by Holly Hart
"Here," he said, seemingly without a care in the world. "Hold it."
I took the blade and watched as the tip balanced on its artery. One tiny little jab. That's all it would take, and Roman's life would ebb away in a matter of seconds. I could watch the life flutter and dim in his eyes. I wanted to.
"You're thinking about it, aren't you?"
I shrugged but stayed silent.
"I don't blame you. I've been in your shoes. I know the thirst for vengeance that's running through your veins. And hell, you've already got the address. You could do it."
"Why are you telling me this? Do you want to die?"
Anger surged in me. It glowed like lava, and ran freely. It cried out to be sated, to be quenched. Killing Roman wouldn't help me, but it might save me – if this was all just his parlor trick.
"No. But it wasn't until recently that my life became worth living. If you snuff it out now, I won't know about it. Others will, but I won't."
"Maybe you're just bluffing," I said slowly.
I growled, and my bicep tensed, and through it all Roman barely blinked. He never flinched. I hurled the short blade as hard as I could against the wall. It landed with a loud thud, and the blade buried itself up to the hilt.
"So," Roman remarked mildly. "We're partners?"
It took a long time for my breath to return to normal. I'd come so close to letting the anger overwhelm me – again. I'd felt its blackness rising up, and struggled to bite it down. Every time I thought that I'd got what happened to me in that cell handled and under control, someone kicked the legs right out from under me. Every time I built a wall to contain the darkness inside me, someone tore it down.
Cara was the only person who'd seemed able, or even willing, to tame it. But she was gone, so that Band-Aid was ripped off too. I needed her back, before I snapped and did something unforgivable. The blackness was rising inside me now, baying for my father's blood. It threatened to overwhelm everything. My hopes, my dreams, my own child, it was prepared to dash it all against the rocks of fruitless, bloody ambition.
The voice whispering in my ear had never seemed fainter, or further away. The soul, maybe you could call it – or the conscience. The voice that says there's more to life than death, and more to life than breath.
That voice was the good part of me, and Cara was the only one who made it sing.
I needed to get her back.
I nodded, "Partners. But the second you –"
Roman cut me off. "No threats. We do this together, or not at all."
I grimaced, "Partners, then."
20
Cara
I woke up.
I could only tell because of the smell. It was everywhere – cold, damp and foul. The kind of stink that would never wash out.
Everything was black. Not just dark, not shadows and pinpricks, like light peeking through a blindfold, or the sun through gaps in a wooden fence – but black. It was so dark that I questioned whether I was still alive – so ominous that I wondered whether this was hell –
so threatening, that I doubted whether I'd ever again feel the heat of sunrays on my face.
My ragged, panicked breath was the only sound that broke the silence. In the darkness it sounded like a hurricane on the outskirts of town, at first whistling, then whipping and crackling in a stillness so heavy that it weighed down on my skin. Waves of panic began to build inside me. My lungs squeezed as fast as a jackhammer, as if the air all around might run out at any moment. My hands were cold with sweat, face slick, clothes sodden.
I hadn't had a panic attack in years, not since I was a little girl.
"Just keep breathing," I whispered. It was a mantra from ages past. But my voice sounded weak, even to me. The sound died before it made it a couple of inches from my mouth.
It was cold, so cold. The life seeped out of me, energy fading away with the heat of my body. So cold that it swallowed the budding panic attack up whole and left only emptiness in its wake. So cold that I knew all I had to do was give up, and my body would follow into the night.
"Why in the world were you so stupid, Cara?" I moaned into the darkness. "What was that asshole ever going to tell you? You should have known it was a trick. And now –"
And now – what?
Now I was stuck in a basement with only my thoughts for company. My heaving chest was the ticking hand on a clock that was counting down the seconds until someone came to end it all – forever.
