VII (Seven) Read online

Mischa is a fickle captor. One moment, he’s seemingly merciful, offering my heart’s desire. The next, he’s content to let me rot.

  I’m too tired to put up much of a fight. Instead, I return to my room and curl up on the lone mattress.

  My body hums in the aftermath of his violence, like an instrument played to the breaking point—but one used how it’s meant to. Ruthlessly thorough. His hands stroke parts of me to exhaustion, making them sing a painful tune.

  But it’s not music. It’s twisted, ugly noise.

  In contrast, Robert used me like a tool. His lust was a sledgehammer against a glass nail. Two items well-suited in theory—but in reality, the latter was destined to break. I can’t recall the way he felt inside me. I don’t want to. Thoughts of him are the remnants of a terrible storm. The details are hazy, but the aftermath is a stark nightmare I’ll always relive.

  And Mischa wants to be him.

  In a funny, terrifying way, it should be easy to swap them out. Pain for pain. Lust for lust. Brutality for brutality.

  It should be easy…

  But Mischa brings a different kind of agony, so unique that I lack the vocabulary needed to describe it. If Robert had my love, Mischa claims something else. Some hateful part of me I loathe almost as much as I desperately want to feel it. I’m not a numb bird in a cage when he touches me.

  I’m a hellcat, aching to scratch him as viciously as he brutalizes me.

  In his bed, I’m angry, and vengeful, and alive.

  Even scarred and brutalized, I can endure every second of his torment.

  Maybe the constant game is better than the surrender I’m accustomed to.

  At least I’ll go insane faster.

  What a pathetic creature he’s turned me into.

  I find snatches of sleep in his absence. When I finally crawl from the mattress, it’s dark. Shadows paint the corners of my room and I have to feel my way into the bathroom.

  I shower quickly, scrubbing my tormentor away. Naked, I retreat to my bedroom and fish a new outfit from my piles of clothing. My fingers settle rebelliously over one garment in particular: a simple pink dress nearly shapeless in design with a modest neckline.

  He accused me of still dressing like I belong to Robert—but when I remember my reasoning for choosing this dress, my husband isn’t who comes to mind. Robert liked me swathed in layers and festooned with pretty, frilly things. Lace. Ribbons.

  He liked me bundled up like a package only he could tear apart.

  This dress? I could smuggle cocaine underneath it in the place of a child if I had to. It would provide sufficient cover if I were locked in an animal’s cage, and I could also climb trees in it.

  More importantly, a madman could easily slide his fingers beneath it.

  And every time I look down at the soft, delicate color, I would remember who I am. Ellen, who likes pink. Not because of Briar or Mischa—but in spite of them both.

  My fingers shake as I wrench the dress over my head just as sounds drift from the hall. Footsteps. Mischa? Only God knows what new horror he has in store.

  I wait, my spine rigid, as the figure advances toward my door and the doorknob rattles. Strange. Vanya knocks, whereas Mischa would just barge in. The second I think as much, the door opens.

  A man stands there. He’s too thin to be Mischa, his face obscured by shadow.

  “I’m supposed to take you to him,” he says.

  “Who? Mischa?” I take a step forward, so conditioned to follow orders. But then something tugs at the back of my mind and I stop short.

  As much as he loathes Robert, Mischa has performed similarly in how he lords his ownership over me. He comes to me himself. Alone. Never before has he sent anyone but Vanya in his place.

  I scan the new man more intently, hunting for anything worth noting. Though he’s wearing the same gray fatigues as Mischa and his men, I don’t recognize his face.

  “Where is he?” I ask, not moving another inch.

  “He’s—” The man cocks his head and suddenly steps farther into the hall. Something about the way he moves makes me creep to the threshold to watch him. He’s stiff, marching past another man who rounds the corner. This figure passes me with no interest.

  I clench my teeth, uneasy. Is Mischa up to yet another mind game? If he is, I should just retreat to my room. Wait. Hide.

  My heart pounds in horror as I enter the hall instead. The unfamiliar man is already halfway to the grand staircase. I presume he’ll be descending the steps, but I don’t find him in the main entryway. I continue down the hall anyway, toward the dining room. Paces away from the doorway, I hear Mischa.

