Below me on a black tiled floor was a dark-haired female. Her big brown eyes were huge as they looked up at me. Her small hands were wrapped around my wrist, pushing me to get off. I blinked, and blinked again, trying to push the fog from my mind. Images flashed across my eyes: her lying in the cage, her tied to the wall, wrapped in ropes, her on a bed, being tortured and hurt.
Zoya, she had said. My name is Zoya.
Jerking my hands free, my neck throbbing with pain, I pulled back. My legs were straddling her thighs. Zoya coughed and spluttered as she rubbed at the skin of her neck.
I slid back against the wall, still feeling the wetness over my chest. I ran my hand over the damp skin, only to see a bloodied towel lying beside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to clear the blur. When I opened them, the chamber came into view. I breathed hard, relieved that I wasn’t back in that hell—the Blood Pit.
Seeing movement from beside me, I rolled my head to the side, wincing at the pain in my neck.
Zoya. Zoya shuffling away from me.
“No,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. My throat feeling like razor blades as I tried to push out the word.
Zoya stilled and deliberately met my eyes. Swallowing, she asked, “Valentin?”
My heart beat fast as she spoke my name. Unable to talk, I put my hand over my chest and briefly closed my eyes to tell her yes.
Relief washed over her face and she came closer. The closer she got, the more I noticed that her long black hair was wet and her skin had been cleaned. She was still naked. As I looked down her lean body, my nostrils flared as I saw red teeth marks covering her chest and rope burns over her wrists and ankles.
I swallowed as images of me doing these things sailed through my brain. I saw myself tying her up, biting her, about to force my cock into her mouth.
Regret and shame burned like fire in my heart.
Needing to get the fuck away from what I’d done, I tried to move. As I fought to get to my feet, a hand landed on my bare chest. I froze, and when I looked up Zoya was peering down at me. She sucked in a breath and said, “It was the monster, not you. And you stopped him before you…”
I frowned, not understanding her meaning. Zoya sat back on her ankles, then pointed to the broken metal collar on the floor. My stomach flipped. I instinctively reached up to my neck, hissing when my hands landed on bare neck.
My bare neck. I hadn’t had a bare neck since I was twelve.
I turned to Zoya for answers. Anticipating my question, she explained, “You fought its control over you. You saw what you had done, were about to do, under its influence, and you forced it from your neck.” Zoya shuffled forward and ran her finger under my neck. “It made you bleed and pass out. You have been asleep, I think, for many hours.” She pointed at the wet rag. “I was cleaning you when you awoke. I think you were having a nightmare; you were restless, and tried to call out.”
I stared at her as she spoke. As she was about to withdraw her hand, I gripped her wrist and kept her finger on my chest.
A flush crept up her skin. As I watched her olive skin blush with red, I remembered my lips pressing against hers. I remembered her touch on my face. I remembered her smiling at me when I told her my name.
“Are you tired?” she asked softly.
I closed my eyes again to say yes. Zoya looked over to the bed and said, “Can you get up to sleep on the bed?”
Wanting to get on the bed with her, I forced myself to get off this floor. Planting my palms on the hard tile, I pushed off the floor, my feet staggering when I stood up.
Zoya stayed at my side. Her face was down, as though she was concentrating. Accompanied with a deep breath, she wrapped her arm around my waist, then guided me to the bed. With every step, my heart swelled at the sweet feeling of Zoya’s arms around my waist.
“Lie down,” Zoya instructed when we reached the edge of the bed.
Doing as she said, I lay down on the mattress, until I was on my back. Zoya stood at the side, rocking on her feet. I patted the mattress beside me. Zoya looked at me through long lashes. Doing as indicated, she crawled onto the bed. She curled beside me, lying on her side. Her hand was tucked under her face. She looked so beautiful. So beautiful that I pushed out my hand and ran the back of it down her cheek.
