Day nine…

Temperatures hover in the sixties today, a typical summer morning in this seaside region, only a couple of hours south of Oregon.

Lukas and Yuri wear light jackets as they sit on top of the wooden castle, taking turns looking out over the ocean through the telescope that’s mounted there. It’s a million-dollar view.

I sit on the patio drinking bitter black coffee and watching them, and can’t imagine what they’re thinking or feeling. They’re like a couple of little aliens beamed down onto my property. Lukas is seven. By the time I was his age I’d shivved a passed-out drunk in an alley so I could roll him and steal his wallet. That was a good take, too. Three hundred twenty-seven rubles, and a cheap watch that I traded for a loaf of bread.

Jasha walks up to me and nods.

“Tomorrow morning,” he says.

I smile grimly. “Perfect. I can’t wait to see the video.”

We’re taking out Edik, Vilyat’s brother. We already took care of Latvi. And Willow’s father, Vasily, died in a highly suspicious plane crash six years ago. I wish I could say I was behind that crash, but I wasn’t. I suspect it was one of his competitors. I was still in the process of working my way to the top, in St. Petersburg. I can only hope that he was conscious, and screaming, all the way down, as the plane plummeted from the sky.

We still need to kill Vilyat, but I’ve been drawing it out. I’m almost reluctant to end it.

Vilyat is one of the last men who was directly involved in Pyotr’s death.

Unlike Vilyat, Edik didn’t have his filthy little fingers dipped directly into the family business in Russia, but he knew what they were doing. He let it happen.

Ever since we took out his brother Latvi, he knows that he’s been living on borrowed time.

His days and nights are agony.

He thinks he’s suffering from ulcers, but in fact the chef that I got to has been slowly poisoning him. He used to be a beast of a man who took pleasure in raping women until they bled; we’ve spiked his food with saltpeter so he can’t get it up.

We’ve deliberately staged failed assassination attempts, and now he’s afraid to leave his house. He’s terrified, in constant pain, and trusts no one. His wife and teenage sons, who all hate him, have fled to their country home in the Hamptons, and when he ordered them to come home, they refused. He sent an assassin to take his wife out; the assassin disappeared.

Tomorrow morning, we’re going to cause a gas main to explode underneath his house. He’ll burn alive.

I dismiss Jasha and focus on Willow. I don’t like what I’m going to have to do today, but I have no choice. I’ve stalled long enough.

This morning, Willow used her computer to search on the dark web. She successfully blocked me from seeing what she was looking for. It’s time for me to take the gloves off.

Willow, Anastasia, and Helenka are sitting on a bench.

My Willow is wearing a pale green gown as light as gossamer wings, with a cotton shawl thrown across her slender shoulders. I can tell from watching them that they’re up to something. Their shoulders are hunched and they’re leaning in to talk to each other, talking in hushed voices. They’re half smart, half stupid.

Whispering is smart. Surveillance equipment has a hard time picking up whispers. But their body language gives them away. If they just acted normal, they wouldn’t be doing anything to raise my suspicion.

I set down my coffee and move quietly through the garden, behind the hedges, until I’m right behind them.

“Willow,” I say, and they all jump guiltily.

She glances up at me, startled.

“Oh, hi, Sergei,” she says. Her voice is unnaturally pitched, and her gaze meets mine and then slides away. Her obvious attempts at deception give me resolve – resolve I shouldn’t need. If Willow were anybody else, I wouldn’t even have waited this long. She’d have been strapped to a chair screaming while I snipped off fingers. Nobody lies to me, nobody threatens my life’s work and gets away with it.

I paste a look of polite interest on my face. “So, what are you all talking about on this fine morning?”

Willow says, “Nothing that would interest you,” at the same time Anastasia says, “Shopping.” And Helenka glares out at the ocean, refusing to look at me.

Amateurs.

I smile. “Oh, you’d be surprised. I find a lot of things interesting.”

Willow meets my gaze. “Like Anastasia said. Shopping.”

“What about shopping?” I glance at Helenka. “Helenka?”

She scowls at me. “I’m not talking to you, because you’re an asswipe, and your douche-water dick-face punks pointed a gun at us and kidnapped us.”

“Helenka! Language!” Anastasia gasps.

Helenka’s mouth curls in scorn. “As if that’s the biggest problem around here.” She gets up and walks over to the castle where the boys are playing, and starts climbing.

Anastasia watches her go with dismay. I shake my head in contempt. Oh, how sad, her daughter is turning into a typical spoiled American little princess. Oh, what a nightmare she’s living.