  “Come here.”

  His irritated tone spurs me closer, but I pause just before entering the room.

  “I thought I told you to stay out of here? Don’t give me that look,” he scolds in a tone so sharp that I flinch. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep playing with those. Huh? You want to learn to use one?”

  I strain my ears, but I don’t hear anyone respond.

  “I don’t think you’re ready,” Mischa replies to silence.

  Is the man truly insane? I inch closer and make out his shape hunched over a glass table in the center of a wide room. In one of his hands is a large knife, which he wields effortlessly.

  He tosses it by the handle and catches it, avoiding the blade. “These aren’t toys.”

  Beside him, barely coming to his waist, stands a tiny figure with wild, blond hair spilling over her shoulders. The girl Nicolai wanted used as a drug mule. She watches Mischa intently, and when he catches the knife again, she points to his hand.

  “What?” He hefts the blade for her to see more clearly. “You want to try holding it? I don’t know… Can I trust you not to cut your damn fingers off?” He laughs and I’m left reeling. Deep and booming, it sounds real.

  Insistent, the girl points again.

  With a sigh Mischa crouches down to her level and snatches one of her hands. “All right. Hold it like this. Not too tight, but not too loose, either. You drop this and you won’t just lose a toe or two, but your whole foot. Understood?”

  The girl nods as Mischa adjusts her grip on the blade.

  “Now, move your feet. Always brace. Don’t think that if you stab something the knife will just go through like paper. You always need force.” He makes her sharply jab the tip of the blade into the air and his lips quirk into a satisfied grin. “Like that. Not that you’re ready for something like this any time soon.”

  He stands and takes the knife, returning it to what I realize isn’t a table, but a glass case.

  “Someone your size needs something smaller,” he explains. “I’ll see if I can find something later. For now, stay out of this room, got it?” There’s no mistaking the authority in his tone, but it’s so much softer than I’m used to. He ruffles the girl’s hair and she playfully swats him off. “You took the braids out again, I see,” he scolds. “As much as you play in the fucking dirt, you keep it clean. If you catch lice, I’ll make you sleep with the rest of the stray dogs. Got it?”

  The girl’s expression conveys something that makes him laugh again.

  “Fine. Come here.” He sits on an armchair in the corner of the room, and the girl sits on the floor in front of him. Sighing, Mischa smooths back her tangled hair and braids it into a single plait. There’s an ease to his movements; he’s done this before. “There.” He shoos her off with a wave of his hand. “Don’t mess it up again. Same goes with the clothes. They belonged to someone special, so don’t even think about getting them muddy again.”

  He bares his teeth, but I marvel at the lack of true anger in his voice. Were he any other man, I’d describe his tone as playful even. The girl just grins, scurrying in my direction. Suddenly, her mouth falls flat as she spots my hiding place. She glances back at Mischa but continues down the opposite end of the hall without alerting him.

  Alone, I stare, watching him.

  He has his face in his hands. In the dim light
of the room, his hair gleams, ghosting his shoulders. Like this, it’s almost too easy to forget who he is. What he is capable of.

  But then he shifts, raising his head and fixating those piercing eyes toward the doorway.

  “I gave you permission to scurry around once,” he murmurs to the silence. “But I don’t remember doing so twice.”

  Caught, I shuffle forward, entering the room fully. “You called for me,” I point out, hating how breathless I sound. Air sticks stubbornly in my lungs, making it a struggle to even form words at all.

  “Did I?” He beckons me with a crooked finger and stands. As I near, he grabs my forearm, pulling me even closer. “Now why would I do that?”

  His gaze is narrowed. Thoughtful. Alarming. He eyes me the way Robert used to inspect his shooting targets. He’d load his gun, lazily deciding where to aim first.

  “To sell me again, maybe?” I gauge his reaction with every word, but he’s careful to reveal nothing behind his mocking smile. “To Robert Sr.?”

  “And what would the old man want with you?” he asks in a dangerous whisper. “Don’t tell me you shared his bed as well?”

  He frowns in a way that makes my cheeks flame. He’s serious.

  “Of course not!”

