lucky he delivers news to me on the phone. If he were in front of me now I’m not sure I wouldn’t strangle him for drawing this out, for making me wait. I’d hold him by the throat and force the words out of his mouth.
“Spill.” My voice is tight, a string pulled taut, ready to snap with a wisp of air.
“The good news,” he begins, trying my patience once more because everyone fucking knows you don’t start with the good news. “She hasn’t been sold yet.” Relief floods through me so hard and fast, I’m dizzy and I need to close my eyes to steady the spinning room around me. If she hasn’t been sold, that means she’s still being groomed. There’s hope.
“She’s being sold at a virgin auction at the end of the month.”
A virgin auction. My skin crawls even while relief floods me.
I know how they test for virginity, and the thought of her undergoing the rigorous, invasive inspection makes me ready to kill.
“The bad news is, the auction is being run by a ring in Boston, exclusive buyers only. No outside buyers allowed.” I clench my teeth.
“How the fuck am I going to get into that?”
“I have a plan,” he says, with unmistakable glee. “And your father helped me, but we have to act immediately.”
I drop my head and hiss into the phone, “I told you to leave my father the fuck out of this.” So fucking lucky he isn’t in front of me.
“I had no choice,” he goes on, speaking so rapidly I can hardly decipher his words. “But no one is the wiser.” That’s what he thinks.
“What’s the plan?” I ask between clenched teeth.
“Your father knows of several new recruits. He made a deal with Boston that he’d vet them himself. And with my help, the third is a ghost profile. Yours.”
“What?” I don’t understand.
“Six months ago, the Boston group suffered a major loss. Three of their best leaders were incarcerated and four murdered. They’re slowly inducting new members into their brotherhood, and asked the pakhans of neutral groups for assistance. Your father vetted three new members. Two of them are legitimate, they’ve passed every test and he sanctioned their induction into the Bratva life. The third is you.”
This is nothing like what I’ve known, but each Bratva group has rules of their own. I spent time with my brothers in Moscow, each member hand-picked by the pakhan, and many were orphaned boys raised by the founder. In America, the rules are a bit more liberal.
“What tests?” I’ve asked. He goes down a litany of criteria new recruits have to pass. Fluency in Russian, written testimonials from current Bratva, a record of having served a minimum of three years in a Russian pri
son. A lump forms in my throat and my voice sounds husky when I speak.
“And my father did all that for me?”
He pauses.
“Almost all. He hasn’t paid the entire entry fee, because that’s something only you can do.”
I nod, but I’m curious. What type of fee can I only pay myself? This is a risk, one I wish he hadn’t taken. If the truth comes out, my father’s life is forfeit. I suspect Myron’s connections run deeper than we know. I scrub a hand across my brow as Jacobs tells me where to go, and who I now am.
“What’s the fee?”
“They’re changing things up this time.”
I draw in a deep breath and grip my phone, pretending it’s his neck. “How so?”
“This time, the entry fee will be a tribute, as it were. An offering.”
“A tribute?”
“Your new brotherhood demands you become party to their trade. In this case, the auction. They demand a virgin tribute.”
He goes on relaying the finer details of my quest. I listen, closing my eyes when I realize what this will mean when he goes through the new details of who I will become.
Aleks Ambramov.
Twenty-nine years old, former Russian military.
Served time in prison in Russia for larceny, extortion, and racketeering.
And as he talks, I absorb this. I welcome my new opportunity. It’s a dangerous line I walk, and if my true identity is discovered, my enemies will kill me. And Marissa will be gone forever.
But I can do this. I must do this.
It will mean compromising even more of who I am. Breaking even more of the rules that bind me to ethics and morality.
It will mean truly becoming one of them.
But everything comes at a price. Even one’s soul.
And I will sell my soul to the devil to find her.
I just hope that when I do, I haven’t become the very monster I need to protect her from.
Chapter 9
Marissa
I tell myself the screams I hear aren’t real. They are recordings or… or something. Designed to scare us into submission and obedience, not because our keepers have any compassion, but because they’re lazy. They’d rather hold the end of a whip and make us cower than break a sweat wielding it.
But tonight, the screams sound far too authentic. I cover my ears with my hands, but I can’t drive them out, and the happy thoughts I conjure up to distract myself don’t come as easily as they once did.
I’ve held onto hope all these days… months… is it years? One loses track of time when kept prisoner. My mind has degenerated into bits and pieces of memories. And one solid hope, one solid memory, keeps my heart beating.
The hope and prayer that one day, I will find Nicolai. That one day, he will find me. That when they captured us, they didn’t kill him.
I have no way of knowing. No contact with anyone or anything from my past that could trace him, and even if I did, if he somehow survived the ambush, he’d have gone into hiding. For stealing me betrayed the brotherhood. And the punishment for betrayal is so severe, death itself is a kindness.
But my heart still beats, and he owns my heart. Knowing it beats on is the one hope I have that somewhere, somehow, he isn’t gone. That he rose from the dead.
I didn’t see them kill him. I saw him restrained by vicious hands, hooded in black, falling to his knees and dragged from me, while I screamed until my voice was hoarse. But knowing I didn’t see his lifeless body brings me hope. The tiniest filament of light in the darkness.
“Get up.” The vicious voice tears me from my memory and I leap to my feet. When left on my own, I can remember a little, and it’s then that I rally myself with hope of escape. But when they talk to me, and I’m dragged into their presence, I remember almost nothing. Who I am. Where I am. Who I was. My only focus, blind obedience.
We are quickly taught we have no choice but to obey, though there’s a hierarchy of command, and the man standing in front of me now is on the lowest rung. Still, it doesn’t hurt to choose the path of least resistance.
