Chapter Eighteen
What day is it? How long have I been out?
The first thing I feel is cold. Bone-chilling cold radiating up from the ground, sucking the heat and life from my body.
The next thing I feel is pain. Throbbing pain in my right leg.
“Willow. Willow. Are you awake?”
I sit bolt upright, strangling on a scream of fear.
There’s a nasty chemical smell in the air. It stings my nose and makes me feel queasy.
Where they hell are we?
I fling my hands out, and they strike something cold and metal. It’s dark in here; I can barely see. But by feeling around, I realize that I’m in a cage. Like an animal. It’s not quite tall enough for me to stand up in.
I’m in a cage.
The realization fills me with horror.
Struggling not to scream, I squint in the darkness, looking around the room, and finally I see Darya, in a cage next to mine. She’s curled up on a thin mattress, hugging her knees, with a blanket wrapped around her. Barefoot, wearing leggings.
I can’t make out much in the darkness, but I see a chair that looks as if it’s bolted to the ground, and a chain hanging from the ceiling.
I scrabble around in my cage and see that I have a mattress and blanket too, so I crawl up on the mattress and wrap the blanket around me. It’s thin and scratchy, but it helps repel the chill a little bit. I’m only wearing leggings and a long-sleeved shirt.
I don’t feel an ache between my legs, so I’m pretty sure I haven’t been raped. Yet. But this kidnapping is entirely different from the fake one that Sergei staged. He made sure that I woke up in a warm, clean room with water sitting nearby.
Whoever has taken us wants to make sure that Darya and I are humiliated, miserable, and physically weakened.
Sergei will come save us. Sergei will come save us. I chant in my head, a desperate mantra, a tiny spark of hope to cling to. How long have I been here? Why isn’t he here yet?
I suck in breaths of cold air, and gradually the dizziness fades. My eyes adjust to the darkness. We are alone in the room.
I’m horrified to see that there’s a bucket in the corner of the cage. Darya has one too, and now I can smell urine wafting in the air.
They want to reduce us to animals.
“Darya? Are you all right?” I mumble, then realize what a stupid question that is.
“Not really.” She makes a sound that could be a sob or a laugh.
“You called me Willow. How did you know my real name?”
“They told me when they brought me here. They said I was just bait for you. Willow, you shouldn’t have come for me,” Darya groans. “Why did you do it?”
“I had a plan,” I croak, and realize I am desperately thirsty. “This wasn’t part of it. How did they get you?”
She shifts on the mattress, wrapping the blanket around her more tightly. “I’m so stupid. That bitch Ludmilla… We were both at work, and she asked me if I wanted to go out and grab a drink after work. I said yes. I honestly thought it was weird – she’s never been warm and friendly in the couple of weeks I’ve known her; she was always just pure business. But I was lonely and wanted a friend, and I felt kind of intimidated by her because she’s such a big deal at Reforma. So I went anyway. And of course…she drugged my drink. Can you fucking believe it? I mean, I would say I’m never going to go out for a drink again, but that’s not an issue. Because we’re both going to die here.” Her voice rises in a hysterical laugh.
I want to reassure her, but how can I?
I have to admit to myself – even if Sergei gets to us in time, I’m sure the place is heavily guarded. We’ll probably be murdered before he can rescue us – and that’s the best I can hope for. That our suffering will be over quickly.
And all this at the hands of a woman I admired so much. A woman I trusted with my life, many times.
“I can’t believe she did that to you. I can’t believe I was so wrong about her,” I groan. “Of all the people to sell out for money. How could she?”
Darya coughs, and her body shakes. “It wasn’t money. She told me that Cataha promised to return her sister to her. Sabina. Her sister was taken eight years ago, and she’d given her up for dead, but Cataha showed her a recent picture of Sabina, holding up a newspaper from just a week ago. And she said that your family were the ones who took her sister in the first place. Is that true?”
“Yes, it was my father.” I am hurtling off a cliff. Falling and falling. “But she shouldn’t have taken it out on you. What happened?”
“She told me she was sorry that she’d had to involve me, but there was nothing she wouldn’t do to save her sister. And she said you deserved it. I don’t believe that, though. You didn’t know, did you?”
“Oh God, no.”
I can’t just sit here like this. I have to take action or I’ll go crazy. I crawl over to the cage door and test it. It’s locked, of course. I reach up to my hair, then suddenly realize that my head feels strangely light.
All my hair extensions have been cut off. Frantically, I run my fingers through my hair, but every single tool that I had is gone.
Then I realize why I have an ache in my right leg.
The true horror of my situation hits me.
Sergei will never find me. I’m going to die here.
Because I told Ludmilla about the tracker, which means they would have searched my body for it and found it. The tracker would have been removed before they brought me to this hell pit.
Everything is gone. My blades, my lock pick, cyanide pill.
And even worse, I wonder – will Sergei think I ran, on purpose? Will he suspect me of murdering his men so I could escape? Is that a crazy thing to worry about? I don’t know. I’m so dazed with fear and thirst and terror that I can’t think straight.
