Blythe knew Viktor was in her house when she came in from running. There was no motorcycle to give him away, but then there hadn’t been the last time he’d been there. She even looked this time, trying to discover his hiding place, her heart pounding in anticipation – and fear – because she didn’t want to forgive him. She didn’t. That was the sad truth. A part of her had needed to blame him for setting the terrible chain of events in motion.
Intellectually she knew that wasn’t fair, nor was he any guiltier than she was. Her mother was solely to blame for her actions, but he hadn’t been there when she needed him so desperately. Now he was… different. Scary. She didn’t want to think that, but he was. She was torn between wanting to take him to bed and then kick him out – or just kick him out, which was much, much safer.
She’d known he’d come. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking at him no matter how she tried to be strong. He’d been like a primitive savage, conquering an enemy. It had been a brutal display, but she couldn’t take her eyes from him. Weirdly, sexual hunger had coursed through her body, bringing her alive. There was no way to sublimate it, even with running – which she’d been doing for five long years.
She went straight to the kitchen and poured water into a glass, drinking it down while she thought about what she was going to do. When she looked up from the sink, he was there, leaning one hip against the counter, looking even more gorgeous and dangerous than she remembered. He’d always done that – come into whatever room she was in, looking lazy and casual, when he wasn’t at all.
“You’ve been gone.”
She couldn’t read his tone or his expression. She downed the rest of the water and filled her glass again. “I went to see your girl, Darby. It was an interesting meeting.”
His eyes lit up. “Thank you, Blythe. Is she okay? Does she have a good family?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. She’s in a state-run facility on lockdown at the moment. I produced papers stating I was a relative, a cousin.”
Viktor straightened abruptly, going from lazy to a threat in a matter of a single heartbeat. “Damn it. I had a bad feeling.”
She didn’t want to see his expression, the one that told him he was genuinely worried about the girl. His strange feelings had always been right. She’d learned that over time. She believed he had a gift, mostly because she believed in them. His was very strong.
“Well, you were right. She has two sisters. One, Zoe, was there, in that horrible place you took her out of, and the other, Emily, is in a foster home. Darby wanted to stay with her younger sister, Zoe, because her sister was so traumatized, but they wouldn’t let her. She reacted like any sister might under the circumstances, but they locked her up.”
Viktor turned away from her, swearing viciously. She winced at his language, but deep down she felt the same way. She couldn’t exactly fault him for caring about the girl. “I saw what they did to Zoe,” he all but spat. “How old can she be? Eleven? Twelve?”
Blythe nodded slowly, aching for him. Aching for all the things he’d seen and been put through in his life – things that woke him in the middle of the night. She couldn’t make it better for him.
“Darby’s highly intelligent, loves her sisters and thinks you can walk on water.” She sent him a brief smile, trying to soothe him. “I didn’t tell her any different. She’s headstrong. A fighter. She’ll cause trouble there and will run away the first chance she gets in order to try to get to her sisters, especially Zoe. She’s so afraid for her. She hadn’t spoken a single word even after the police got there. Darby kept her from looking at the dead bodies, but they’d had time with her. They beat her and repeatedly raped her. Darby had broken ribs from trying to stop them. She’d been raped first by all of the men there, as an ‘example.’”
“It wasn’t an example.”
There was so much rage in his voice that the walls and floor felt as if they shook with it, trying to contain it. She glanced at him sharply. He really couldn’t take the things he saw. The things he was expected to participate in being a member of that particular club, yet he’d stayed with them for five years. She needed to understand why. She needed to understand him.
“I know,” she admitted, still trying to soothe him. It had been hell to listen to the things Darby had told her. The way the Swords had beaten and raped young girls with no regard for them at all. She couldn’t imagine what it would be to actually witness it.
“So what’s the plan?”
Of course he would ask that, put it on her shoulders. He’d known if she went there and met Darby, heard her story firsthand, she couldn’t walk away.
“I filed papers stating that as their only living relative, the three girls should come live with us on the farm. What else could I do? You knew that too. You knew if I met her, I’d have to help her.”