“Beautiful,” I murmured, watching the shock ripple over her face. My raw throat burned in pain, but I pressed my free hand against my throat to numb it and finished, “I have hated … all … Georgian bitch females … my whole life.” I swallowed to wet my throat, then scratched out, “But I … cannot hate … you.”
Zoya’s eyes dipped; then, without looking at me again, she slid from the bed. My heart sank as she disappeared into the small bathroom, but she appeared again with a bottle of water. Nervously she moved to my side. Kneeling on the bed, she brought the bottle of water to my lips and poured some of the cold liquid down my throat. She repeated the action until the bottle was drained; then, as before, she lay down on the bed beside me.
I cleared my throat, the burning sensation already dulled.
My hand was lying on the mattress between us. Zoya’s fingers went rigid, and with a sigh her small hand covered mine. My eyes snapped to hers. Soon her warmth seeped into mine, and she licked along her lips.
“Valentin,” she said in the thick Georgian accent I used to despise but now had learned to adore. “You are not a bad man.”
My eyebrows pulled down. Those images of what I was about to do to her raced through my head. As if sensing what was happening, Zoya squeezed my hand. “I know what you are thinking,” she said softly. I focused on the rope burns on her body.
“Look at me!” Zoya said. My nostrils flared on hearing a command from her mouth. Zoya’s face softened and she added, “Please.”
Forcing my body to not respond to a strict female voice, I sank farther into the mattress and met Zoya’s eyes, as requested, not commanded.
Her fingers began stroking across my own. “When you first touched me, you terrified me.” I stayed still, just listening. Zoya’s face paled and she said, “The things you did to me when you first brought me to this chamber”—she shook her head—“I could not have even dreamed of in my worst nightmare. The electric shocks, the hot and cold, then the way you used my body and its centers of pleasure against me. It was barbaric, cruelty at its very worst.” My jaw clenched at the hurt lacing her voice, but I didn’t react. I had committed these acts. I’d done what I’d been commanded by Mistress.
Zoya smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “At first, I thought you were coldhearted, a monster. But then I realized what the collar around your neck was doing to your body. I knew when it took you in its hold. Your blue eyes would turn black, fully dilated. It still didn’t explain the hours when your eyes were blue, yet you still caused me pain. But you began to slip, and I glimpsed fleeting moments of compassion sneaking through.” Zoya’s head tipped to the side. “And even though you had me held captive, even though you had hurt me, had brought me to a torturous level of pleasure, I worked out that you were doing all of this because you had to, not because you wanted to.”
I rolled my lips together; that feeling again burst within me. I stared at this female. I questioned how she could be speaking to me this way. How could she care for me, after all that I had done to her?
“As I said before, Valentin, we are not dissimilar. And believe it or not”—she tipped her head forward—“you and your chamber are not the most horrific of things that have happened in my life. You see, I think in that respect we are alike.” Her hand squeezed mine and she added, “Except the people who found me and took me in were good and honest people. They protected me and kept me safe.” Zoya lifted our joined hands and brought them to her lips. As her lips brushed the back of my hand, a blanket of heat covered my body.
“Where I believe the people that found you caused you nothing but pain and sorrow. I believe that had you not been forced to have this life, you would have been a very different man. Do you
agree?” she asked, her question hanging thick and heavy in the air.
I shrugged and whispered, “I do not know. I have caused others pain. I have killed and tortured since I was a child.”
Zoya’s face fell and she asked, “By choice?”
I closed my eyes and slightly shook my head. “No,” I admitted, “made to. Forced to.”
I heard Zoya sigh. I felt her warm breath on my face. My answer rewarded me with another kiss on my hand. As if some invisible barrier had been torn down between us, Zoya shifted closer until I could feel the heat of her body seeping into mine. A deep blush ran up her neck to fill her cheeks and face. I decided at that moment that she was the most beautiful female that could have ever existed. She, a Georgian, of an enemy race I had vowed to always hate. But with that flush, brown eyes, compassion, and tender grace all the hatred fell away.
