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“All dead soon,” he mumbled, his voice coming out more muted than he’d intended. Speaking was a struggle. “Leave then.”
Luka left her in the room. The killing focus he often enjoyed had splintered. He crawled through the house anyway, searching for anyone besides the woman who still breathed, then taking that breath away. The total number didn’t matter, just that he got them all.
He couldn’t disappoint Ivankov. If he did, the pakhan would kill him before he was strong enough to do the same.
All was silent throughout the estate. Even the groans of the dying had faded. Luka found a spot where he could see the woman through the open door of her prison, looked away from her, and waited. He studied her through his periphery as time passed.
She continued to tremble, but other than that, her body didn’t move.
He’d thought the trembling was fear. Fear of him, of the boyevik who had already hurt her, of what was to come. She was naked. Maybe she was shivering from cold. Besides, nakedness brought a vulnerability.
Ivankov had shown him that.
Luka slipped his long-sleeved shirt over his head. It was wet with blood, but the black material hid that well enough. He wore another shirt under it, but hated the brush of air over his bare arms. He’d hoped the tattoos he’d covered himself with would help to remove his sensitivity, but that had never worked. The one that now covered his neck was still healing and particularly sensitive.
He relied on his gloves as he moved to the woman, managing not to touch her at all as he slipped his shirt over her head. Her arms were more difficult to maneuver. The heat of her penetrated his gloves, confusing him since he’d expected to find her cold. He quickened his progress. She was slight enough that only her legs were bare once his shirt was in place.
She finally lifted her head, and Luka met the eyes of a woman for the first time in years.
He wondered if it was his imagination that made her eyes seem so similar to the last ones he’d seen—green and empty despite the life behind them, just as his sister’s had been.
He made space between them, leaving the path to the door clear.
“Leave,” he told her again.
The woman shook her head before lowering it to her knees again. He could no longer see her eyes. “He told me to stay,” she said.
Realization seeped into Luka. It wasn’t his sister she reminded him of. No, the woman was more like him.
They’d both been made to obey.
Chapter 2
Alina waited for his anger. He wasn’t a big man, but he’d already killed so easily. Her fingers fiddled with the edge of his shirtsleeve, the one he’d dressed her in. It stopped just past her wrist. Instead of swamping her body, the shirt just covered her, somehow making her feel more vulnerable than she had when she was naked. She was rather small. Perfectly petite, or so her father had once said.
Silence stretched between them. All the screams and moans from before had faded.
Despite the shirt, her shivering wouldn’t stop. She had thought the man from before would kill her, and now she wondered if it would be better were this new man to do it. She still didn’t want to die.
But if that were true, why hadn’t she taken him up on his offer? Leave. That’s what he’d said. Not an order, but an enticing offer she was too scared to take.
The man from before, the one who had raped her, he had told her he would kill her. She had begged him to keep raping her because he’d told her he’d kill her if she didn’t beg for it. She didn’t even know his name, but she knew how he tasted, because offering her mouth had delayed the worse fate. Delayed it, but not prevented it.
Her abuser had told her to stay, and her legs wouldn’t move.
The man who was in the room with her now shifted toward her. He moved in slow increments that made her breathing hitch. When he finally stood before her, he held down a hand.
The hand was encased in a black glove, one that was probably as bloody as the shirt he’d given her, though she couldn’t tell by sight. Above his wrist, she couldn’t see much more of his skin around the ink of his tattoos. Most were black, though the beads of the inked rosary had been shaded red.
A skull stared back at her, unsmiling. A snake wrapped up and around his elbow and continued beyond where she could see.
Alina looked up into his face and saw no anger, no emotions at all, reflected in his eyes or on his face.
She wished she could feel the same way. Instead, a debilitating fear consumed her.
She took his gloved hand.
The material wasn’t what she had expected. It wasn’t thick or rough, but smooth and almost satiny with the way it clung to the contours of his hand.
