I didn’t stop. I kept hitting and hitting until he let go. My eyes were focused on Inessa, who was being backed away farther into the room. I lurched forward, but as I did, a pain slammed across my stomach. My legs gave way at the power of the blow, all breath leaving my body.

But I still didn’t stop. Inessa was a statue in the Wraith’s arms, her blue eyes wide and watching. As a tear fell down her cheek, I forced myself to move. Using my arms, I dragged myself toward my sister, teeth gritting at the pain in my stomach. Suddenly another blow hit me, this time across my back. My body slumped to the cold floor and blood trickled out of my mouth, the tinny taste coating my lips. But with one look at Inessa, I forced myself forward.

In the back of my mind I could hear the Wraiths talking to one another in hushed tones, but when Inessa reached out her hand I redoubled my efforts. I crawled and crawled toward my sister. Just as I was about to touch her hand, I was whipped off the floor. I fought and fought, struggling to get free, but the man who held me was too strong. My body was too weak from the blows.

“Let me go,” I hissed in my native Russian. “You won’t take her from me.”

The woman moved into my line of sight. Her small dark eyes stared at me, a smirk pulled on her thin lips. My eyes flared and I snapped, “Let me go!”

That smirk then turned into a smile, and a man came over to stand beside her. It was the man who had flipped the bed to find us. His dark eyes watched me, his large arms folded over his chest.

The woman stepped back toward Inessa, her eyes never moving from mine. I watched her all the way. When she reached Inessa, my sister shrank back in fear. The woman lifted her hand, as if to strike.

I thundered out a shout.

I roared. I kicked and punched to get free. The woman dropped her hand, and I could see some kind of understanding flash across her face. She took four steps back to me—I counted each one—before lifting her hand to my face.

“You will do anything to protect this one, won’t you?” she said in Russian, her thick Georgian accent coming through with each word.

My jaw clenched, but I said nothing. She laughed and the man next to her tipped his head to the side. The woman looked up at him and said, “We take both. She is a beauty. And he is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. So loyal and fierce.”

The man nodded his head. My blood turned to ice. The woman lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. Immediately the man holding Inessa began carrying her out of the room, the man holding me moving, too. I never took my eyes off my sister as we were carried past the rows of lined-up boys and girls. I didn’t move my eyes from my sister as they led us to a van. And I didn’t take my eyes off my sister as the female Wraith moved her mouth to my ear and said, “If you want to keep her alive, you will learn to do anything we say. You will become one of us. You will become a Night Wraith, as this place calls us. You will become an unseen killer. You will become one with the night. You will be my prized Ubiytsa, my most effective assassin.”

And I did.

As the years passed, I became a ghost in the night.

I became the deliverer of death.

I was torture.

I was pain.

I was the fucking nightmare that no one ever saw coming …

… until it was too late.

1

ZOYA

Manhattan, New York

Present day …

“Sykhaara,” I murmured in shock, my chest cracking open with hope, a hope that I hadn’t dare let myself feel in the twenty years since the massacre. The hope that my brother was alive. Now, after all these years, he was alive.

“Miss?” Avto, my protector and minder, pushed, but I was frozen on the spot. My legs were numbed in shock. Zaal, my Zaal, was alive.

Water blurred my eyes as I looked to Avto once more. “And Anri? Is there news of Anri?”

Avto’s face fell with disappointment. “No, miss. There is no word of Anri. But our source got word of a Kostava arriving in the city. They watched him; they watched him and watched him. And—”

“And what?” I interrupted, hanging on every word Avto said.

“And it is Zaal, miss.”

A sob ripped from my throat and my hand covered my mouth. I pictured Zaal in my mind. His eight-year-old face looking at me as he held me in his arms, walking us from our estate’s forest toward the house. His smile was wide as he looked at me counting the three moles on his left cheek, “One, two, three.” I remembered long black hair hanging down his back and his green eyes bright with life. And I remembered Anri walking beside us, his frame and hair the exact replica of Zaal’s, but his eyes were a dark brown, like mine.

A hand landed on my shoulder pulling me from the memory. Avto was looking at me in concern.

“Miss, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I whispered, then shook my head, “I don’t know. It’s just all so … I had hoped and prayed that he had survived, that both of them had, but when nothing was heard in all of these years, I had lost that hope. It … it is all too much to take in.”

A sinking feeling hit my stomach. “Are you certain, Avto? I’m not sure I could take it if this was a mistake. My heart has been broken for over twenty years; it cannot take any more pain.” Avto’s gentle brown eyes softened. “We are sure, miss.”

I frowned. “But is he in hiding still? Who has been protecting him all of these years? How has his identity been found out? Is he in danger?”

Avto’s soft gaze turned sorrowful. My hand jerked out and wrapped around his arm. “Avto? Tell me. Where has my sykhaara been?”

Avto sucked in a long inhale and said quietly, “Miss, the Jakhua took your brothers and used them.”

“Used them? How? I don’t understand?” I wanted answers.

Avto tensed and said, “Miss, there are things in our world that you are unaware of. People that exist, places that exist, only in the underworld. Only in secret.”

My eyebrows pulled down. “Avto, what are you trying to tell me? Where has my Zaal been? What did that man do to my brothers?”

Avto’s arm muscle was rigid under my hand. Taking a deep breath, he explained, “Zoya, the Jakhuas were developing drugs.”

“What kind of drugs?” I asked.

“Obedience drugs, miss. Drugs that wipe the memories of the victims, coerce them into doing horrific and despicable acts.”

I swallowed, my chest tightening. “Like what?” I whispered.

Avto’s shoulders slumped. “Killing. Murdering. Doing anything their Master asks of them. And I mean anything. No matter the moral implications.”

Bile built in my throat, but I choked it back down. “And Jakhua.” I swallowed again when my voice broke. “Jakhua used this drug on my brothers?”

Avto nodded, but his face blanched.

“What?” I probed.

“Miss,” Avto rasped, “Masters Zaal and Anri were not simply put under the influence of the drug. It was on your brothers that the drug was developed.”

I stared. I stilled. My hands trembled. My throat closed in, but I managed to ask, “He, Jakhua, he used my brothers to test his drug on? He experimented on them like laboratory rats?”

Hot tears streamed down my cheeks when Avto answered, “Yes, miss. Since they were twins he used them to test all the stages of the drug’s development. He compared the results.”

Jumping to my feet, I ran to the wastebasket and threw up.

Avto followed behind, his old hand gently pressing my back in comfort. But there was no comfort to be found at the thought of my brothers, my strong and brave beloved brothers, being injected with that, that poison, for years and years, until they had no memory—

Gasping, I wiped my mouth and turned to face Avto. “Their memories? Zaal’s memories?” Fear filled me as I confronted the possibility that my brother would not know who I was. It had to be the cruelest of God’s jokes, my twenty-year wait for their return, only to find one of my brothers, my only family, could be a stranger.

“We have heard that his memories are returning each day, and Zoya, we believe he remembers you, but—”

“But what?” I said almost inaudibly.

“Miss,” Avto said, and stepped closer, “he believes you died in the massacre. He has no idea that you survived. He never got word that your body was never found.”