Zoya lifted her leg to place it over mine, moving closer until her head lay next to me. “I know you do not like Georgians, Valentin, but my grandmama would tell me the story of the Tbilisi monster. Have you heard of it?” she asked. My lips curled up at her Georgian accent fluidly wrapping around the Russian words.
“No,” I replied.
Her brown eyes became lost as she explained, “I was only five years old when my family was killed.” My eyes dropped to the scars on her shoulders and hip. Seeing my attention focus on these, she stroked along my face and said, “The day I too should have died.” My stomach dropped just at the thought of Zoya being dead. But I refocused on her words as she carried on, “I have no more memories, I believe, from that age. I think it is because I lost them all to trauma. I think when a horrific event has tarnished your soul all the lighter days prior to that event are the brighter for it.”
Zoya’s eyes dulled for a moment but brightened when her lips pulled into a small smile. “My grandmama loved to tell me stories. And I loved to hear them. She knew this, so she would often tell me stories. But there was one she would tell me over and over again. Every time she told it, I would always find fault.”
I listened to her talk of her family with such happiness. At that moment I could have listened to her always. Her voice changed as she recalled her family. I never had that. Even with Inessa, I was always fighting for us to survive, stealing to help us eat.
“Valentin?” Zoya pushed. I snapped back to the present. “Are you okay?” she asked. I pressed my cheek to the hand she had left under my face. “Tell me about the monster.”
She smiled again. “Legend has it that the monster, who is as tall as the trees and as broad as an ox, lived in the deepest parts of the Tbilisi forest. For years he had been spotted by the children in the town. He would live on his own in peace, but the children all wanted to see him. But when they saw him, they would laugh at him and make fun of him, call him ugly. They prodded him with sticks, hit him with rocks, and ran screaming past where he slept to keep him awake.
“Then one day everything changed. The monster fought back. The monster waited and waited in hiding for nasty children to run by. As they passed his hiding place, he jumped out and caught them, bringing them back to his house. In his house he had a cauldron. The captured children were placed inside and cooked alive, into a hot monster’s stew.”
A laugh came from her throat, instantly seizing my fucking heart. She shook her head. I could see the water glistening in her eyes. “My bedroom overlooked the Tbilisi forest. At night I would search and search for the monster in the woods. I never saw him of course, but I didn’t know that as a child. He was my obsession. I thought of him day and night.” Zoya’s eyes dipped, and she said, “I wanted to see the monster. I wanted to speak to him. I wanted to ask him why he’d done such an awful thing. I wanted to speak to him to ask if somebody had hurt him, and inquire why he was so angry and sad. I wanted to tell him that if he tried to be nice, if he didn’t hurt and eat the children, then people might come to like him, that he could make friends. I wanted to tell him that even if he didn’t look like the rest of us, even though some found him ugly, he wasn’t. He was just different. But of course, I never did see him.”
Zoya dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her thumb and laughed again. “My family laughed at me as I searched the edge of the forest, shouting for the monster day and night. My brothers would often hide behind the trees and jump out, making me scream as they chased me over the lawn.” Zoya paused.
Zoya edged closer, until her forehead pressed against mine. Her fingers traced over my scars that ruined my face. “Valentin, to me, you are the monster of Tiblisi Forest. You have done cruel things. But just by looking at you, at that collar on your neck, the scars on this face, I could see it was because horrid things had first been done to you. Someone had you under her control; she had the means to make you act so cruelly, to hurt you and believe you were a beast.” Her hand pressed over my heart. “I believe it goes against the grain of who you truly are, in here.”
“Zoya,” I murmured, and she smiled.
Swallowing, I pressed my hand against her cheek and whispered, “Do you realize how much you’ve just fucked up?”
Zoya froze and paled. I held her head tightly in place and stated, “You are really from Tbilisi, not Kazrati, as you have argued for many days.”