When I was thirteen, I slept on a piss-stained old mattress in sub-zero temperatures in a filthy, stinking basement where we shit into buckets. We huddled together for warmth under thin blankets, hands tucked under our armpits. Every morning when we woke up, we’d check to see which of our friends had frozen to death in the night. We’d haul their stiff corpses out into the alleyways. And we’d envy them. Their struggle was over.

I gesture at Willow. “Come with me.”

Anastasia looks as if she’s about to protest, but Willow quickly holds up her hand. “Anastasia. This is part of the deal. I’ll be fine.”

No, she won’t.

I take her in to the house, to the playroom, and slam the door loudly enough to make her start. The shawl slides off her shoulders and falls to the floor, and she makes no move to pick it up.

I can see the fear in her eyes now. Good.

“Why are you angry with me?”

“What were you guys talking about, really?” I grab her chin and force her to look me in the eye. “What are you looking at online?” Arousal rushes through me. It’s hard to interrogate someone when all you want to do is fuck the breath out of them. When every frightened gasp turns you on.

She just looks at me. She knows better than to lie to my face. Unlike me, she’s a terrible liar.

Instead she tries to parry. “Why do you care?” she asks.

“Because obviously you’re hiding things from me, which means you are planning something or doing something that you know that I wouldn’t like.”

Her gaze slides off to the right. “Or you’re just paranoid.”

“Of course I’m paranoid. Otherwise I’d be dead. But as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. You’re up to something. Tell me what.” I arch an eyebrow. “Or would you like me to ask Anastasia instead?”

“Go ahead,” she scoffs.

So she doesn’t think Anastasia would break.

She doesn’t know what I’m capable of.

“I will, later. In the meantime, I’m not fucking around, Willow. You’re here to be useful to me. Not to get in my way. If I think you’re getting in my way, then I’ll have to rethink my deal with you.”

Anger blazes in her beautiful blue eyes. “So your word is no good?”

I tighten my hand, squeezing her chin painfully hard. “My word? Did I give you my word that I would let you undermine me? I don’t recall that.”

She claws at my hand, so I tighten my grip even more.

“I’m not trying to undermine you!” Her breath is coming out in tearful gasps now.

“Then what are you trying to do?”

She meets my gaze with a mixture of hurt and fury swirling in her eyes. She’s definitely hiding something, and it’s something that affects me directly.

Anger flares inside me.

I shove her up against the wall and grab her throat, squeezing until her face turns red. I let her struggle for air long enough to genuinely scare her, before I loosen my hands a little. She sucks in a wheezing breath.

“I’m not going to drop it,” I say. “And this isn’t going to be the fun kind of punishment. When I make you scream, it’s not going to be a scream of pleasure. I have plans. I have been working my entire life towards those plans. They are the reason that I wake up in the morning. And you may be threatening them. Last chance to talk.”

“Fuck yourself up the ass, Sergei!” And she used to be such a sweet girl – before I got hold of her.

She claws at the backs of my hands, breaking the skin. She tries to knee me in the crotch, and I trap her knee between my legs.

So that’s how it’s going to be.

That bitter taste in my mouth is back, and I swallow, trying to wash it away. “Let me give you a taste of what you can expect next.”

I spin her around and tie her up with her hands yanked high over her head, fixed to a ring on the wall. I adjust her bonds so she’s dangling, tiptoes barely touching the floor. The air thickens like molasses, slowing my movements. The sound of her sobs and curses is amplified to a roar in my ears.

I don’t want to hurt her.

I will hurt her. It’s just one more black mark on my hard anthracite soul.

I grab my bullwhip and I bring it down – hard. She thinks I’ve been cruel to her before, but I’ve never genuinely whipped her, not like this.

It snaps across her back, tearing the fabric of her dress, and she screams and her legs dance. There’s no pleasure in her scream – it’s pure pain and fear. It’s a horror-movie scream.

I don’t want to keep hurting her like this.

But I do.

I snap the whip again, and she bucks wildly and screams even louder, the sound bouncing off the walls. I feel it vibrating through my body.

“Sergei! No! Please!” she screams at the top of her lungs. Her legs thrash wildly.

And then a third time. Her shriek of pain stabs right through me, and my breakfast rises in my throat. I almost vomit on my own shoes.

Normally when I whip her, it turns me on so much that it’s all I can do not to come in my pants. I love it; she loves it. I am the artist of her suffering. I decorate her skin with beautiful bruises which will throb for days before they fade. I mark her as mine. Every time I play with her like that, I can feel her arousal, as if we are one flesh.