“What is it?” I ask, keeping my voice humble and meek. I have to, or they punish me.
“You’re wanted,” he sneers. Our guards wear hoods or masks to protect their identities, and it’s just as well. It’s easier to hate someone whose eyes you can’t see. I don’t know what it means to be “wanted.” I’ve lost track of nearly everything I knew before my abduction.
They brought me here to be prepared for something, but I don’t know what. I’ve been fed a strict diet, and given proper rest. Every hair on my body save my head has been plucked or waxed, but the worst of it all has been the training.
Dozens of us, forced to our knees in a room that resembles a dance studio. Taught to obey. Taught to submit. Taught to respect our future masters. Violated in as many ways as they can get away. But I can’t think of that.
As I walk with my hands cuffed behind my back, I keep my head bowed as I’ve been instructed. No eye contact with anyone. Submit to those in authority. My guard keeps his hand on my arm, and doesn’t speak until we’re right outside the door.
“What do you say when addressed?”
“Yes, sir. No, sir.”
I watch him nod from my peripheral vision, even with my head bowed.
“Keep your eyes cast down and do as you’re told,” he reminds me. I won’t forget. It’s been beaten into me too many times for me to forget my place.
There are no exits here. I haven’t seen the light of day in so long, I don’t know how my eyes would even adjust. It seems our buyers prefer pasty white women, since we never see sunlight. I remember there’s a thing called sunlight… but I can’t remember how it looks, or how it feels. Just that it is. Like me.
This is the little I’ve surmised from the bits and pieces of conversations I’ve overheard: I’m being kept longer than the others for an elite auction, because I’m a virgin. I don’t want to remember the testing they put me through to prove my virginity. It was a violation just short of actual rape itself. I’ve chosen to block that from my mind.
“Sit.” He yanks the chains on my wrists and makes me sit in a padded chair in front of a desk.
The voice that addresses me is a new one, wholly unfamiliar. Scratchy, like he’s smoked cigars since infancy, and utterly devoid of human emotion.
“On your knees, woman.”
I fall to my knees in front of the desk, my eyes still cast on the carpet in front of me. My wrists are secured behind my back in cuffs.
“Eyes to me.”
I shiver at the unexpected command. I know that raising my eyes will get me beaten, unless it’s a direct command, and this is a direct command. Holding my breath, I look up. Stunning blue eyes remind me of the man I once knew, but it’s the only resemblance. This man is smaller, thinner, and swarthy. He’s clean shaven with a strong, authoritative look about him, inciting respect from the men around him. I wonder who he is.
“I see you’ve been well-trained,” he says coldly, his lips pressed thin as he rakes his eyes over me. I’m dressed in a simple sheath, the only garment we’re allowed during grooming.
“Yes, sir,” I say quietly. I don’t recognize my voice. Long ago, I had fire in me, but the fire was quenched. My voice is quiet and subdued. Lifeless.
“Do you know why you’ve been brought here, woman?”
I shake my head. “No, sir.”
Leaning back in his chair, he places the very tips of his fingers together and nods.
“We’ve prepared and saved you for the virgin auction,” he says with a smile, standing at his desk and wandering over to me. To my surprise, he falls to one knee before me. Our keepers never kneel.
Placing one finger under my chin, he holds my gaze. “And you are a pretty little thing. I would take you as my own, but I have too much work to do.” I inwardly cower at the thought of being his. There’s something in his eyes that warns me he is an exacting master. Something cruel.
He s
peaks softly, as if to himself. “I can’t devote myself to your training the way I’d like to, not for some time yet. I have too much work to do.” He releases my chin and strokes my hair. “But it’s a shame. You would make a beautiful slave.”
My stomach clenches. Though I’ve heard similar words before, his musings make my skin crawl. I’ve been taught to obey. I’ve been taught to submit. But does anyone ever get used to complete subjugation?
I swallow, not sure if I’m required to respond to his thoughts or not. I watch as he gets to his feet and stretches his back, then cracks his knuckles.
“She’s fully prepared for the next auction?” he asks someone who stands at the back of the room.
“Fully, sir.”
“You have the paperwork certifying her virginity?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Very well. Bring her with the rest being moved.”
Where are we going?
He turns his back to me, effectively dismissing me. I stifle a whimper when I’m drawn to my feet by guards on either side, their hands on my elbows biting into my skin.
“And do not harm her,” the man says sharply, causing the guards to gentle their touches. “I want no mark on her when she’s brought to auction. If she disobeys an instruction, bring her to me.” He smiles, a slow, sadistic half-smile that makes nausea swirl in my belly. “If she disobeys, I’ll find a means to punish her without leaving a mark.”
He looks as if he wants me to earn punishment. They all do. They enjoy inflicting pain.
But I won’t. I know better.
Somewhere, in the dimmest part of my mind, a ray of hope shines. But before I can form a thought… before I can grasp the memory of something I can do, something that feels like the word free… the thought is gone, and I’m walking in line between the guards.
I’m brought to a large room that looks like a warehouse. I tremble so badly my knees knock into each other. For as long as I can remember, we had a very particular routine, and even though the routine was brutal, there’s comfort in familiarity. Wake up. Groomed. Cleaned. Breakfast. Exercise. Training. Rest. Training. And on it went. I know there was some sort of drugs they imparted to us. I have the vaguest recollection of being stuck with needles, and we were on occasion physically forced to take pills they gave us. I hate that what they’ve done affects my memory. I keep doing my best to remember, but even the most basic facts I hold onto sometimes slip away.