He ignored that. “Is the paperwork going to stand up to scrutiny?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t the one handling that. In all honesty, I expect the cops to show up at my door any minute to tell me they’re taking me to jail for lying so much. Lev did the paperwork for me. I was lucky that Darby was curious enough to lie as well and say she had a cousin, because of course they asked her.”
“Three of them? All girls? That’s harsh.”
“I said we were a couple, Viktor, but I’m not saying that to you. I don’t know if I can do what you want me to.”
“Baby.” He whispered it. “I want to come home.”
She shook her head. “You’re a nomad. You take off when you feel like it. You have this club. This huge family. You made your choice, Viktor, and it wasn’t me.”
“It was always you, Blythe. From the moment I met you, it was always you. I brought my family home so you can work your magic on them. They need you. I need you. It’s time you let me back in.”
She shook her head again, and then took a step back, putting more distance between them. She even held up her hand as if that could ward him off. “Don’t. Don’t push this right now. I don’t know you. At. All. You ride in here looking scary and you say you’re here to do a job, not to be with me, and yet you expect me to just take you back as if everything that happened, didn’t. It did happen, and I don’t know how to forgive you. I know that makes me a terrible person, but I don’t know how.”
“Blythe. I want to come home.” His voice was low and persuasive.
She felt the notes caressing her skin, sending fingers of desire trailing down her spine. She kept her gaze glued to the kitchen table because if she looked at him she might be lost.
“Baby, I need you to look at me.”
He knew. He knew what he did to her when she looked into his eyes. She moistened her lips, shook her head and pushed off the counter. “I have to go take a shower, and then I’ll fix us some dinner. I’ve got chicken and fresh veggies.”
“I want to come home.”
His voice was so soft, so compelling she felt it move over her bare skin and trail like fingers down her spine. She shivered with wanting him. With needing him. She nodded because she had to acknowledge him. “I don’t know if I can get past everything that happened,” she admitted, still without looking at him. “You think you can come into my home and start up where we left off, but it doesn’t work that way.”
“You can forgive me.” He said it with complete confidence. “You’re soft inside, Blythe. You can’t help who you are. I’m a dick. I know that. I’m scary. I know that too. I’m rough, and I know I’m asking a lot from you. A hell of a lot. Taking on my brothers and sisters. The club. The fact that I’m not always a nice guy and that will never change. The three girls. I know what I’m asking of you, but I also know you, baby, and you’re that woman. The one I need more than I need air.”
She tried not to like what he thought about her. Sincerity rang in his voice, and she didn’t want to hear it because she knew he was right. She was that person, but she didn’t want to be. “You’ve been gone a long time. You’re obviously not the same person you were five years ago and neither am I.” In a way she felt like she was fighting for her life. Her sanity. He’d been her world and then he was gone. She couldn’t do that again. Not after what happened. She couldn’t.
“Blythe. I want to come home. It’s time. It’s way past time. I need to come home. Let me come home, baby. I swear if you do, I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you better than anyone else ever could.”
She had no idea how he got from where he’d been standing with his hip against the counter to where she was thinking she was so safe from him, but he was there, a big man moving so fast, so quietly, she barely registered that he’d changed positions. His hands were gentle when he lifted her face, forcing her eyes to meet his.
His eyes. Slate gray. Burning silver. Molten mercury. So beautiful all the time, no matter his mood. He took her breath. Her will.
She took a deep breath, gulped some badly needed air and nodded and then shook her head, showing her confusion. “Give me some time to get to know you. I need to understand why you made the choices you made.”
“Fair enough. That’s all I’m asking for, a chance.”
That wasn’t true and both knew it. He wanted to come home. Home was Blythe. He’d made that clear. He’d always made that clear to her. In those fantasy months before he was gone, when her world was astonishing and perfect – perfect even if they disagreed. She didn’t care as long as they were together.
“You’re asking for more than a chance,” she challenged.