Now I am truly beating the shit out of her, and it makes me feel cold and dead and sick inside.

But that is what I am, I remind myself. A thing, not a man. Cold and dead and sick. That’s how I deserve to feel.

When we went out to dinner, I let myself pretend that maybe I could make this work, but it was all a pretty lie, a fairy tale I read to myself.

I stroke the braided leather strap on my wrist. I summon up the memory of Pyotr’s lifeless blue eyes. That’s a dangerous trick, because it can tip me over the edge into madness, but I need that strength now, because I’m about to break. I’m about to let her down. I’m about to go down on my knees crying and begging her to forgive me. I’m about to betray Pyotr yet again – the way I did all those years ago when I let him die.

No. Pyotr, I won’t let you down again. I won’t let anyone snatch away my revenge – even her.

Sobs rack Willow’s body.

I drop the whip, adjust her chains, and spin her around to face me.

She stares at me, horrified. As if she’s really seeing me for the first time, and what she sees is a misshapen beast that just clawed its way out of the bowels of hell..

Good.

“Yes,” I say, nodding, and I can feel the light of my madness beaming out from my eyes. “This is me. This is what I am. Tell me what the fuck you are planning, or I will whip the flesh from your body.”

“We’re not planning anything!” she sobs. “Please, let me down. Please!”

“Don’t make me ask you again.” I bend down to pick up the bullwhip.

“All right!” Her chest heaves with sobs. “We’ve been trying to hack into your computer systems to find out what you’re up to. That’s it!”

That’s it?

“What?” I slap her face, and she cries out, her head rocking to the side. Her legs are kicking, desperately, trying to find purchase. She’s white with strain.

“What did you find out?”

“Nothing!” she shrieks, but she’s avoiding my gaze.

I grab her hair in my hands and start twisting.

“Fuck you!” It’s a harpy screech of rage. She’d stab me if she could. She kicks at me with bare feet; her sandals have fallen off.

I grind on, relentless. “I’m one step away from bringing Anastasia in here. I’ll take turns between the two of you, with the bullwhip.” Sweet, kind Willow. The best way to break her is to threaten someone she loves.

“All right, all right…” She gulps for breath. “I found out one thing. One! And I don’t even know what it means. One time, I came across the name ‘Operation Salvat’.”

“When? And how did you find it?”

Despair twists her features. I’ve seen that look on the face of those who thought they could oppose me and learned otherwise. I always win. Except right now it doesn’t feel like victory.

Her voice is hoarse from crying. “I looked…I looked up what vendors do business with you, and I hacked in to their email accounts. It was one of your suppliers in Russia. But the next day when I tried to get back into their email, I was locked out.”

“Ah. That was you.” I grab her face in my hand. It’s wet with tears. “And what else have you done? Who have you told about this?”

“Nobody!” she stares at me in shock. “Sergei, I’m not trying to betray you! I’m not suicidal, and I wouldn’t… I don’t want to hurt you.”

My cold, hard mask is in place.

“Really? Because I recall a time a couple of months ago when you told me that you wanted to see me go up in a giant bonfire.”

“Right after you told me not to come back or you’d kill me?” she shouted. “Right after you said that you’d lied when you told me you cared about me?”

“I didn’t say I’d kill you,” I say, and I adjust her bonds and lower her to the ground. I free her hands. She slumps back against the wall with a shudder, closing her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at the monster right in front of her face.

I believe what she’s told me. She could have royally screwed things up for me if she’d succeeded in finding anything, but my security is too good. And she’s not actually openly hostile to me. I don’t have to do anything worse to her – thank God.

She sinks to her knees, shaking. Too tired to stand. Then she looks up at me, her face twisted with sorrow.

“I wanted to see if I could find any connection between my family and you, because I wanted to know why you hate us so much. I don’t care what happens with my uncles – they’re evil bastards who deserve anything you do to them, and worse. But I need to know if your plans include my aunt and cousins and me.”

“I told you that I’d let you all go when I’m done. That’s all you need to know.”

She sniffs, hard.

“And I should just believe you because you’re such a fine, upstanding citizen?” She spits the words.

“You have no other choice.”

“You never leave me any choice!” she screams, her voice hoarse and cracking. “I don’t want to just sit there and take whatever you dish out to us! I’m sick of it! I’m sick of everyone else making all of my decisions for me, right down to what I wear!”

“Fine. I’ll give an order to burn all your clothes, and you can pick out a new wardrobe.”

