by Anna Zaires
His lips quirk in a dark smile. “Because right before they arrived, I killed a guard,” he says softly. “I staked him out in the snow and made him admit his crimes before I gutted him like a rabbit in front of the entire camp. My methods were… Well, let’s just say it was exactly what they were looking for. So instead of getting punished for the guard’s death, I got a new career, one that fit both my inclinations and my skillset.”
My palms grow slippery where I’m holding the blanket. “What were the guard’s crimes?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to know.
The darkness in Peter’s gaze deepens, and for a moment, I’m afraid I went too far, brought up too many bad memories. But then he leans back against the headboard and says evenly, “He liked to boil boys alive.”
I stop breathing as bile surges up my throat. “What?” I gasp out when I’m able to speak.
“In the showers, we had either ice-cold or scalding water, nothing in between,” Peter says, his face tightening as his gaze grows distant. “The pipes would constantly malfunction, so we’d use buckets to mix the water before washing. Some guards, though, would punish us by making us stand under the water as it was, ice cold for minor infractions, scalding when we really misbehaved. One guard, in particular, liked the hot water remedy. He got off on it, I think. The others would just do it for a few seconds at a time, maybe half a minute tops, giving the boys superficial burns. But this guard, he’d push it. A minute, two, three, five… By the time Andrey landed on his shit list, he’d killed two fifteen-year-olds by boiling the meat off their bones.”
I taste vomit in my throat. “Andrey… your friend Andrey?” I whisper through numb lips.
“Yes.” Peter’s chiseled face takes on an almost demonic look of fury. “Andrey, who should’ve never been in that shit hole in the first place. My friend, who refused to let that prick fuck him and died in agony instead.”
“Oh God, Peter…” I press my trembling fist to my mouth, then reach for his hand, feeling his fingers twitch with barely suppressed rage as he fights to control himself. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He grips my hand like a lifeline and closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. When he opens them again, his expression is calm, but I now know the depth of the pain and fury that lurk beneath that controlled mask.
I was wrong to think that his family’s deaths made him into a monster. He was one long before Daryevo, the horrors he’d encountered in his lifelong struggle for survival stripping away whatever capacity for goodness he might’ve once possessed. His early victims were no angels, but once he went down the dark path of vengeance, he became like them, hurting innocent and guilty alike.
Carefully extricating my fingers from his grip, I move back to the middle of the bed. “What about that headmaster?” I ask, holding my captor’s gaze. I’m already sick to my stomach, but I have to know how deep the damage goes. “What did he do to make you kill him?”
Peter smiles grimly. “You haven’t had enough for tonight? No? All right, if you must know, he liked little boys. The younger, the better. I was lucky, because at eleven, I was already big, almost like a teenager. Way too old for him when he started at the orphanage. But the little ones… I would lie there at night and hear them scream and cry in their rooms when he came to them. Each night, I’d die a little bit inside, because there was nothing I could do, nobody I could tell who’d listen. The teachers, the police—they either didn’t care or didn’t dare make waves. This motherfucker was connected, you see; he was from some important family. So nobody did anything, and then a new boy was brought in, all of two years old. When I heard him go to the child, I couldn’t take it anymore. I took one of the kitchen knives, crept up behind him, and while he was busy assaulting the kid, I slit his throat.”
Of course. My dark knight taking vengeance again. I close my eyes against the hot sting of tears, my heart breaking for both Peter and the little boy. I suspected it was something like that, only I was afraid it was Peter himself who’d been the victim. Not that it means he hadn’t been. Opening my eyes, I meet his steely gaze. “What about you?” I ask unsteadily. “Were you ever…?”
“No.” His mouth flattens. “At least not as far as I know. I was always very good at defending myself, even when I was little. I don’t recall much before age three, though, so I suppose it’s possible—I was a pretty kid, according to old pictures. In any case, by the time I was in kindergarten, I knew how to use my fists, teeth, rocks… any kind of weapon I could get my hands on. The one fucker who tried something with me when I was five got his finger bitten off, and after that, I was generally left alone.”
I stare at him, relief battling with agonizing pity. And anger. I feel so much anger at the cruelty of the world that shaped him into the dark, tormented man he is today, into this ruthless, amoral killer who, despite everything, craves love and family. Did he find respite from his demons when he had Tamila and his little boy? Is that why he accepted her pregnancy so easily, becoming a husband and father when he could’ve simply walked away? Did they give him back pieces of his soul, only to rip it all away with their brutal deaths?
If so, it’s no wonder that their loss sent him spinning—and that vengeance was his default response.
At my long silence, Peter’s face tightens further; then a mocking smile curls his lips. “Too much for you, ptichka? I suppose I should’ve come up with some rosy story, one filled with rainbows, puppies, and piñatas.”
“No, I just—” I stop, my throat swollen with emotions. Gathering my composure, I try again. “I just wish someone had been there for you, the way you were for that little boy.”
He blinks slowly and pushes away from the headboard. “I just told you—I was fine. I could always take care of myself.”
