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It’s difficult to remember. Sometimes, I wake up and forget, lean on my shoulder, and my world ignites with fire and agony. Sometimes, I wake up and my name escapes me. Food is scarce and my water comes from licking the walls, born from a desperate desire just to survive.
Survive.
And my chance will come.
Survive.
And I will get out of here, I will find Alena, and I will kill Mara. Nice and slow.
I tell myself this as the days blur into weeks, and I know nothing but darkness and pain. Faceless Kuznetsovs aren’t my only visitors, though.
Mara likes to make an appearance, and given her plan for running the Bratva, that tells me more than she even realizes.
I must be in America. Given how healed my gunshot wound looked when I first woke up here, it makes sense that they shipped me over here. My memories from them blur with fog, but I remember a few painful things.
August is dead, I think.
He tried to help me, but then there was blood. Too much blood, and his face was pale.
My gunshot even looked treated, which confirmed my suspicion that Mara wanted me alive for some reason.
For now, at least.
The moment that changes, I’m dead.
Given my inability to track time and that I’m denied light at all times other than when someone’s here to play, it’s difficult to tell how much travel Mara goes through to get here, but I know one thing for sure.
I’m not on Orlova property. The cell and the Kuznetsovs were a clear giveaway, so in the beginning, I reasoned I was in one of their torture black sites.
Survival became my only task.
Survive, and get to Alena.
I know Mara has Alena, given how when she comes here to torture me, she talks at length about how she’s doing. She brags about the health of her—my—baby and taunts me with how one wrong word from me, one wrong step, and she’ll take her plans for me and force Alena to suffer through them too.
I called her bluff, given her desire to make sure the baby was safe, and Mara, to my surprise, was honest.
“It’s true,” she had said, pacing around me like a lioness. “You’re just here as my backup plan. The moment Alena starts to act out, I’ll start carving you up, Kristof. Serving your cock to her at dinner will certainly rein her in. But when that baby is in my arms? I’ll kill her in front of you, then I’ll lock you in here and throw away the key. Assuming you last that long.”
I tried to track my time here through her updates on my baby, but it grew impossible with the starvation, the constant cold, and the blood loss from countless beatings and torture.
I’m wasting away, fueled by determination to get to Alena and my baby, to save them.
It’s the only thing keeping me alive, and yet, escape feels like a dream. They keep me weak and down because they know the moment I get my teeth around the throat of my captor, it’s all over.
“Hey!”
Mara’s fingers snap over my face, drawing me out of my bleary, tumbling thoughts. Her black, pointed fingertips glint against the light above, and I bite back a wince at the glare.
“Sorry, it’s just that sometimes, when you drone on and on, it’s too easy to switch off and pretend that you don’t exist.”
Mara growls, and the hot, stabbing sensation against my ribs worsens like fire ants eating into my flesh. I can’t lift my head from the table to see what she’s doing, but if I close my eyes, I can feel her tools scraping against bone inside my own head. It’s enough to shatter the mind.
I’m stronger, though.
“For someone who cares so much about his Family,” Mara spits, “you think you would listen.”
That catches my attention, and the pain fades to the background. “Huh?”