“You’re right.” He cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs sliding over her cheeks in a slow caress. “I am. I have to. I need you to save me. To save all of us.”
She stepped back, rejecting his plea. “Don’t. Don’t say things like that to me. It isn’t fair, and you know it isn’t.”
He let his hands drop to his sides. “Did you think I would fight fair? You matter more than anything else in my life. You. I’m not about to fight fair to get you back. Just because it isn’t fair to tell you doesn’t mean it isn’t true. We do need you to save us. I need you. Without you, I have no anchor. I’m not really alive. I need you to bridge the space that I can’t. The one between me and everyone else.”
“Stop. Just don’t talk anymore. I’m going to take a shower. Please, please give me a few minutes alone.”
She had to get away from him, from his soft, insistent voice that rang with such truth. She did believe him, that was the trouble. Still, he’d chosen his work. He’d left for five long, terrible years. She couldn’t just let herself love him all over again. It would kill her if he left her again. She’d come to rely on herself, on her sisters. She had made a life for herself and it had been very difficult.
“I’ll start dinner,” he agreed and went to the sink to wash his hands. “Go grab a shower. Take up some more water with you.”
She’d almost forgotten. She was careful to always stay hydrated with all the running she did, but his presence threw her into some chaotic state where she couldn’t think of anything else. She filled her glass a third time and hurried upstairs.
Her house felt different with him in it. She felt different. It was the way he looked at her, as if he could devour her any minute. As if he was so hungry for her and thought she was beautiful, even when she’d just come in from running. When she’d been with him before, she thought about him every single minute of the day. It had taken five long years to learn to control her mind so every moment wasn’t taken up with worry, with anger, with wondering where he was and what he was doing. Now he was back.
She stepped under the spray of hot water and let it pour over her head and down her back. It felt good on her aching body. She closed her eyes and tried to think about her life again without Viktor. He already was in her head. In her heart. No one else could ever touch her body. But he was different. Very, very different. He didn’t want to think so, but he was. Or maybe the man she’d known had been an illusion and didn’t exist at all.
She took her time, shampooing her hair and soaping her body with her favorite gel in order to give herself a respite from all the emotions. She told herself she just needed time and closure to get over him, but she knew she never really would. But a biker? Really? Her? That brought her up short. Was she really contemplating taking him back?
Of course she was. But how? She didn’t believe in trying to change a man. She didn’t want him to change her. You loved a person for who they were, not what you wanted them to become.
The smell of chicken grilling made her very aware she was hungry when she stepped out of the shower to towel off. He’d always done that, cooked meals when she was busy, or late getting home. He didn’t mind helping out with housework either. She’d always been a little shocked by that; now that she’d seen him in his more real persona, she was even more so.
Slowly, with some reluctance, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen. He was at the stove, grilling two chicken breasts and quite a few vegetables. The food smelled delicious. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten much in the last few days. She’d been traveling and then, after meeting Darby and hearing what happened to her and her younger sister, she hadn’t felt much like eating.
She opened cupboards and took down her dishes. Instantly the memory of buying them with him came into her mind. It had been a beautiful day. They’d held hands, laughed and shopped for hours. They hadn’t needed to – she had kitchenware – but he told her to give it all to Goodwill and they’d buy what they both liked together. She’d loved that he’d thought to donate her nice set and yet cared enough about building a life with her to want to shop for such mundane things as dishes. Now she knew it was because he would be leaving and he’d wanted her to have those memories.
Her hands shook a little as she set the table, careful to place him across from her.
“Babe, what is this pink stuff that should be salt?” Viktor held up the salt shaker.
The look on his face made her laugh in spite of her uneasiness. “It has minerals in it. It’s real salt, not processed.”
“Does it taste like salt?” He sounded skeptical.
“Yes. You know salt isn’t good for you.” The moment it slipped out she wished she could take it back. It was a long-standing argument between them and instantly threw her back to being easy and comfortable with him.
“It is. It’s a necessary mineral. We all need salt.” He grinned at her as he brought the pan with the chicken breasts over to the table and put them on their plates.