  “Because you were his.” He nods to himself, as if a suspicion of his has been proven once and for all. “He would have never used you as a decoy, not even for his sister.”

  “Why does it matter?” I try to wrench my arm back, but his grip tightens and I wind up stumbling into him.

  “Because him, I understand, Little Rose,” Mischa utters near my ear, his voice cold. “I know your husband. I know how his brain works. But you…” His fingers sink into my hair, grasping strands at random. “You are a mystery that makes no fucking sense.”

  He lets me go so suddenly that I stagger into the table, forced to brace my hands against it to stay upright. His footsteps advance on me and I sense him standing there, inhaling my scent, breathing out hate.

  “You say you love him,” he accuses, “but he’s hurt you. You jump when I say his name.” His touch nudges my spine as if to point out the reaction I wasn’t even aware of. “But you call for that fucker in your sleep. You moan for him. Did you know that?”

  I didn’t. Heat sears behind my eyes as my body stiffens. He’s lying. Though maybe he isn’t. I haven’t remembered a nightmare in years. There’s no point. I wake up and purge my soul of anything I might have dreamt of.

  Until now.

  “I want to know,” Mischa demands.

  I gasp as his fingers slip beneath my dress, brushing the back of my thigh. Instantly, I regret wearing it. Though, ironically, isn’t this one of the many reasons I had in mind for choosing it in the first place?

  There’s less hassle when his mind switches to sex—which it seems to do so often around me. But as if reading my mind, he grates out a harsh scoff and his nails dig in, making me flinch.

  “You play your innocent act. You walk around here, batting your fucking eyelashes, getting Vanya to do your bidding. Was he easier to seduce than I was, Little Rose? Has he tasted you already—”

  “Stop!” I push against the table, attempting to flee.

  Laughing, he presses harder, grinding my stomach into the wood. “You are very skilled,” he insists. “Sometimes, you even have me fooled. Convinced that it’s my cock getting you off. Making you come. But it’s not me, is it?” He grabs the hem of my dress again, lifting it.

  “What are you doing?” I try batting his hands away, but he pushes me aside and yanks the dress up further.

  “I could understand if he was a normal, pathetic, bleeding-heart motherfucker,” Mischa says over me. Our eyes meet and the look in his sends my pulse hammering. “I would understand it. If he never hurt you, I would understand.”

  Still holding my dress, he brings his free hand to my cheek, nudging my healing wound. “But he did. This is me,” he says, stroking the outermost edge of the wounds he inflicted. XV. Next, he traces the outline of my sore right eye. “So is this. And this…” He moves down to my neck and then my shoulder, aggravating old injuries I’d nearly forgotten. “But these are him.” His gaze cuts a brazen path down my front, raking over the various scars. “This is him,” he snarls, fingering a healed cut along my rib cage. “And this.” He turns his attention to my stomach, stroking the length of a raised, silvery scar. “He’s hurt you way more than I have.”

  But Robert had years to inflict his damage. Looking back, only now can I admit that—despite my insistence to the contrary—his true abuse started when I was seven years old and he made me ogle a captive woman for sport.

  “And what about you?” I croak, shivering as he meets my gaze directly. “You don’t talk about…her. Anna.”

  The woman who he inferred was his love. I picture her, those wide, brown eyes. With Mischa? It doesn’t fit. Not until I envision the boy who crept into a room that he thought was Briar’s, intent on using her as a tool in their war. That boy would belong with a girl like Anna.

  “You say Robert is in my head,” I point out when he says nothing. “But you don’t mention her. You have no pictures of her—”

  “Who says I don’t?” His tone sets my nerves on high alert. Dark. Grated. Ragged. “Who says that I don’t talk about her? Think about her? Because her memory doesn’t rule my life the way your fucking Robert does?”

  Danger! I’ve gone too far. Mischa fists a handful of my dress in both hands, and tearing cotton is my only warning to brace as he tugs. Tears. Strips me bare.

  “You think I don’t think of her every fucking second of the day?” He doesn’t even seem to realize what he’s done. What’s he’s doing: invading my space, crushing me against the table, all while bringing his face within inches of mine. “You think I don’t miss her?”

