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Ava
They saythe definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that’s true, I’ve gone straight off the deep end twenty-two times.
That’s how many times I’ve pulled, yanked, and twisted the zip ties binding my wrists behind me and my ankles together. Obviously, it didn’t work. I’m still here in this house. Still bound. Still alone. The only thing I managed to do was cut my wrists and rub my ankles raw.
Smart, Ava. Real smart.
Exhausted, I roll onto my side and stare at the four wooden plank walls. I’ve counted each plank repeatedly, multiplied them together, then divided them so many times my head hurts. I look up, searching for the clock I know I won’t find. Just like the other eleven times I tried. The one thing I haven’t done is scream. I gave that up not long after Niko walked out and I heard him yell from outside the window, “Feel free to scream until your lungs burst, pchelka, but you might want to save them for when you’ll really need them.”
Nothing shuts a girl up faster than a well-timed threat.
Hours later, my limbs ache, and I’m so thirsty, the thought of water has overtaken everything else in my head. Who cares that I’m bound like cattle? Who cares I’m probably going to be tortured to death? All I can think about is that I haven’t had anything to drink since that damn bottle of wine almost twenty-four hours ago. Technically, that doesn’t count. Alcohol dehydrates a body, and I’m feeling every ounce of that fortified loss.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe dehydration made me act like I did with Niko.
That has to be it. There’s no other explanation for me throwing myself at the man who kidnapped me. The man who said he’d enjoy seeing me suffer. Lack of water altered something in my brain, twisting the line between pleasure and pain, and the one between love and hate.
I still at that last thought. I hate Nikolai Garetovsky, or Gaheris—whatever his alias is for the day. I hate him for not fighting harder to save me. I hate him for letting my father turn me into a whore. I hate him for hating me. But mostly, I hate me. I hate me because as hard as I want to make myself believe all of it, I don’t.
I don’t hate him. But I can’t love him. I won’t. Not again.
“Damn it!” I close my eyes and scream out of sheer frustration. Taking a deep breath, I twist my wrists for the twenty-third time, crying out as the plastic digs into my open wounds. The pain only spurs me on. I wiggle and squirm across the hardwood floor until my hip slams into the end table next to the couch, causing it to rattle.
“Fuck, shit!” I mumble through gritted teeth. Then I stop. The table is heavy. It wouldn’t rattle. Lifting my head off the floor, I push as high off my shoulder as I can, and that’s when I see it.
Niko’s vodka bottle.
It’s right where he left it, open and sitting right at the edge of the table. I lick my lips, the thought of liquid touching them too tempting to pass up. After a minute or two of assessing my options, I can only come to one, and it’s going to really suck.
Rolling away from the table, I take a deep breath, clench my stomach, and power roll back into it. The impact sends white hot pain searing through my muscles. I second guess myself until I see the bottle rattle then tip toward the edge.
Screw pain.
Three more times I roll away and then bang into the table. Three times more, the bottle tips and almost falls. Sweat pours down my face, and my shoulder burns.
One more.
“Jri govno i zdohni!” I yell, slamming into the table leg. As if cursed, the bottle tumbles off the table and slams onto the floor. I brace for shattering glass, but it breaks in four clean pieces.
Well damn. If I knew screaming eat shit and die in Russian was the key, I’d have done it a long time ago.
It only takes one full roll until I’m face down in eighty proof Stolichnaya. The first slurp burns like hell. My throat feels like it’s been doused in gasoline and set on fire, but I’ll be damned if I’m stopping now. I worked too hard for this.
“I brought you a bottle of water, but I can pour some whiskey on the bathroom floor if you’d prefer.”
I freeze. I don’t have to look to see who it is, but I do anyway. Niko’s standing in the open doorway, one arm gripping the molding over his head. A huge water bottle dangles from his free hand. I expect him to be pissed at the mess I made, but to my surprise, he seems amused.
“Fuck your water,” I growl, lowering my lips back down to the vodka.
Within five steps he’s squatting down beside me, slowly unscrewing the cap off the bottle and making an unnecessary production of taking a sip. “Mmmm.” The sound draws my eyes to his lips as he licks them. “This is ice cold. You know, one taste is like a drug. The moment you have it, you’ll never get enough.”
I may be drunk, but I don’t think we’re talking about water anymore.
Rolling onto my side, I rest my head in what’s left of the vodka. “You were gone a long time.”
“And you’re a mess.”
“Thanks.”
