by Jaden Wilkes
Columbia nodded her head and kept her mouth squeezed shut. She wanted to scream and bite and attack, but she understood this wasn’t in her best interest at the moment.
“So when that princess needs a new knight to protect her, she’d better think about good old Mike here. Because, princess, when I fuck you I’ll be nice about it. I might even take you home with me and let you live a few more years. But if any of these other guys get at you,” he nodded towards the guard Columbia had kicked, “they’ll fuck every hole in your body, and probably cut a few more to stick their dicks in. You understand?”
She shuddered, but nodded yes. He smiled and moved her lank hair off her forehead. She closed her eyes and let him touch her face. He forced his finger in her mouth and pumped it like a cock, muttering how he would fuck her like that when he had her all to himself.
She ran inside her head, back to the place she had gone when her stepfather was still alive, when he was the one invading her body and destroying her soul. She curled up in her mind and hid from what was happening to her body.
This time was different; she knew Dimitri would come for her. She had to believe he was coming. As long as she played along and stayed safe, she could watch them all bleed and burn when he showed up.
He pulled his finger out and sucked on it. He smiled and said, “Even when you’re filthy, you’re a beautiful girl. I can’t wait to taste that pussy.”
He got up and left, shutting the door behind him. She heard him punch the guard on the way out and yell something about keeping his hands off the princess in cell fifteen.
In a strange twist of fate, the man she had targeted for death had ended up becoming her protector.
He would still die, and she would take immense pleasure fucking his mouth with a sharpened blade.
*****
Sleep was almost too much to bear for Columbia. She always dreamt of Dimitri, every time her eyes were closed for more than a heartbeat, his face appeared and he lived in her mind.
She wanted to stay there, to never leave, but she kept waking up.
They would feed them once or twice a day; it was impossible to keep track down here.
It was always the same thing, a thin rice gruel, sometimes it had a few limp vegetables thrown in, every once in a while it had a chunk of unknown meat.
It didn’t matter, Columbia ate whatever they brought, sucking it back like an animal, dipping her fingers in the metal bowl at the end, bringing them out to suck on them. She didn’t want to miss a drop.
She imagined she’d been here at least a week, possibly two…she really had no idea, but it seemed an eternity had passed already. She ate and exercised and did what she could to keep healthy.
For Dimitri and for his baby.
Columbia was certain now. She had bought herself a pregnancy test back in Vienna when they’d visited right before this last mission. When they’d been setting up their route and planning her possible escapes if things went wrong.
She’d peed on it in the hotel room, her hands shaking as she watched the little digital readout turn to a plus sign.
She’d wanted to burst into the bedroom and shove it in Dimitri’s face, scream at him that he was going to be a daddy, dance around and jump on the bed in joy.
She hadn’t though; she’d been too scared. She’d been terrified.
She had always thought of herself as barren. After her stepfather’s repeated rapes with no resulting pregnancies, she had convinced herself she’d never have a child.
Her second thought had been that last mission. She’d suspected they were close to finding Sergei’s successor and couldn’t tell Dimitri until they got the guy in Vienna.
She knew he would have shut the entire thing down, forced her to stay home in Malta, hovered around her worried about the baby.
And she should have let him. It was a bitter pill to swallow now, how stupid she had been, thinking she could handle this.
Now, here in the dark, damp cell, she imagined she had felt their baby kick for the first time. So far away from him, she knew his seed had taken root inside of her and was growing now, a reason for her to live.
She wanted to weep for it though, this moment should have been a joy. She should have run to him and had him fall on his knees in front of her to cradle her belly, feel their little fish wiggling just under the surface.
They should be picking out baby furniture and arguing over names.
Instead she was licking her filthy fingers and thinking of ways to bribe the guards for a few more drops of water every day.
She was a pathetic, grasping creature living in the dark, not glowing with the power of bringing new life into the world, as she should be.
She longed for Dimitri right now more than anything she had longed for in her life. More than she had longed for death when her stepfather had raped her, more than she had longed for Dimitri’s touch when she had him with her.
It was terrible to find that when you thought you had been through the worst life had to offer; it always found a way to drag you lower.
She dozed on and off, fitfully, shivering and always woke to find her hands cupping her stomach. She imagined she could feel a slight pressure there, a bulge perhaps.
When she looked back through her periods, she realized she must already be about four months along. She had always been irregular though, and never really paid attention; having convinced herself she was infertile. She also knew nothing about pregnancy, and couldn’t be certain. The kick she’d felt could have been a gas pain for all she really knew, but in her deepest heart she believed she was carrying Dimitri’s child.
It was the only reason she would survive if he were dead. It would be the one thing that would keep her alive against the odds of seeing him again.
