“So you’re saying you’ll get Zoya back?”

“I’m saying it’s just a matter of fucking time.”

10

194

I entered the back room, then slammed the door shut, snapping the metal locks tightly into place. My back hit the door and my legs became weak. I lifted my hand and stared at my rigid fingers. I’d almost touched her. A hollow feeling built in my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I am alone. I have always been alone. They were all killed—parents, grandmama, my younger siblings, and my brothers who I adored. I survived.… Most days I wish that I had died, too.

My heart beat rapidly against my ribs. Her voice, her voice was broken and cut. I could hear the devastation in her every word.

She felt just like me.

She felt like me.

Fisting the hand that was still raised, I moved off the door. I walked to the desk, and my eyes immediately fixed on the screen. The female was crying, her head down and her body shaking with sobs. My stomach tightened, and without my meaning to my finger lifted to touch the screen. My index finger traced the outline of her face and naked body.

She was so beautiful as she hung off that wall. I gritted my teeth as the thought ran through my mind. She was a Georgian. I hated all Georgians. They’d brought nothing but pain into my life. Mistress was Georgian. The Wraiths that would come to the orphanage, stealing kids, were Georgian.

But no matter how hard I wanted to hate this suka, seeing her like this, broken over her dead family, made it impossible. And … Yes, I think you’re beautiful, too.…

She didn’t lie. She looked at my fucked-up face and didn’t lie. She thought me beautiful. No one ever looked beyond my scars. I was Mistress’s ugly beast, a killer, nothing more.

But this little Georgian’s eyes. Those huge dark eyes. Her lips, her tits, her body, that long dark hair. My chest warmed and I smirked—her refusal to break under my questions. Her strength and iron will.

I’d never met anyone like her.

I stared and I stared at the screen. And I watched as the female lifted her head and drew in a deep breath. As if feeling the weight of my stare, her dark eyes peered down the camera lens.

My heart pumped fast, blood soaring through my veins. My hand ran down my face. As I still watched her like she was right in front of me, my finger landed on my lips. Freezing. Remembering that my finger had been on her pussy, I slipped it into my mouth, my dick hardening until it was painful. I sucked and sucked on my finger, tasting the sweetness of her juices.

Moving my hand down, I gripped my dick—picturing her lean body twitching, tensing, and moaning as my fingers circled her clit.

She’d been wet for me.

My hand worked faster, my dick leaking with my just seeing her panting. Her brown eyes shone and her olive skin flushed red, her nipples hardening like bullets. She may have been untouched, she may not have wanted it to be me who made her come for the first time in her life, but she had mewled and moaned, until she’d screamed out her release.

My jaw clenched and my head threw back as I came all over my hand. I stroked my release along my prick, coating the skin. My body jerked and I fought to catch my breath.

And the female still looked up at the screen, like she knew what the thought of her pussy had just made me do. My nostrils flared, as I imagined I was hovering above her, sinking my cock into her tight hole, but then just as my cock began to harden once more a buzz from within the desk drawer snapped me back to reality.

My heart dropped when I knew what it was.

Straightening, fighting back the rage that was already engulfing my body from the toes up, I slowly opened the drawer and pulled out the device Mistress always made sure was in the chambers I used.

Laying the device on the desktop, I pressed the button, the small screen immediately coming to life.

I wanted to look away. Then I wanted to reach into the screen and rip this prick apart. The prick who had pinned my sister down as she writhed on the bed. The Type B drug. The Type B drug that Mistress infused in my sister’s body from when she was a child. The one that took my sister away from me as a child. The drug that held her captive, held her body captive, internally writhing in pain until she was taken. Until some Wraith asshole—like the one that was slamming inside of her right now—took the pain away by fucking her into peace.

Mistress. It was all Mistress. Promising she’d give me my sister back after the next hit, the next kill, the next torture. But there was always a next time. Never the reward of freeing my baby sister, now twenty-two, from this hell.

Fury built inside me when the screen clicked to black. Just as I was about to throw the device against the wall, I forced myself to back up three steps. Lowering my head, I breathed and breathed, pushing the image of my sister being taken against her will from my mind.

When my head lifted, it was to stare into the small mirror on the wall. I glared at my reflection, not even recognizing the ugly beast I was now. My hair was shaved, scars and tattoos covering every inch of my skin. A scar on my right cheek, my left, my head, and my lip—the right cheek scar trailing from my temple to my chest—that I’d gotten when I spat in Mistress’s face as a child. The scar she’d caused by having a Wraith pin me down as she ran her switchblade through my flesh, narrowly avoiding my eye, all to teach me that I was her property. All so I’d look like a fucking nightmare. All so no other female would ever want me but her.

My body was over-muscled, years and years of Type A drug use the cause. And I hated it. But the collar, the damn collar around my neck, controlling my life. The clear sign to everyone in the Wraiths that I was Mistress’s dog, her pet whom she controlled to exact her revenge on anyone who pissed her off. The pet whom Master, Mistress’s brother, let her have, to keep her the hell away from him and his enterprises.

The bitch was poison. A poison that someday I’d destroy.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood in the center of the room, but when I was sure no more rage could flow through my veins I looked over my shoulder and to the little Georgian on the TV screen.

My eyes narrowed. She knew something about Kostava. My mind raced, and my head tilted to the side. She said all her family had died, been massacred, but as I thought of her screams, of her cries, I detected a shake in her voice as she’d mentioned her brothers.

I didn’t doubt that her family had died. But my little kotyonok was lying about who had actually died.

I stepped forward, ready to reenter the chamber. As I did, my body came to a stop. My heart began to pound and my stomach fell.

Realization hit. I didn’t want to hurt the little Georgian anymore; I wanted to be inside her. I wanted to hear her moan as I took her over the edge. I wanted her to suck my dick as I gripped on to her hair. I wanted her to look up at me with those brown eyes and not to see them filled with hate.

I wanted to feel her small hand back on my chest.

Shaking my head, I tried to refocus, but all I could see was her dark eyes, her pink lips.

Suddenly the image of my sister being fucked like an animal sprang into my mind. My hot blood cooled rapidly.

Keep focus, I told myself. Get the information from this suka, dispose of her body, and then kill Kostava.

Running that thought repeatedly through my head, I unlocked the door to the chamber and walked down the narrow hallway to come face-to-face with the female who had gotten under my skin.

Hundreds of kills and she was the first to have any effect on me.

Her eyes immediately bored into mine. Nothing was said for minutes as we stared each other down. And all thoughts of my sister fled my head, only to be replaced by the little kotyonok.

Forcing myself to move, I approached her and held her head in my hand. Her cheeks were heated, but our eyes met. As they did, that strange feeling once again broke out in my stomach.

She thought me beautiful. She didn’t lie.

The female licked along her lips and whispered, “Water.”

Mistress had taught me to use victims’ wants against them. But as Kotyonok’s beautiful face stared up at me in desperation I wanted nothing more than to get her a damn drink.

Propping her head on my shoulder, her chest against my chest, I reached up to the cuffs on her wrists and unlocked each one. Kotyonok’s limp arms fell down beside her body. Bending down, one of my arms now wrapped around her pinched-in waist, I freed her feet, the heavy chain swinging to the side, the cuffs now lying on the floor.