Tears fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks. I always knew that it would come to this, but it’s no less terrible.
I’m twenty-three. I don’t want to die. I want to see my family again. I want to see Sergei again. I don’t want him to hate me. I don’t want him to think I ran away from him after I promised not to.
I want water. I’m so thirsty.
“I called up Grigor like you said, and he was going to meet me in St. Petersburg.” Darya’s voice is a pained croak in the darkness. “He’ll think I stood him up. Reforma will think that I just quit without notice. Ludmilla will make them think that, because she’s their shining star. Their heroine. You still think Fate doesn’t hate me, Willow?”
I can’t even find words to answer her. I just hug myself and rock silently.
Time ticks by, too slowly. Minutes? An hour?
Finally, I force myself to form words.
“We fight to the end, Darya,” I rasp.
“Yes.” She clears her throat, which I’m sure is as dry as mine. “You were my friend. Thank you for being my friend.”
And then the door flies open, and I choke in fear, because the devil is striding through.
He’s still wearing his mask.
They flip on the lights and flood the room with blinding white light. Tears burn in my eyes, and I blink frantically.
He has four men with him. Without a word, they open up Darya’s cage. She scrabbles to the back of the cage, and one of the men pokes a cattle prod through the bars, making her scream.
I want to cry out in protest, but what’s the point? These men thrive on inflicting pain and fear.
She crawls out of the cage without a word, and tries to stand up, but one of the men kicks her back down to the ground, grabs her by the wrist, and drags her across the floor.
Because she’s not even human to them. They have to degrade her in every possible way. She would have walked, but they want her knocked down and helpless.
When they reach the chain dangling from the middle of the room, they tear her clothes off. My stomach turns to water.
They’ll rape her while I watch.
They tie her hands to the chain that’s dangling from the ceiling. Then one of the men turns a crank on the wall so the chain is pulled up, and she’s hauled up off her feet. Dangling, legs thrashing, tiptoes barely touching. The men hold various implements of torture. One holds a bullwhip, two have cattle prods, one holds an enormous knife.
God, please let this end soon. Please let us just die.
Next they open my cage door. I don’t want to be shocked with the cattle prod, so I crawl out, cursing under my breath. Cataha himself is standing by my door, and he grabs me by the hair, hauls me to my feet, and marches me over to the chair.
They treated me differently. I wasn’t kicked to the floor, I wasn’t stripped. Why?
“Tell me your real name. I want to hear it from your lips.” Cataha’s voice is creaky and strange.
“Fuck yourself!” I shout at him.
One of the men slashes at Darya with the whip, leaving a vicious red stripe across her stomach, and she jerks and makes a strangled sound. Tears run down her face. I can almost feel the agony of the whip on my own skin, and I can’t imagine what it cost her not to cry out. She’ll be screaming soon enough. She won’t be able to help it, no matter how strong she is. She’s only flesh.
“Stop it!” I cry. “Why are you hitting her? I’m the one who’s not talking! Hit me!”
But I’m an idiot. This is exactly how these men operate. They find out what will hurt you the most, and attack you that way.
“Your real name!” Cataha barks again.
Before I can answer, the man whips Darya again, and this time she screams and her body convulses. Her eyes are open wide, huge with terror.
I meet his gaze. I am sure that my answer spells my doom, but I am doomed anyway. “My name is Willow Toporov.”
Cataha gestures at the man with the whip, and the man lowers his arm. They lower Darya to the ground, so she’s sagging on the chain, her feet on the floor, her head hanging down.
Cataha pulls his mask off and steps closer to me. He’s bathed in the harsh white lights. His face is strangely, horribly familiar.
The hair is different than I remember. Clipped close and bleached a pale blonde. He has facial hair – a goatee. The nose is a different shape. His cheekbones are wider and higher, his jaw broader. He has brown eyes, which must be contact lenses.
I know this. I know his eyes are really blue. I know his hair used to be black and curly. Because despite all the plastic surgery, the distorted face, the scars…this is Vasily Toporov.
This is my adoptive father. The man who died, right next to my mother, when I was seventeen years old, when their small private plane fell from the sky. He’s come back from Hell, to drag me down with him.
The look of hatred that’s twisting his face is terrifying.
His head jerks to the side. He screams at someone I can’t see. “It’s her! Shut up, shut up, shut up! I brought her back!”
Who the hell is he talking to? I can’t see anyone, although my eyes haven’t fully adjusted to the light in this room. Maybe there’s a one-way mirror I can’t see, or a hidden video camera.
“I’m the one you want,” I plead. “Not Darya. Please let her go, and I’ll do anything you want. If you hurt her, I’ll make you kill me.”
He lunges at me, hands closing around my throat, squeezing hard.
“Let her go, you fucking pig!” Darya howls. So brave. So foolish.
One of the men slashes her with the whip again, and she screams so hard I think my eardrums will split.
My vision is turning black, and I’m frantic for air. I claw at his hands, my lungs burning.
“You treacherous bitch,” Vasily rasps. “You backstabbing little traitor whore. You’re the reason that your mother’s dead. And I’m going to make you pay for it.”