I sagged forward, and some part of me woke up – a survival instinct, maybe. Chain links clinked as I moved, and my brain took notes. It was like trying to piece together a jigsaw with both hands tied behind your back. It was only a little part of me, anyway. Mostly I was struck down by a dull, aching pain – the heavy realization that I'd never see my daughter again. Or the man I was coming to love.
Limbs began to come to life, waking up from their enforced slumber. I wished they wouldn't have bothered. I wished they'd just stayed asleep and spared me the pain. Instead they screamed a song of discomfort as the blood rushed back in.
But the pain was good.
It gave me a reason to concentrate on something else – something to distract me from the dark and the cold and the hopelessness – from Val's face, and Kitty's, too. Because they were the people I loved.
I should have said it more when I had the chance.
They were the people I had to live for.
"Get. It. Together," I grunted, punctuating each snarled word with a lunge as I threw my body away from the wall. It was an agony of wasted effort. Each time the chains that bound my hands together simply bit deeper into the tender skin at my wrists. If it wasn't for the blackness sucking away my spirit, I knew I'd see red welts beginning to form, maybe blood.
I didn't care.
Don't you dare give up.
"Val didn't, not when he was locked in that box for years, so why the hell should you?" I asked the darkness even knowing it would just echo silently back.
It was nice to hear something other than the sound of my own ragged breath. There's something about the sound of a panting mouth that inspires fear. It's the soundtrack to so many horror movies for a reason. It starts slow, then builds, and before you know it your chest's heaving and –
Get it together. You're going to make it out of this. What do you know?
"Chains: I'm locked to wall. Both hands: Up high." I kept speaking, and testing my limbs; trying to do anything to fight off the choking darkness. My voice was all I had for company, but I sure wasn’t complaining. Not here. Not now.
What about your legs?
I moved my toes experimentally, waiting for the sound of clanging metal. But there was none. "Okay, that's good news. Legs are free."
What else?
I laughed. "It's dark as hell, and I'm talking to myself in a kidnapper's basement. Jesus, it doesn't get worse than this."
If only that was the truth.
A scratching sound broke the darkness, and then a metallic click as a key turned in a lock. I shrank back against the cold wall, chains clinking around me. As sick as it sounds, I wished that I could wrap myself up in them and hide from this new horror. A crack of light dawned, just enough to paint a grim picture of my present. I was in a basement; cold, dark and moldy. There was a window, but it was boarded up and nailed tightly shut.
A man started down the stairs.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
I flinched every time one of his heavy boots hit the staircase. The sound reverberated around the cramped basement.
"Wakey, wakey, rise and shine," a cold voice called.
Thud, thud.
My captor paused at the bottom of the staircase and flicked something, and my world exploded with brightness. I scrunched my eyelids shut and pushed my head into my shoulder. I tried dragging my hands close enough to shade my eyes, but it was fruitless. I was strapped to the wall like Jesus on the cross – high enough that it was all I could do to maintain an unco
mfortable crouch.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Now, now, girl," the nameless voice said, going up in pitch and sounding disappointed, "that's not polite, is it? Who taught you your manners?"
It's him, Anatoly.
"You're a traitor," I spat, blinking as my eyes acclimatizing to the harsh light that shone from the unshielded bulb swinging in the center of the room. "I don't take orders from traitors, let alone tips on how to fucking comport myself."
I thought but didn't say: you're going to die, even if I have to wring your neck myself.
Anatoly stopped dead. I watched him warily as my eyes got used to the new brightness, after so long in the dark. His lip curled into a feral snare, and his fingers tightened and whitened around the object in his hands –
a metal tray –
Food. The smell wafted across the fetid basement, and this time it was my stomach's turn to turn traitor. I was starving, so hungry that the tendrils of pain clawing at my stomach seemed anything but imaginary.
Anatoly chuckled. It was a hard sound, the rasping noise of a metal file as it's tugged back and forth. "Comport. Now there's a twenty dollar word if I ever heard one. Who taught you to read?" He paused, staring me up and down.
"Bitch," he snarled – and dropped the tray onto the floor.