She was being driven into madness by the dreams. In this one she had seen him walking down the hallway in their home in Malta. He always seemed to be steps ahead of her, not listening to her cry out his name or beg him to stop. The hallway turned and twisted at impossible angles, but he was always just ahead.
She woke in a sweat, her skin was cold and clammy and she thought she was going to be sick. She took several long, deep breaths and sat up with her head between her knees. The nausea passed and she stood to stretch her legs. Her muscles were cramped and tight, as though she really had just been running.
“Hey,” she heard a small voice call to her. She looked at the door, but it was still closed. She thought she must be losing her mind, but the voice repeated, “Hey.”
“Um, hey?” she replied.
“Come down here,” the voice said. It sounded like a young girl and was coming from the wall near floor at the head of her cot, a small crack between two cells.
Columbia knelt and whispered, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” the girl said, “you were crying in your sleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. I think about a week or ten days. Maybe more. When did they bring you in?”
“Last night. There are fourteen of us, from a house in Berlin.”
Columbia could have cried, having this small voice comforting her in the darkness of her cell. She wished she could reach through the tiny crack and touch the girl; find some human contact. The girl’s voice had a very slight Russian accent; she sounded soft and intelligent.
“Where are we? Do you know?”
“I think we’re back in Romania. The girl I came with is from Romania, and she recognized one of the villages.”
“Romania?” Columbia asked. She knew nothing of the country.
“You were calling out a name in your sleep…Dimi?”
Columbia was embarrassed that she had shared such a vulnerable moment with a total stranger. “Yes,” she replied.
“Who is he to you?”
“My love, my everything,” Columbia said and felt tears welling up again. She choked them back, she wouldn’t cry, she couldn’t cr
y. Her body couldn’t handle it. She needed to stay strong for their child.
“I had an uncle Dimi,” the girl said and laughed. “He was one of the happiest parts of my childhood. You know, one time he flew all the way from South America just to be at my sixth birthday. He then flew back as soon as it was over. He worked for my father.”
“My Dimi would probably do the same,” she replied and smiled, imagining the birthdays they would celebrate with their baby.
“My father wasn’t a good man, and people said Uncle Dimi wasn’t either, but I never thought he was bad. A lot of the men who worked for my father were very, very bad, but not him.”
“You were very lucky,” Columbia said. “Where is he now?”
“I haven’t seen him for a very long time, years. It was strange; he and my father were as thick as thieves. Well, they kinda were thieves,” the girl said, “but he showed up for my twelfth birthday and disappeared. I never saw him again.”
“That’s terrible, do you know where he is now?”
“I think he died in a fire. People talked, but nobody would ever tell me exactly what happened,” she said. She paused and gave a little laugh, “I was really angry at him, for leaving, I felt like he’d abandoned me to my father and his horrible gang. He was a great, huge man, tattooed and very fierce looking. But so handsome, the women were always hanging off of him. It was ridiculous.”
Columbia froze; the girl had essentially just described her Dimi, her great huge man. The fire, the tattoos, it all added up. Almost afraid of the answer, she asked, “What’s your father’s name?”
“Sergei,” the girl answered, “although you can say ‘was’, my father died a while ago.”
“Iryna?” Columbia whispered.
She was met with silence. Finally the girl answered, “Yes, how did you know my name?”
Columbia could have wept and laughed hysterically at the fates and their cursed games. The one person who she connected with while wasting away in a prison cell was the daughter of the man she killed. How could she ever admit to the girl that she was the reason Iryna was here?
“Your Dimi is my Dimi,” she said, “he’s spoken of you fondly over the time we’ve been together.”
“Your Dimi? Oh my god, you mean you are with my Uncle Dimi? He’s alive? How is he? Where do you live? How long have you been with him? I have a million questions!”
Columbia smiled and said, “Let’s see, yes, my Dimi. I’m sorry but I claim ownership of him, I hope you understand.” Iryna laughed and reassured her that she was pleased for the both of them. Columbia went on, “I am with him, he’s alive and very well, and we’ve been together for a little over two years now.”
“You have to tell me how you met. How did you manage to capture the heart of a man like that?”
Columbia skipped the locations of their life together, and of course skipped the intimate parts, the crazy animalistic, savage sex they shared…but she told Iryna the unlikely way the two of them met and how they had saved each other in the end.
Iryna was a stranger, but felt much more like family, especially in this place. She surprised herself at how much she shared and how much Iryna told her. She was nervous at first, wondering if this was a set up to glean information about Dimitri, but Iryna’s sincerity and exuberant spirit won her over.
When the guard arrived with the slop for dinner or breakfast, whatever it was Columbia couldn’t tell, she felt a little more alive. Connecting with Iryna through the crack in the wall had proved to be the one thing she’d needed to stay connected to her humanity.
