My consciousness creeps back in like the very first rays of dawn cresting over the horizon. My head spins, and I blink my eyes open through blurred vision. A pounding rhythm permeates my skull, applying pressure to the back of my eyes. Rolling over, I push myself up, my palms meeting the icy concrete beneath me. 

“Ah, you’re awake.” I try to move quickly, but it’s like moving through quicksand. Everything is slow and slurred. The smudged outline of a man comes into view, and I scramble as far away from him as I can until my back hits a wall. “The drugs will wear off soon,” the man says in a thick accent. 

I press my fingers to my temples and manage to focus on him more. He’s wearing a perfectly tailored three-piece suit, his greying hair neatly combed. He looks hard and implacable, with pale blue eyes that cut through all pretense of humanity. 

“Who are you?” I ask. 

A twisted smile pulls at his lips. “You look just like her, you know?”

“Who?”

“Why, your sister of course.” It takes me a moment to register the words, but they finally cut through the fogginess still clinging to my mind. 

“My sister,” I whisper. “Who are you?” I repeat.

He moves closer and slowly drops to a crouch in front of me. “Oh, little bird, I am Nicholai Ivanov, and I own your sister, just as surely as I now own you.” He reaches out, and I flinch away before his cool fingertip brushes over my cheek. “Yes, just like her, but not as strong.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Tsk tsk. If I have you, then my little dove will come back to me.” He eyes me up and down. “She betrayed me for you, you know? She was always so loyal, so strong. And now…” He shakes his head. “So disappointing. But…” He claps his hands together and pushes to his feet. “I can fix her. She will come for you, and all will be well."

I look up at him. “I haven’t seen my sister since I was ten years old. Why would she come for me?”

“Yes, it is strange.” He tilts his head to the side, and it’s almost animalistic, inhuman, calculating. “Such weakness.”

Something about this man makes me tread carefully. I’ve met bad men, but he is different. Bad men are driven by something: basic desires, simple depravities. This man is cold, distanced—until he speaks of Una. Then there’s a light in his eyes, a rabid kind of obsession. Whoever this man is, Una; no matter how vicious she might be, is not safe with him.

Taking a phone from his pocket, he smiles as he dials a number, placing it on loudspeaker. I listen to the dial tone reverberate around the empty room before it clicks off. 

“Hello.” I squeeze my eyes closed at the sound of Una’s voice. I’ve heard it once in twelve years, but I’d recognize it anywhere like we’re attuned. 

“Little dove,” Nicholai gets this nostalgic smile on his face.

“Nicholai,” she breathes.

He takes a deep breath. “Did you get my card and present?” he asks, almost joyfully.

“I did.” 

“And I asked you to come home, little dove.”

“I can’t do that.” She sounds indifferent, as though she were discussing nothing more than the weather.

He smiles indulgently. “You wound me. But no matter. I told you I would come for you, though, I have had to go to great lengths. I’m not happy with you.”

“What lengths?” He says nothing. “What lengths?” Her voice rises slightly, the indifference slipping. With a grin, he thrusts the phone towards me, and nods, raising his dark brows. He wants me to talk to her. Of course.

“Una?” I say.

“Anna,” she whispers, and my sister—my strong, killer of a sister—sounds so wrecked with that one word. “Are you okay?” 

“I think so. What’s going on?”

“Just stay calm. Do what they say. I’m coming for you.”

Nicholai pulls the phone away from me. “She looks so much like you, little dove. But you were always so strong, Una. You are the perfect soldier, to be surpassed only by your child.” Her child? Una has a child? “But Anna…Anna is not strong like you, little dove. She will not make a soldier…” He lets that hang in the air for both of us to hear.

“I promise you, if you touch her, I will tear your heart from your chest,” Una spits. And she sounds every inch the killer I know she now is. 

“Tsk-tsk, I raised you better than that. You have been away too long. It has tainted you. I thought I taught you well enough that love is weakness. Your sister, the Italian, your child…they weaken you, Una. You have become fragile,” he spits, practically shaking with rage. “But it is fine. It is fine. I can fix you. Don’t worry, little dove. I will make you perfect again. And I will make your child stronger than even you.” He waves a hand through the air. He really is mad. This is the man who raised Una? Who taught her to kill? “You will come home, and I will set Anna free. You have forty-eight hours, and then I kill her. Tick-tock.” He hangs up and smiles at me. “I am sorry, little bird.” He’s going to kill me. I wait for a sense of fear or desolation, but it never comes. In the grand scheme of things, there are much worse fates than death. 

He walks over to a door and knocks on it. With a loud squeal, the thick steel door opens, revealing two men in military uniform. They snap to attention, arms clasped behind their backs and postures rigid. 

With one last glance, Nicholai pulls a lollipop from his jacket pocket and puts it in his mouth before stepping out of the room. The door slams closed behind him, the sound echoing around the cold concrete room. As I glance around, I realize there are no windows, only one door, a cot and a toilet. That’s it. I’m a prisoner on death row, unless my sister, the sister I barely know, turns herself and her child over to this madman. 

I hope she runs as far and as fast as she can.