He’d said that in response to her reprimand every single time. She knew exactly what would come next.
“Salt controls the way nerves and muscles work, so you need it when you run. It helps control fluid balance.” He sounded like a professor giving a lecture.
“Humans eat way too much salt,” she said in her snippiest voice, unable to stop herself from entering into their favorite argument. They had it every time they cooked together, which had been nightly.
“So what you’re telling me is this pink stuff has less salt in it because they added other minerals to it.” He put the pan back on the stove, and picked up the one with vegetables.
She watched him divide them between the two plates. “They don’t have to add the minerals in, it occurs naturally.” She slipped into the chair facing away from the window, knowing he always faced the door or windows. It was habit when he was around to accommodate that in him.
He made a face as he put the salt shaker on the table. “Tell me more about the girls. Did Darby talk much about her parents?”
The knots unraveled a little bit in her belly. She was grateful he wanted to talk about Darby and her sisters instead of them. She wasn’t quite ready yet for that conversation. “I think they both had bad drug habits, Viktor. She didn’t talk much about them, but I got the impression she’d mothered her two sisters almost from the time they were born. She hasn’t had it easy.” She raised suspicious eyes to his face. “Did you know? About her parents?”
He shook his head. “We had to get in and out of there fast. Every time we go after one of the Swords’ houses and take back the girls they have trained or were training, I’m risking the lives of my brothers and sisters. We’ve been hitting the Swords’ whorehouses pretty hard over the last few years. I worried that someone would connect the strikes against them with some of my brothers joining the club.”
“I couldn’t help but be sympathetic with her. It reminded me of my childhood, although I didn’t have siblings.”
“You would have watched over them. You’re protective and responsible. You look after others before you do yourself.” He reached for the salt shaker.
“Didn’t you use salt when you cooked?” She gave him the evil eye.
He snickered. “Baby, you still can’t look mean, even when you try. You’ll have to improve if we’re taking on three girls.”
She stopped chewing and sighed. Chewed, swallowed and shook her head. “We don’t know if that’s going to happen.”
“It’s going to happen.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Three reasons.” He shook salt onto his chicken until she reached across the table and took the shaker out of his hand.
“Tell me, I’m all ears.”
“First, you love me. That right there gives me a huge advantage in this fight. Second, you’re going to tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it. Anything at all. You name it, and I’ll make it right. Third, I love you with everything I am. I want to make you happy. I’ll devote every minute I have to making that happen.”
She shook her head, a small smile stealing up out of nowhere. “You think you’ll spend every minute making me happy. What you’ll really do is make me crazy. You’ll come home and inform me there are ten children that need a home and they’re on their way, can I fix dinner for them.”
He laughed. “More likely my brothers will be begging for food, and I’ll have you feeding them most nights. But I can grill, and so can they. Until we get our clubhouse and their homes built, we’ll make certain they’re fed.”
“You’re crazy if you think they’re all going to be here.”
“They’ll be here.” He was absolutely confident.
She realized that was one of the things she loved most about him – the way he had utter faith in her. “I need to know things,” she said in a low tone, not looking at him.
“I know you do. You’re the only one I’d ever tell them to. When I tell you about me, I’m telling you about my brothers and sisters. No one has the right to hear their stories but the person they want to tell.”
She was silent a moment, trying to understand. Whatever had happened to Viktor had happened with the men and women he called family. He was asking, without voicing the words, that she not tell anyone else, even her sisters and his blood brothers.
He put down his fork and looked at her. “After, when you know everything, you might be ashamed of me. Of being with me. That’s what I’m risking. Having you look at me with shame.”
Her heart clenched. It was going to be bad. Worse than she’d anticipated. She raised her chin. “Have more faith in me than that.”
“I do.” He picked up his fork. “After dinner, I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but not while we’re eating. Where are you on the paperwork for Darby? Did you explain things to her?”