“I know you could,” I whisper as he reaches for me, pulling me down to lie beside him as he stretches out on the bed and turns off the light. “But you shouldn’t have had to, Peter. No child should’ve had to.”
He doesn’t reply, but I know he heard me, because the arm looping around my ribcage tightens, drawing me closer as we lie together in the darkness, feeling each other’s warmth and deriving comfort from the steady beating of our hearts.
32
Sara
After that night, it becomes even harder to resist Peter’s efforts to insinuate himself into my mind and heart. I don’t know if he thinks his revelations terrified me and is seeking to make up for it, or if he simply senses my resolve wavering, but he becomes impossibly more attentive toward me, pampering and indulging me beyond belief.
Everyone except me has chores. Peter does most of our cooking, and the other guys are in charge of laundry and keeping the house spotlessly clean. I help with the laundry anyway, so I don’t feel like a total slug, but Peter doesn’t require it from me, and other than that time when I threw the plate, I haven’t had to touch a vacuum or do anything else that I don’t feel like doing.
On top of that, anything I want is mine—within the confines of my captivity, of course. If I mention a preference for silk pillowcases, Peter gets them for me within a few short days. If I express a desire to go for a walk, he drops whatever he’s doing and accompanies me, no longer entrusting that duty to any of his men. Most importantly, though, he does everything he can to ensure I’m not bored.
His dance studio idea is a bust so far—all I use the room for is occasional yoga and some stretching—but I really appreciate the recording equipment he got for me. It’s as high-end as anything a professional might use. I can record and edit anything I want, and while I start with the pop songs I love, I soon begin experimenting with variations on those songs and even try composing a couple of my own, setting the lyrics to music mixes I create from different tunes. Mastering the software and the equipment requires a steep learning curve, but I welcome the challenge. It’s not only fun, but it consumes a lot of my free time, and when I’m trying to find the words to express the song forming in my mind, I don’t think about everything I’ve lost and th
e fact that I’m an assassin’s captive.
I just focus on the music.
I’ve also started to perform for the guys. It’s an after-dinner ritual now, where Peter asks me to sing as a way of entertaining everyone and I reluctantly (but secretly, quite eagerly) agree to do one song, prefacing each performance with disclaimers about possibly not remembering the words, being unprepared, and so on. Naturally, it’s always a song I rehearse in advance, usually a variation on whatever popular hit I played with in the recording studio that day. I’m too shy to share my own songs, but the guys are so enthusiastic about my renditions of pop music that I foresee a day when I might try performing one of my own pieces.
“You have a really good voice,” Yan tells me after the first week, his cool green eyes assessing me with some surprise. “Peter was right about that.”
I grin at him—praise from our resident psychopath is an exceedingly rare event—and decide to perform two songs next time.
If the guys enjoy it and so do I, why not?
Between the music and my usual activities with Peter, I have enough to occupy my days, but I still miss my old job. Whenever one of the guys gets hurt—which happens with scary frequency during their daily sparring—I get to use my medical skills, but it’s not enough. I need the intellectual stimulation of my profession, all the things I learned daily by treating a wide variety of patients and keeping up with the latest studies. Now I feel out of the loop, isolated from new developments in my field, and when I mention it to Peter during one of our walks, he promises to do something about that.
Sure enough, he starts having his hackers send me biweekly compilations of all the cutting-edge medical research happening around the world. Some of the material is obviously public—peer-reviewed studies published in the academic journals I used to subscribe to, et cetera—but a lot of it seems to come straight from the companies’ private archives.
“Peter, this is insane,” I say after reading about a gene therapy that holds hope for reversing late-stage breast cancer. “Where did your people learn about this? This is huge.”
“Is it?” He smiles as he looks up from his laptop.
I nod vigorously. “If this therapy is as effective as these researchers’ notes indicate, millions of women’s lives will be saved. How did your hackers come across this? I should’ve at the very least heard rumors about this back home. This is a game changer in cancer treatment. You realize that, right?”
His smile broadens. “What can I say? Our guys are good.”
I shake my head and bury myself back in the detailed study analysis. I should feel guilty that I’m essentially stealing some startup’s intellectual property, but I’m too fascinated to stop reading. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to use this knowledge for financial gain or share it with anyone. My access to the outside world is strictly limited to phone calls with my parents.
It’s the one thing Peter won’t budge on, no matter how much I beg and plead.
“Come on, what harm would it do to have me browse the news once in a while?” I argue after Peter catches me trying to log on to his laptop—a fruitless attempt, given all the passwords and security he has in place. “You can block certain websites, prevent me from using all email and social media if you want. There are a ton of apps for that, and—”
“No, ptichka.” His face is resolute as he takes the laptop away from me. “We can’t risk you performing a search that would expose our IP address to the FBI, nor you figuring out some clever way to get in touch with them. Every website has a place to leave a comment nowadays, and you’re too smart not to know that.”
Frustrated, I give up on accessing the internet and try to think of other escape venues, but none come to mind. The one thing I could try—some kind of coded message to my parents during our brief phone calls—is far too risky. Peter is always with me, listening to every word I say, and I know that if I so much as hint at our location, he’ll cut me off from further contact with my family. He’s said as much, and I know he means it.