  I shove against his shoulders, but he doesn’t budge. “N-no.”

  “No?” He laughs, tossing the remains of my dress to the floor. “She was better than you. Better than you will ever be.” He roughly tilts my chin, probing my gaze from a different angle. “She was good, and innocent, and sweet. And your husband destroyed that innocence.”

  I gasp as he grasps the back of my scalp and wrenches my head back. Eyes streaming, I stare up at the ceiling while his breath fans my exposed throat. Panic renders me motionless—but deep down I know that he could truly hurt me if he wants to.

  But he isn’t.

  “He killed her,” Mischa hisses. “And I should have killed you. All this time, I thought it was him. That he was a sick, twisted piece of shit who got off on causing pain. But why wouldn’t he?”

  He tugs harder, turning my face so that my brand is visible. “He had you. Fucking him. Moaning in his goddamn ear. Making him feel… Making him feel fucking human.”

  The way he growls that word in particular resonates in my bones. Human.

  “You talk about Anna, but you want to know what makes her different from you? She wasn’t a cunning little bitch.” He pulls harder. Too hard. I claw at his fingers, desperate for relief, but he’s impervious to my attempts. “If she were here now, she’d want nothing to do with me. She wouldn’t even let me touch her. She’d run. She wouldn’t moan for me. She wouldn’t compare me to her fucking husband. She wouldn’t look at me—” He breaks off, inhaling raggedly. He has me pinned against the table’s surface, breathing heavily against my throat. “With those fucking eyes. Like you’re daring me to just do it already. Wrap my hands around your fucking throat. Squeeze. Put you out of your goddamn misery. You’re teasing me, aren’t you, you little bitch?” He sounds crazed. Manic. Laughing, he spits out, “You’re taunting me. I’ll never fucking have you.”

  He lets me go, backing away while his fingers fist the air. “Run away, Little Rose,” he commands, eyeing me with an unfathomable expression. “Now. Get the fuck out!”

  I crouch for my dress, only to stare abjectly at the torn pieces of fabric.

  “Here!”

  I glance u
p as Mischa shrugs his own shirt over his head and throws it in my direction. Sweat-soaked fabric lands over my knees as he storms past me. “Maybe I’ll reconsider selling you after all,” he suggests, laughing. “I won’t let you play your mind games with me.”

  The walls tremble with every thunderous step he takes as he retreats down the hall. Numb, I sit here, listening to him travel deeper into the house, trying desperately to anticipate his next move. I can still feel his touch, rough and scraping. Searching.

  For what? As I crouch on my knees, shock gradually replaces the hold fear has over my lungs. I start laughing too, cringing at the unstable, high-pitched sound. Ha ha ha. Robert could be impulsive when he wanted to be—but even then, I could always predict him. Anticipate him. He liked me meek and pliable, like putty in his hands. Sometimes, he liked it when I put up a fight every now and again.

  He never wanted more. He never punished me for not fearing him enough. Fucking him enough. Craving him enough.

  Is that what Mischa wants? My blood runs cold as my laughter trails off. I’m shaking, my teeth chattering. Naked, I have no choice but to put his shirt on and hunch beneath the heavy cotton.

  He smells so strange: a milieu of nuanced flavors that repulse me and intrigue at the same damn time. When inhaled, they’re too complex to describe. This must be what rage smells like. Raw, incredible anger. Twisted musk. Spiteful sweat.

  As twisted as he was, I always knew what Robert wanted from me. How to predict him. How to stay alive, even when he became his most unhinged.

  But Mischa? There’s no fucking point in even trying. He’s a storm, changing intensity at his own fucking discretion.

  I jump as my own fingers brush my throat, tracing my rapid pulse. He bit me there and the mark stings. Throbs. It’s a warning.

  Robert brutally scarred my body, but I was still Ellen in the end. Still me.

  Mischa is changing me, and I don’t know who I’ll become when he’s through. Someone twisted enough to want…

  More.

  Enough. I close my eyes, inhaling as much of the stale air as I can until my lungs fully expand. Then I slowly release the breath and reenter the hallway warily, praying that I don’t run into Vanya. What would he say if he saw me like this?