Blaire

Drip.

Drip.

The sound of water droplets helped me keep my sanity and kept fear at bay. It muted the skittering on the wet ground, the sighs and groans that echoed around the stone structure of the level that housed my cell, and the creaking floorboards above me. I was in a dungeon, dark and damp, that smelled of bleach and death.

I knew where I was—the mansion of Mikhail Orlov near the Everglades. He didn’t take me directly to his solarium. That was where he did his executions. Here in this dungeon basement, he kept his guests to taunt or torture, or leave them to die a slow death. I wasn’t sure what he planned for me yet. I was lying on a steel-framed cot with a lumpy mattress that made my skin itch. I didn’t even want to see its condition. The pungent odor of copper, mixed with every imaginable bodily excretion from sweat to urine, was enough to make me gag, but my other choice was to lie on the floor with Lord knew what scuttling around. The darkness was a blessing and curse. Mercifully, I was given a t-shirt to wear over my dress so at least there was more barrier between the filth and my skin.

A heavy door clanged. I had not seen Mikhail, but I was sure that was about to change.

A white glow lit the gap between my door and the flooring. An army of footsteps approached. The small window on the door slid open and someone peeked in. As if I could go anywhere when my ankle was shackled to the concrete wall. There was only enough slack in the chain for me to go to the bucket in the corner to do my business and wash up at the drippy faucet.

The door swung open and the man himself stepped in. He was flanked by his trusted second man, Stefan. I didn’t know who the other three men with him were. The height and frame of one of them could have been the man who’d drugged me.

Orlov reminded me of those doting uncles you had as a child. He wasn’t tall and had a stocky build with a slight paunch. He had dark hair, a receding hairline, and a friendly smile—until his eyes darkened with malice and the smile became a sneer. Then he’d become the bogeyman of your nightmares.

I’d seen it happen before but, at that moment, he had on his doting uncle face.

“My dear, Paulina, it’s been almost three years,” he said as he stopped short of the bed.

I pushed myself up. I felt a bit nauseated, probably from the drug. “Mikhail.”

Stefan set one of those rechargeable lamps on the floor and illuminated the gray cinderblock walls of my room. The cement flooring was uneven, as if the house was built upon a slab of rock. The bucket and the faucet that I had to feel my way in the darkness for, sat in the corner of the room. A groove was carved into the length of the flooring and led into a hole in the ground.

“You’re looking well,” he said. “I’m sorry for your accommodations.” He gave my room a cursory glance. “But you and Maxim broke my heart. He died in here, you know.” Orlov shrugged. “It took a few days.”

Papa. I tried not to think of him, but images flashed in my head—of him drinking coffee while I finished my milk, of how he’d look over the edge of his newspaper and chided me to hurry up or I’d be late for school. And now I’d picture him in this dungeon…bloodied, dirty, and dying.

I knew what Orlov was doing … he was trying to play on my grief and my fear. Even as I tried not to give him that satisfaction, an anguished sob broke through my lips as emotions filled my chest.

“Just tell me what you want and get it over with,” I choked.

“The thing that bothered me all these years,” Orlov began. “Was not knowing how my son died.”

“Didn’t my father tell you?”

“Maxim told me my son attacked him and he stabbed him in self-defense.”

“It was self-defense,” I whispered. “You’re blind to the monster your son was.”

“He took the blame for you, didn’t he?” Malevolence darkened his eyes and his lips curled into a snarl. “You’re the one who killed Yuri.”

“He was a monster,” I repeated. “He murdered my friend and you had my father cover it up. You sent him away to Moscow for a year hoping he’d change, but how can a sociopath change when the sickness is in his blood? Your blood.”

He ignored my jab. “He was obsessed with you. If you’d accepted him, none of this would have happened.”

I laughed without humor. “And here you are still trying to justify his actions. Let me explain to you”—I got to my feet so we were face-to-face—“Yuri tried to rape me! I did what you should have done a long time ago, Mikhail. I put him down.”

Orlov snapped. I heard his roar just as the back of his hand struck me. I fell back on the bed, but something else hit me. A cane. Mikhail’s preferred method of torture. He hated blood and usually left messy kills for Stefan.

I curled into a ball and protected my head.

He cursed in Russian, chanting like a madman, and I cried when he struck my torso. The beating suddenly stopped as I heard Stefan and another man pull him back.

“We can’t kill her, boss. We need the information and—”

“I know!” Mikhail shouted. Fingers dug into my hair and he yanked my head so I could look into his eyes. “Where’s the storage unit?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Ahhh…”

He pulled at my hair again and gripped my chin hard. “Do not lie to me, suka!”

“I’m not! We never knew where it was. Papa gave the key to someone else. I swear.”

He asked me again and again. He hurt me again and again. This went on for several minutes until he was convinced I knew nothing.

“You’re lucky I’m not allowed to kill you,” He let me go in disgust. “Stefan?”

In my haze of pain, I registered his strange statement. Why wasn’t he allowed to kill me?

“Boss?”

“Make her bleed. Take a picture of her and post it in that chatroom. The one where that traitor Marco will see.”

Marco had been Liam’s undercover name.

“Tell him he has twenty-four hours to comply.”

Mikhail turned and left the room; the three men followed him. I was left with Stefan. Orlov’s second looked at me with regret in his eyes.

“You don’t have to do this, Stefan,” I pleaded. He wasn’t exactly a friend, but he was more than an acquaintance.

“Just tell us where it is and the pain will stop,” he said gently.

Was this why Liam kept quiet about the location of the storage unit? Did he suspect I would break and, when they got what they wanted, they would kill me? Would I have broken by now if I knew?

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, closing my eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Paulina,” he said and I believed in the sincerity of his apology. Stefan was a good soldier.

I let my mind escape my body. I tried to think about happier times with Papa, but my heart only hurt. My thoughts wandered to my happier times with Grant, but all I remembered was the contempt in his voice when he told me to leave. My heart cracked in two. All those condemning eyes closed in around me until I suffocated.

I coughed and choked.

My hand came away from my mouth.

Stefan did as he was told.

He made me bleed.