No matter how much he indulges me, I never forget that his obsession has a dark side, that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep me his.
33
Peter
As the heated days of summer transition into fall, with the forest bursting into shades of red and yellow, I become increasingly convinced that I did the right thing by taking Sara. Despite our initial rocky start, she’s starting to settle in, and I feel certain that one day, she’ll adjust completely, accepting and embracing her new life with me.
I love her so much it’s like a constant ache in my chest, and though I know she doesn’t feel the same, I sometimes catch a glimmer of softness in her gaze, a warmth that spears through my heart and gives me hope. As her anger over the abduction lessens, our arguments grow less frequent, and though neither of us can forget how our relationship began, the past begins to feel more distant, its grip on our present less painful and sharp.
I still think about Pasha and Tamila, and wake up in a cold sweat when I dream about their gruesome deaths. But the nightmares don’t come nearly as often, and when they do, Sara is always there. I can reach for her and hold her, hear her steady breathing until the memory of the horror fades.
I can also fuck her. It’s the one thing that never fails to soothe me, the single best way to relieve the darkness tormenting me from within.
“Why do you like to hurt me sometimes?” she murmurs one night after I wake her up and take her roughly, fucking her so hard we both end up sore. “Do you have some sadistic inclinations?”
I consider it, then shake my head, though she probably can’t see the gesture with the lights off. “Not in the sexual sense—at least not until I met you.” I have derived pleasure from killing and torturing my enemies, but it was mostly cerebral, a way to feel that violent rush of power and satisfy my sense of justice. At least that’s how it was with the guard who boiled Andrey in the showers and, to a lesser extent, with the terrorists I caught for work. I felt no pity for them; their suffering gave me vicious joy. But my dick never got hard from inflicting pain, and during sex, I was always careful and gentle with women, using my knowledge of the human body to pleasure, not to hurt.
It wasn’t until Sara that those conflicting impulses—punishment and pleasure, violence and tenderness—somehow merged. I treasure her, love her so much I ache with it, yet sometimes when I touch her, I can’t control myself, can’t fight the urge to punish her for being what she is.
For belonging to my enemy before she stole my heart.
“So with her… you never?”
The poorly concealed curiosity in Sara’s whisper makes me smile, even as a familiar ache constricts my heart. “You mean Tamila?”
“Yes.” Her hand splays over my chest, as if sensing the pain within. “You were never rough with her like this?”
“No.” I cover that slender hand with my palm, pressing it tighter against my skin. “It wasn’t like this with her.”
What I felt for Tamila was nothing like the intense, almost violent connection I have with Sara. With my wife, it was a pleasant mix of physical attraction and liking, even a friendship of sorts. I admired her for being brave, in the context of her upbringing, and for being a good mother to Pasha. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, either, and though we didn’t have much in common, I grew to care for her… maybe even love her, I thought. Now, however, I see that I was fooling myself.
My affection for Tamila was just that, a mere echo of the raw emotions Sara evokes in me.
Her hand twitches under my palm, and I hear her swallow. “I see.” There’s a strange note in Sara’s voice, something almost like hurt. “You must’ve loved her very much,” she continues in the same tone, and I smile again as I realize what the issue is.
“Are you jealous?” I ask softly, reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp. Sara blinks at the sudden light, and from the tight set of her pretty mouth, I see that I was right.
She misunderstood
my admission, thinking that my gentle treatment of Tamila meant I cared for my wife more than I do for her.
Sara doesn’t answer me, just pulls her hand away, and I laugh, feeling peculiarly light despite the dark memories dancing on the fringes of my mind. My ptichka is jealous—of a dead woman, no less—and I couldn’t be more pleased.
At the sound of my amusement, Sara’s expression darkens further, her delicate brows drawing together into a full-fledged scowl. With a barely audible huff, she turns off the light and turns away, giving me a quite literal cold shoulder.
My amusement fades, replaced by the complex tangle of emotions she always elicits in me. Lust and tenderness, anger and possessiveness—it’s all part of the madness that is my love for Sara, of this obsession I know I’ll never shake.
“Come here, my love.” Ignoring her stiff posture, I pull her against me, curving my body around hers from the back. Burying my face in her hair, I breathe in her sweet scent—my favorite fragrance ever—and tighten my embrace, holding her in place as she struggles to move away.
“I do want to hurt you sometimes,” I murmur when she stills, her breathing ragged from exertion. “I want to do things to you I’ve never dreamed of doing to my wife. There are nights when I want to devour you, ptichka, to consume you until there’s nothing left… until this addiction fades and I can take a breath without wanting you, without feeling like I need you more than life itself.”
Her breathing catches. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I love you, ptichka… and that I hate you. Because it hurts, you see, knowing you still love him, still think about him when you’re with me.” My voice roughens, my grip tightening as she again tries to scoot away. “Your husband’s killer—that’s how you see me, that’s all you sometimes see. If I could wipe him from your mind, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d erase every record of his existence, make him into the nothing that he is. In a different world, you’d have been born mine, but in this one, I had to fight for you… kill for you.”