“It’s not that I don’t like them! And don’t change the subject. You know this has nothing to do with my clothing. I just want to know what the hell is going on here.”

Yes, feeling helpless is horrible. I remember it well. I remember what her family did to me, how they snatched away all my choices, and how I prayed for death every single waking minute.

But I don’t want her to feel the way I did.

“What does your heart tell you that I plan for you and your family?” I ask her. “Think logically. Your uncle screwed me over, and the smartest thing for me to do would have been to send him the nose off your face. And a videotape of the non-surgical procedure, with before and after pictures.”

Her eyelids were drooping with exhaustion. Now they fly open in horror. “What?”

That’s fine. She keeps trying to love me. She should know what I’m capable of.

“Or I could have sold you and your aunt to a whorehouse, or I could have shared you both with everyone who wanted you. I have done none of those things. I have kept you safe under guard, and I have attended to your every need. You want for nothing. Food, movies, books, beautiful clothing, the free run of this beautiful property. I offered to pay for you to go to graduate school, to support you after I send you away, I offered to give you this house. Do you really think that whatever revenge I take will be against you?”

A sigh shudders out of her. “No.”

“But if you ever try to hack into my systems or investigate me again, you will leave me no choice but to genuinely hurt you, and every agreement I made with you will be null and void. It doesn’t matter whether I want to hurt you or not. I don’t. But I can make myself do anything, no matter how horrible, even if it tears my soul to shreds while I’m doing it. To get to where I am today, I’ve done things that make me sick. You’re not safe from me, Willow. Please understand me.”

The heartbreak on her face tears into me. “I want to understand you. Part of the reason I was trying to hack into your systems, look into your past, is that I want to know what made you like this.”

I look at her blankly. “Why?”

“For selfish reasons. You may not believe this, but I…I love you.” The terrible confession rasps out, her throat hoarse from screaming and crying. “Even now. Even after what you just did to me. And I don’t want to believe that I would care about a man who is just pure evil. If something happened to you to make you so hard, it would be easier to understand.” She looks at me, pleading. “I want to get to know the real you.”

“You can’t.” My words are harsh. Savage. Final.

And that makes her cry. Not tears of pain or fear, but tears of genuine sorrow. She sobs so hard her shoulders heave. I turn to go.

“Don’t leave me!” she calls after me.

Every other time she’s reached out to me like this, it was like a battering ram, thudding against me, tearing holes in barriers that have been up since as early as I can remember. And I always lashed back at her, mocking her, knocking her off her feet, breaking her heart every time.

I can’t do it again.

I walk back to her and I sink down next to her. Without meaning to, I gather her into my arms. She sags against me, her face buried in my shoulder.

I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. I’d destroy anyone who wanted to hurt her – but I can’t protect her against her cruelest tormentor – me.

“Why do you want me here?” I ask her gently.

“Because I do. I just do.”

She slides her arms around me, and then I’m actually hugging her. Embracing her. Like normal people do.

I gather her up in my arms and carry her through the halls, past servants who quickly avert their eyes, and back to her room. I deposit her gently in an overstuffed armchair. She whimpers in pain from the lash marks on her back.

I’ll send a nurse in to take care of her. To clean up my mess.

“Will you come back later and sleep with me tonight?” she asks.

I stroke her cheek. “I wish I could, but I cannot.”

Her delicate brows pinch together. “You mentioned that one time a woman slept in bed with you. Why not me?”

She’s still jealous. She’s insecure because she doesn’t know how beautiful she is. She doesn’t understand what she’s done to me, how she’s touched me in places nobody ever has before.

“Do you remember that I also told you that I had a nightmare and broke the woman’s jaw?”

She shrugs, unworried about the danger that I pose to her. “I was mostly concentrating on the fact that you slept in the same bed with her.” She moves, trying to get comfortable, and grimaces.

“She was a high-end escort. She passed out drunk, and I was too drunk and tired to kick her out at the time.”

I see the relief in her eyes.

“Will I ever be able to sleep in the same bed as you?” she asks, her voice so soft, like the caress of an angel’s wing.

God, I want that. “I don’t know. Probably not. I still have nightmares. I might hurt you.”

That last part was a lie, because I haven’t had nightmares since she’s been back. I hate lying to her. But if I let her sleep with me night after night, I’ll never be able to let her go.

“All right.” Her voice is small and sad.

For once I want to leave her happy when I go.

I bend down and kiss her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Her brow creases in bewilderment. Her eyes are watery with tears.

“For being amazing. For loving a monster, even if he can’t love you back. For…for letting me see how good it could be, if I were someone else.”