I groaned, watching with horror as my meal became one with the filth on the floor. The basement was covered in a half-inch deep layer of decay and fungus, where the floorboards had rusted away with time and damp to become squishy mulch. Anatoly watched me like a hawk, and a broad grin sprung to life on his face – an idea.
He crouched down. "Hey, you know – I think we could save some of this. You must be hungry. After all," he laughed shrilly again. "You never did get time for lunch."
I shut my mouth, pressing my lips together until the blood in them fled. The groan I'd given away was an involuntary protest. But I'd be damned if I was going to give him what he wanted – the pleasure of seeing me beg.
Anatoly slowly pulled himself to his feet. "Oh," he started in a singsong tone, lifting his booted foot from the floor. Clumps of filth fell from his footwear as it swung through the air.
"Maybe I was wrong."
He held my stare without blinking and began to lower his foot. His eyelids were white, the hair on them sparse and uneven. He reminded me of a snake. Short and stocky, but a snake nevertheless: evil, cold-blooded and reptilian. The tray crunched beneath his boot, and I watched as my one-time meal was ground into filth.
"Maybe you'll have to go hungry after all. It's safer that way, don't you think?"
I closed my eyes; anything to hide from Anatoly's unsettling, unblinking stare. You're being stupid. Think! What would Val do?
Fight.
You're in chains.
So I'll get out of them.
How? Are you superwoman all of a sudden?
I'll…
I softened my voice, stopped bristling, and let the chains go slack. Anything to present the image that I wanted – that I was broken. I let my head sag against the wall.
"What do you mean?"
I didn't know what turned my stomach more – the sight of my meal in pieces on the floor, or the way I sounded. It was how I wanted it, but that didn't make it any better. The quavering, stuttering sound of my voice reminded me of how I'd always acted around Russell – walking on eggshells.
Anatoly sounded triumphant. He was that type of man, the kind who wants nothing more than to conquer a woman, not work with her. "If you're hungry, you're cold. If you're cold, you're tired. If you're tired … then you won't try anything nasty, like trying to escape."
The mulch underneath his boots squelched as he strode towards me, ever so slowly. I clenched my jaw and scrunched my eyes up, desperately fighting the urge to spit right in his face.
"But," he murmured, so close that his breath felt warm on my cheeks. "We know better, don't we girl."
Girl… I fumed. I'll show you girl.
"There's no fire in you. You're not that type. You know, Arkady told me about daddy."
I couldn't help it. My head jerked up. His eyes filled with a fierce satisfaction, and I kick myself for giving him the opportunity. "Oh yes. The boss knows everything." He took one final pace, and then he was next to me, close enough to touch, to feel, to taste…
I closed my eyes and tried to bite back a rising tide of fear. The breath seeped out of my lungs. I sagged against the wall, shrinking as far back from the creeping menace as the space allowed. It wasn't much.
"Please," I whimpered. "Don't …"
"Don't what," Anatoly growled.
I clenched my teeth. I shouldn't have said anything at all.
Anatoly jerked his head at the ceiling, but I kept my eyes held resolutely forward. He grabbed my chin and yanked it up hard.
"Look, bitch," he snarled, bringing his face so close to mine I almost gagged on the foul stench of his breath. "You see that? Cameras: watching everything. Oh believe me, I want you. I want that tight little body of yours. I want you down on your knees in this dirt. You'll be begging to suck my cock by the time I'm done with you …"
I stiffened. I doubt that. There's only one guy who gets that kind of treatment, and you're two things he's not: five foot eight, and a creepy sex abuser.
I shook my head, and a tear squeezed loose from my eye. Anatoly grabbed me by the hair and smashed my head against the wall. Stars exploded in the blackness behind my eyes, and my ears filled with the ringing of bells.