“I asked her if she would want to live with us. I told her about the farm and Airiana’s children. How they were on one of the ships. She’d heard about the ships. They threatened the girls. I told her about the farm and the premise, how my sisters were not birth sisters but sisters of the heart, and we’d gotten together because we’d all attended group counseling for survivors. I told her each of us had someone in our family murdered and we felt responsible. She asked what had happened to me, and I told her. Everything. She deserved to know if she was going to make a decision about her and her sisters.”
She looked up at him because she couldn’t stop herself. This time the painful memory was shared by another person. By him. Viktor. She saw the grief etched deep into his face and knew it was very real for him, just as it was for her. Somehow in sharing, it helped. She found herself sending him a small, sad smile and reaching out to touch the back of his hand.
“Darby seemed to relax a little more around me. She thought I looked too nice, a do-gooder who would never understand what happened to them or that there would be issues for the rest of their lives. I told her I’m still working through mine.”
“So she wants to come here.”
His voice was very gruff and she could feel his emotions, so deep, the grief carved inside him, that first cut halfway through his bone. She knew it would stay there, because it was the same for her.
Blythe nodded. “She said she’d feel safe with you. I told her it was very safe on the farm. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up that you’d be here.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Viktor…” she cautioned.
“Blythe.”
She put down her fork and glared at him. “You aren’t making this easy. We’re supposed to be talking about these children. They’re going to be traumatized, even the youngest. She’s been in four foster homes already. She may not have been taken by the Swords, but she’s been away from her sisters for months. She gets in fights because she wants her family back.”
“Then we’ll give it to her. You can get them counselors or whatever you think best, but seriously, Blythe, you’re what’s best for them.” He chewed and swallowed the last of his chicken. “I knew the moment I saw Darby that she needed you. I didn’t want to go there because we had so many things to work out, but I couldn’t let go of that thought. I didn’t say a thing to her, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The moment I saw you in the street with the cowardly lunkhead, I knew we had to track her down.”
“He’s not a cowardly lunkhead.” She glared at him.
“Yes he is.”
“Anyone would be afraid of you and the mob of badass bikers you had behind you. He called the sheriff.”
“Walking away he called the sheriff. He didn’t stop to see if you were all right. He left you seven messages, but he didn’t apologize for being a fu – A coward.”
“You listened to my messages?”
“You left your phone here. I’ve warned you about that before. You’re off running, you need that cell to call 911 in an emergency. Women are attacked on running trails, or parks or on the highway or wherever you’ve been running.”
She sighed. “Cell phone service can be spotty around here.”
“You can still call 911.”
“Why am I talking to you about this?” She threw her hands up into the air in complete exasperation. “The point is, you can’t be listening to my messages. They’re private.”
“Not when they’re from another man. You’re married. You can listen to all my messages, whether they’re from a woman or a man.”
“I forgot how bossy you were,” she said, infuriated. Because he always had been bossy. She understood a little better now. If he had all those “brothers and sisters” and he lived in the biker world, it stood to reason that he would be bossy. “I don’t like anyone listening to my private messages.”
“You never minded before,” he pointed out.
That brought her up short. She hadn’t minded before. Sometimes she’d ask him to listen to her messages and tell her who called and for what reason. She hadn’t thought a thing about it.
“That was when we were together and I trusted you. We aren’t and I don’t.” Abruptly she stood up and carried her plate to the sink to rinse it off. “Let’s do this if we’re going to. I’m not promising you anything.”
He rinsed his plate as well and then opened her refrigerator to take out a beer. She didn’t stock beer as a rule, so she knew he’d brought it with him.
“You want one?”
She shook her head and got a glass of water. She rarely drank anymore unless it was with her sisters. She found if she drank, she got depressed, and she couldn’t take chances with depression.
“It isn’t going to be a pretty story, baby,” he warned.
“I realize that.” And she did. Whatever had happened to put that blank, emotionless, ice-cold look in Reaper’s eyes had to be horrible. She knew Viktor’s brothers had all been through hell, but she had a terrible feeling that she was about to hear something worse than hell.