Now how was she going to let Iryna know that she was responsible for Sergei’s death?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DIMITRI
Boian’s crew was a bizarre mixture of men and women, old and young, tall and short. The one thing they all had in common was a fire burning in their eyes, the fire of the determined, those cast off by regular society and ready to fight to prove their worth.
Dimitri stood in front of them as Boian apparently filled them in on what was happening, he couldn’t be certain as his Romanian was sadly lacking.
Boian finished up in what Dimitri assumed was a ‘Braveheart’ type rousing speech and they all cheered, three times, loudly and with their knives in the air.
Boian turned to Dimitri and said, “Okay, we’re on board with this. Where are your people?”
“I don’t have people,” Dimitri replied, “Nico is my right hand man but he’s hiring mercenaries to support our ranks.”
“Mercenaries? Men don’t fight well when they just fight for money. You need to give them something to believe in.”
“Not these men,” Dimitri said, “these men will do anything for the right price.”
“What if somebody else’s price is…righter?”
“I have more money than God, nobody will outbid me for their loyalty. I guarantee it, on my life and the life of the woman I love.”
“Well, I have no other choice than to believe you. So I choose to believe you.” Boian turned back and dismissed his crew. They broke rank immediately, milling about the narrow hallway connecting the entrance chamber and what appeared to be the next room in Boian’s underground kingdom. He’d been meeting with Boian down here for the last few days and had yet to be invited deeper inside. That was fine with him.
“Have you heard anything else about their location?” Dimitri asked. Being kept in the dark…well, not exactly in the dark…being kept in this grey zone of information was getting under his skin. He was jumpy and still wasn’t sleeping well. It had been ten days since Columbia had been taken. He wouldn’t sleep properly again until she was back in his arms.
He hungered for her; a full body need to have her near. It distracted him from regular activities, like eating and making small talk. He’d gotten the reputation amongst Boian’s people as being moody and unpredictable. He made no apologies for his behaviour; he wasn’t quite in his right mind at the moment.
“We are almost certain we have his location. And we are almost certain Ioana is with Columbia; this holding centre is where they keep difficult captives, in order to break them in and redistribute them to other countries. In Columbia’s case, I’m sure they are planning on simply breaking her for information. To find you.”
Dimitri had been ruthless. He’d spent each night patrolling Bucharest, finding men he was almost certain were connected with the gang he was after…and killing them. He’d left a trail of bodies in his wake, each cut up beyond recognition and each worse than the last.
He knew he was losing touch with the man Columbia had drawn out, but he didn’t give a fuck at this point. He needed to be cold and inhuman in order to find her. She would melt his heart and bring him back to reality once he had her near, once he could hold her and stroke her hair, kiss her lips and talk in low voices about their future.
His cock ached most of all, he hadn’t been able to find release since her capture, and it felt wrong to come while she was held so far away from him. It was like his body betrayed him, wouldn’t let him find satisfaction unless it was Columbia’s cunt, Columbia’s mouth, Columbia’s fingers.
“They want to break her,” he said, “I will fucking break every last one of them. I will destroy them.”
“I believe you,” Boian said, “A week ago, I would have laughed at you. But having heard the rumours about the corpses you’ve been leaving every night…I believe you. You’re a dangerous man, Dimitri, and I am happy to have you on my side.”
“I’m pleased we’re in this together. Not the circumstances, but knowing you feels like I’m doing Sanda’s memory a good deed.”
Boian’s face clouded over, talking about his mother was still not something he was comfortable with. “Yes, it is the worst possible circumstances for the both of us. I say once your mercenaries get here, we storm the mansion and find our women.”
“They will take a couple days to ready themselves. Nico will join us soon. So this coming Friday we attack.”
“We attack,” Boian echoed. They stood in silence until Dimitri could no longer stomach staying still.
“I’m going out again tonight. I’ll leave the corpse on the steps of the house that had Ioana, the one she escaped from. I want to send a strong message.”
“I’ll meet you in the morning to go over the house design. We only have a general outline, and I’m certain it would have been fortified. We’ll find a way in though.”
“We have to,” he replied and shook Boian’s hand, “we have no other choice. So we’ll choose to.”
*****
Dimitri returned to the hotel to change, to put on something that would allow him access to the city’s most exclusive clubs. Money, power, these were things he could wear outwardly. Clothing truly did make the man, and in terms of the criminal elite, they were easily swayed by such expressions.
The club was on the third floor of a low building in Centru Vechi, Bucharest’s old town. He took the stairs two by two and rapped on the door at the top. A window slid open and a man’s wide, rough face peered through.
He spoke a quick sentence in Romanian and Dimitri cursed his lack of the language.
Dimitri countered in Russian and was met with an irritated string of apparent expletives.
He asked, “English?” and hoped they could find a shared language.
“Yes,” the man said, “what the fuck you want?”
He had a firm grasp at least. “I want in, asshole. What do you think?”