Zoya exhaled a shaky breath. Her hand on my face began to shake. Her skin turned cold when I said, “Zaal Kostava is from Tbilisi, Georgia. His family was killed; all the bodies were accounted for but one.” Her head flinched as she tried to move away, but I held it still in my large hands. Taking a deep breath, I rasped, “All but a younger little girl, a younger girl called Zoya.”
Zoya’s eyes closed. My eyes closed, too.
She was Zaal’s sister.
The man I was commanded by Mistress to kill.
14
ZOYA
I had never ever felt my heart beat so fast. As I lay here, trapped in the grip of the man I thought I had grown to understand, my heart beat too fast and too strong.
I could feel my body shaking. I could feel my blood turning to ice as it sluggishly tried to infuse my muscles with strength.
Crystal blue eyes watched me, like a hawk watches its prey. I chastised myself for my emotional naivety, for my abandonment of logic and my seriously misplaced trust.
I tried to pull back, but Valentin’s grip was too strong. Please, I tried to say, but no words fell from my mouth. I had been so wrong. It wasn’t the collar. This man was a heartless monster. Whatever had been in the collar only heightened the blackness scarring his soul.
I gave up the fight, lying as still as I could. I closed my eyes, seeing Zaal’s happy face in my head—the brother I’d just condemned to death.
My breathing quickened in sorrow, then my world was blown apart when the monster said, “Her name is Inessa.” I held my breath, my mind confused. Who was Inessa? What was he referring to?
Then he continued, “She is my sister, though she hasn’t remembered that fact, or even her own name, since she was four.” I blew out a breath, slow and controlled, shock filling every cell of my body. My frantic heart began to slow when I realized, I realized he was confiding in me. He was telling me about himself.
“Valentin,” I said softly, my near whisper sounding like a scream in the deathly quiet room.
Valentin’s hands ran to the back of my head as though he was trying to bring me as close as possible. I let him take comfort from my proximity. But when I saw a tear roll down his stubbled cheek, my heart broke in two.
“Valentin,” was all I could say. I swallowed at the grief in that single solitary tear tumbling to the mattress. “Where is she now, your Inessa?”
Valentin’s hold became rigid, but he managed to explain, “I do not even know how to make you understand. She is being held captive, like we all were. But where the men were trained as fighters or, worse, killers—”
“Like you?” I asked, the question tumbling from my lips without thought.
Valentin’s eyes shut painfully, but he nodded his head.
“Yes. Like me.”
“But your sister?” I pushed.
Valentin edged back, his hands sliding from behind my head. He took a grip of my hand, though, like before. No, not this time. When I saw his eyes, they were like nothing he’d shown me before. Vulnerability and despair shone in their depths, and absolute defeat.
“The females are taken down a different path. They are drugged with a serum that makes them sexually subservient. They are driven mad from within, if a man doesn’t fuck them like an animal.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Your sister? As a child…?” I trailed off, not wishing to hear the answer to my question.
Valentin shook his head. “Not as a four-year-old. As a four-year-old she began to be raised to clean and to cook under a different type of obedience drug. It took away her personality, anything about who she was. Mistress would show me Inessa on a screen every night, 152 as the tattoo on her back said—they didn’t tattoo females’ chests because it would spoil their looks. Mistress knew that I would never leave the Blood Pit without her. She also knew that I’d do anything to get my sister back, so she personally trained me to be an Ubiytsa.”
“An assassin,” I countered.
Valentin nodded his head. “For years Mistress held me in her personal chamber.” He pointed around the room, “This is a replica of her chamber. She keeps it the same wherever we go to find and make the hit, so I know where everything is, to make the torture more painful.” Valentin’s face, which was pale from his injury, began to redden with the anger thoughts of his “Mistress” were stimulating. “I was twelve when they took me and Inessa from our orphanage. Mistress immediately saw the bond we had. She’s a sick twisted whore who knew she could control me using Inessa’s safety—and she has; she still does.”
Valentin’s hands were shaking. I knew it was in fury, not fear. Shuffling closer, I ran the pad of my thumb over the racing pulse in his wrist and said, “Shh, calm. Take your time.”