She curled up in one of the wide armchairs opposite from him. He hadn’t sat on the love seat or couch. He’d always wanted to be as close to her as possible, but this time he’d deliberately sat first, choosing one of the armchairs. That filled her with trepidation instantly. It was out of character for him.
“This isn’t going to be easy telling you. I wrote it down in the letter I left for you, but even then, I was careful, didn’t say much, just enough so I’d hoped you’d understand.”
She nodded because he looked at her expectantly. She hadn’t gotten the letter. Her mother must have and most likely burned it. That would be just like Sharon. She had never wanted Blythe to be with anyone, let alone a man like Viktor who protected her from her mother’s ugly outbursts.
“You know Sorbacov had my parents murdered. I was ten. Ilya was an infant, barely a year. Sorbacov knew my father was very respected and Sorbacov feared him, and that made him hate my father. The schools were already established. I was taken to one run by the worst criminal population he could find in Russia. He claimed it was another one of his experiments, but it was far more than that.”
“Actual criminals? You mean like murderers?”
He nodded. “Serial killers, armed robbers, pedophiles, rapists, that sort of criminal.”
Her heart pounded and she tasted fear. She had a very bad feeling, but she bit her lip and remained silent.
“There were close to a hundred students already there when I arrived. Over the course of the time I was there, two hundred and eighty-seven children were brought there, all various ages. Only eighteen survived.”
She gasped. “Eighteen out of two hundred and eighty-seven? Viktor? How could Sorbacov allow such a thing?”
“He had his own secrets to keep. He had a family, and he was very high up and respected in the government, but he had certain proclivities. His appetite ran to children.”
No. No. No. Her stomach lurched and she pressed her hand deep. She didn’t want to hear this and she had to. “But he sent you after Ray.”
“He did send me after Ray. There were films taken. Videos. He liked watching himself with his victims. Somehow Ray got ahold of them. We don’t know how. I found them in his safe. They were copies. I never found the master copies. I’m not certain he had them. If he did, I couldn’t find them. Sorbacov wanted the recordings.”
She found she was holding her breath, so she forced air through her lungs. “Tell me what happened in that place. How all those children died.”
“We didn’t live like human beings. We weren’t given clothes. Or food. You had to earn food.” His tone implied earning food meant cooperating with whatever the inmates demanded. “We had classes, like any other school, because the inmates all had skills. The punishments for the least little infraction were always capital. Beatings weren’t the worst. Rapes in front of the class, both boys and girls, were common. Chained in what we referred to as the dungeon was one they particularly loved. They flayed a student, until his or her skin ran with blood, and then chained them down in the dark where the rats were.”
She couldn’t listen anymore, but she had to. She had to know what happened to him and the others and how they had managed to escape. This was what had shaped Viktor’s life. Not only his life, but the men and women he called brothers and sisters. This was the reason he had not come home to her but instead had taken the job Sorbacov had given him.
“That’s what happened to your back. All those scars. You were chained down there.” In the dark. Alone. With horrible rodents. Her stomach lurched again.
“If that was the worst, baby, I wouldn’t be so fucked-up now. The worst was Sorbacov and his buddies. They like to play with children. And the way they played was not pretty. I saw them leave child after child for dead. Sometimes I wanted to die, but his warning was always there.”
She raised an eyebrow, and the tension in the room worsened.
“He told me if I didn’t survive, neither would my brothers, and that he’d bring them all there, the baby first. I knew he meant it. He was a sadistic bastard. That meant, if I was going to survive and he clearly was going to do his damnedest to make certain my life was a living hell, then I would find a way to turn the tables on them. On all of them.”
She could see him as a ten-year-old boy, stoically and silently being used so brutally and enduring it all in silence while he planned and schemed with the other children. She put her fingers to her mouth. “Ilya,” she whispered. “The things he said to you. If he knew, he’d be so upset.”
“He’ll never know,” Viktor declared. “I promised my father I’d take care of the others. I gave him my word. And I kept it by staying alive. By killing the men and women in that place.” He looked her directly in the eye. “I was raped repeatedly by both men and women and then I systematically killed them any way that I could.”