"What's so fucking special about him?" He ranted. "What makes him different from me? You think he's all sweetness and light, honey? You got some kind of savior complex? Because let me tell you, he ain't. He's no different from me –"
"You're fucking crazy," I choked back, still catching my breath from his vicious assault. "He's everything you're not. You're an animal, a … a freak!"
Anatoly went deathly still. If possible, it scared me more than anything he'd done yet. The basement was silent again, except for the slow drip of condensation hitting the floor, and the uneven heaving from my chest.
You fucked up.
I waited for the inevitable explosion of anger; waited for the perverted gangster to form his fingers into a fist and drive it into my stomach; waited for the blow that would leave me wheezing for breath and hanging from my chained arms.
I waited, but the surge of anger didn't come.
Anatoly did something I never expected. He reached up and stroked my chin, caressing my now filthy hair. "You don't mean that, baby," he crooned.
He's crazy. The chilling realization froze the blood in my veins. He's crazy and he could do anything.
"You'll see. I don't know what lies he's fed you, but I can be everything he's not."
I held myself entirely still, every muscle tensed.
"I can make you happy," he whispered into my ear. I closed my eyes with horror as I felt his hand sliding down my neck, slowly, slowly, so damn slowly. It felt like a serpent coiling its way down my body.
"You don't need to worry, girl," he said, his throat humming with a manic energy. His hand gripped the side of my torso and stroked, and I willed it to stay there. But I knew that I would never be that lucky. "Anatoly's going to take care of you, you can believe that. Arkady," he paused and glanced at the cameras.
He leaned in, and whispered to my ear. "Arkady doesn't care what happens to you when that piece of shit baby daddy of yours is gone. You know something?"
His hand closed on my breast and stayed there, squeezing tight like a vice, so tight my eyes watered.
"What?" I gasped.
"He's going to die. The boss always gets his man. And the second I finish shoveling the dust over his corpse, you're mine." His hand jerked like a wet fish and I sighed with relief as it began to lift from my breast – only to wince in pain as he grabbed my nipple and squeezed it.
"You want that, don't you baby?"
My mind cast around for a way out. Anatoly was unhinged. The longer th
is went on, the more danger I was in. I had to stop it, whatever it took.
"Anatoly," I gasped. I scrunched my eyes up and said the unthinkable, "Baby –"
"What is it honey?" Anatoly breathed. I had to fight back the tide of nausea as the smell of his rotting breath assaulted my nostrils.
"You know I'm yours," I lied desperately. I closed my eyes and prayed that I hadn't misunderstood what I'd seen. This was my last, my only shot. "But baby, the cameras – what if he's watching?"
Anatoly jerked back, as if he'd been stung. His eyes flickered nervously to the cameras, and I held in the biggest sigh of relief.
He locked his eyes with mine. "You're right," he whispered, "but soon. They don't work so well in the dark. I'll be back for you, baby."
The second he turned his back to leave, I slumped against the wall. Sick, twisted scenes tore loose from the depths of my imagination and played on the backs of my eyelids – depraved videos, remnants of a lifelong fascination with horror movies, and screwed-up books.
The door to the basement slammed shut. The light died.
But you're still alive. He didn't touch you, not really. There's hope yet –
but not much.
It was a delay, not a reprieve.
I was still fucked.
Anatoly sickened me, and having to play the role of a willing, eager flirt made my stomach turn. But it was an angle. It was the faintest crack of light at the end of the tunnel that led all the way back to my happy ending – the world I saw every time I closed my eyes – with Kitty and Val by my side.
So I was going to work that angle with everything I had left inside me –
because it was worth it.
21
Val
I couldn't think. I couldn't sleep. The hair on my chin was long past stubble, and the bags under my eyes more like suitcases.
The thought that kept me up at night was that I had to save Cara. It was her face I saw on the backs of my eyelids the second darkness fell. I put her in this situation. This was my fight, not hers. It was never hers. The second I saw her I should have told her to run far away from me, at least until I slew my demons – or they slew me. She'd have been better off bringing up Kitty alone, rather than in this type of life –
