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He raised his brows questioningly.
“I drank a little too much last night,” I confessed.
Sliding closer, he wrapped an arm around me and turned me toward the door. “I’m glad you’re not hungry,” he said, forcing me to walk with him. “There’s something I need you to see right now. Although, I can’t promise you won’t be sick.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see,” he replied cryptically.
The corridors outside were clean now. Not a speck of blood remained on the polished floors and the walls. Only the residual smell of some kind of harsh bleach lingered in the air.
“What happened to all the bodies?” I asked as he led me down the staircase at the end of the corridor.
“They were taken away,” he said. “Leaving them for too long will stink up the place.” His long, slender nose screwed up in an unconscious gesture.
“Where are the corpses?” I prodded. “Are they being buried?”
“Ehh, the grounds and the woods are already full of rotting corpses,” he said. “We have to burn them now.”
His words reminded me of the tendrils of smoke rising over the woods. A shiver ran through me. Blood-soaked floors. Burning piles of corpses in the woods. The grounds swelling with the remains of slain enemies. The Volkovs’ world sounded surreal in every aspect.
“Step in through there,” said Leon, jerking me back to the present. He was gesturing toward a dark, rectangular hole in the floor of a room.
I stared at him, wondering what he was up to.
“It’s okay,” he coaxed. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I dipped a toe into the rectangle cut in the floor. It was big enough for a grown man to slid through. To my surprise, I stepped on solid concrete.
Soon, a flight of stairs was revealed to me.
The temperature dropped the further I descended the staircase. Our movement threw dark shadows in the dimly lit space. Leon’s footsteps sounded right behind me.
Did they decide to put me into a dungeon again?I thought as fear and anxiety snaked through me.
“Will you keep me here?” I asked as my feet landed at the head of a narrow corridor.
“Don’t worry, Princess” he said. “You won’t be living down here. I just want to show you something.”
The sparsely lit space and the cold, moldy air were enough to make me wary. Sounds of soft groans and someone weeping reached my ears as I followed Leon down the narrow tunnel.
There were cells with barred gates on either side of the corridor. They were all empty. Faint sounds of moaning and groaning came from somewhere down the tunnel.
Leon came to a stop beside a cell. My eyes adjusted to the dimness, revealing three men who hung from chains suspended from the ceiling. To add to the disturbing sight, they were all naked.
Leon pushed open the gate and dragged me inside. A tripod with a camera was set up before them.
“These are the men your brother bribed to steal you back,” said Leon.
The three men opened their eyes, all staring at me.
I didn’t want to look at them at all. Bloody cuts marred their skin and streams of blood seeped down their torsos. The sight raised the sparse hair on my arms and instinctively I stepped back.
Leon’s fingers tightened on my arm painfully. “Don’t move,” he warned in a low, throaty growl. “You have to see what I do to them.” Releasing me, he turned around and locked the gate.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Why are you locking us in here with them?”
“I want you to see what I do to traitors,” said Leon. “Because once you do, Yakim won’t seem like such a monster anymore.” His knife flashed between his fingers as he rotated it at a blinding speed.