His head wasn’t bowed. It was up. Defiant. Waiting for her to pass judgment. She wanted to weep for him, but he held himself still, tension pouring off of him, his eyes filled with a rage she understood. Ten years old. He hadn’t been a man. He’d been a little boy, and yet he’d taken on the role of a man.
“I had to find a way to save the others. The older ones were gone over the years, but when Reaper and Savage came, Reaper was more like me, determined to protect his brother. He couldn’t of course; he was just a toddler. Four. Savage was three. They had two older sisters who didn’t make it. I started developing a plan and recruiting the children as they came into the school. We banded together and fought back.”
He looked up at her again, directly into her eyes just as he had before. There was hell there for her to see. Plain. Unashamed. No remorse. “We started killing them. We had a system. Each of us had certain talents, and we used them together.”
He went silent and she didn’t know what to say to that. It was self-defense; they were children without choices. No one had come to save them so they’d found a way to save themselves. He held her gaze and she didn’t blink, didn’t look away. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she condemned him for surviving – for finding a way for the other children to survive.
He took a breath, closed his eyes for a brief moment and then looked at her again. She realized he was totally tense, so much that the tension filled the room and pulled the air around them into a tight net that held both of them stationary. He’d expected condemnation.
“Sorbacov liked to make an example out of me.” He said it low, as if confessing. “He preferred young boys, but even as I got older, he liked to show off with his friends. I was required to do things. If I didn’t, they would beat a child to death in front of me, or rape him or her repeatedly.”
She could barely breathe. Part of her horror was the guilt and shame in his voice, as if he should have been able to stop what Sorbacov and the others had done to him.
When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “I learned to do as they said, but I retaliated. We all did.” He shook his head. “You don’t need details, but suffice it to say, it was far worse than you can possibly imagine, and the things we had to do to protect one another made us close. Made us believe in one another.”
She nodded. Certainly she could understand why the men and women were considered family by him. He had been the oldest of the survivors and had devised and executed the plan that had kept them all alive. Not safe. There was no safety in their nightmare world, but they lived. He also gave them the ability to retaliate against the men and women who used them for their own sick pleasure.
“Sorbacov didn’t just have us killed when he realized we were the ones responsible for killing the criminals. At first, he didn’t believe that a bunch of little kids could get away with it, or even have the balls to do it, but then he wanted to catch us at it. The brutes running the place couldn’t conceive of any of us retaliating against them. We were too small and helpless. Still, they took Reaper and tortured him. We could hear him screaming for days. They did all sorts of things to him, and they threatened Savage. Then they took Savage from us.”
Sweat beaded on his body. The unrelenting rage was back in his eyes. “I couldn’t stop them, and I knew they would really hurt him in order to break Reaper. If Reaper confessed to the killings, we were all done for, but Savage and he both held out. It was worse than anything you can imagine, listening to them, hearing what those brutes were doing to two little boys. I swore if I ever had the chance, I’d wipe them all off the face of the earth.”
She was crying because he was. He didn’t know he was, or he didn’t acknowledge it, but she’d had enough. Viktor Prakenskii had stood for his blood brothers, keeping his word to his father. He’d stood for seventeen other children, keeping his code. It was one of fierce protection for women and children. It was equally one of fierce retaliation for anyone choosing to harm women or children.
She could at least understand his choices. She’d be a monster not to. She was far too empathetic not to feel the reality of his suffering. She wanted to weep a river of tears for him and those other children.
He scrubbed a hand down his face and looked at her. “I want to come home, Blythe. I need you more than anyone else could ever need you. I’ll love you better than anyone ever could. I know what I’m asking of you. I do. It’s not only me you’ll be taking on, but my brothers and sisters, and they’re just as fucked-up as I am. I probably will bring home ten more children just as fucked-up. Still, we all need you. We’ll all need you, because you’re you. You’re like a breath of fresh air. You’re… everything. Everything. Let me come home.”