Page 102 of Essence of Fear

She never wanted to hear that voice again.

Ever.

Boris.

“I see you haven’t learned very much in our time apart,” her captor taunted.

It was made worse by the fact she couldn’t actually see him or where he was. If he got behind her, what might he do? What could he do in front of her? That was the thing … Viktoria didn’t need to wonder at all. She knew exactly how this man could hurt her. She knew all the ways he could rape her, tied or not. She’d lived it once.

“That’s fine,” he told her in a murmur.

She wasn’t expecting his touch again, but when his knuckles reached out to stroke her cheek behind the hood, she did all she could do not to jerk away. That wouldn’t work well for her, it would only piss him off more.

That meant bad things.

Bad things would happen quicker.

She didn’t realize until right then how fast her mind had dropped the panicked state from earlier and gone into a whole other mode. She remembered this—she knew exactly what this was, and what her mind was trying to do.

Survive.

It was trying to survive.

Again.

“You’ll learn, Viktoria,” Boris said, his voice closer now as the sound of shoes squeaked against the floor. Had he kneeled down to be at eye level with her? God. “And I did miss you. I didn’t lie about that. I have waited so long, suka.”

She sucked in a breath that tasted like her own blood and tears.

“You deserve this,” he added. “After everything, he owes me. Vadim owes me, and so, I get to have fun with you for a while before he comes and we have to get back to business. Are you excited? I am.”

Fuck her father to hell.

May he burn there.

Viktoria supposed when Boris wasn’t getting the reactions from her that he wanted with the hood still on her head, that’s when he decided to rip the damn thing off. The tie around the neck choked her as he yanked it off her head, but he didn’t seem to care.

Not surprising.

This man felt nothing.

For the first time in two years, Viktoria came face to face with the man she hated more than anything else in the world. She stared him in the eyes—the same eyes she’d watched light up with glee as she’d begged him to stop and when he’d made her bleed. She sneered at the sight of his cold, evil grin; a smile that he’d used to lure her into a house that was supposed to be the start of their marriage, but was actually a prison where he’d hurt her worse than anyone else ever had.

This man was her monster.

She knew the scars on his face. The slit in his lip from a fight he’d said happened when he was a teenager. The slice through his left eyebrow from a wayward knife at a bar. Where his hands rested on his jean-covered knees, his knuckles were full of white, crisscrossed scars from fights he’d gotten in over the years, and men he’d beaten to death.

Those hands he’d used to hold her down. Those hands he’d beat her with. Fingers that had touched her bad. Touched her wrong.

Boris reached up to touch her face again now that it was visible, but Viktoria wasn’t having that. Not this time around, not when she could see the bastard coming for her. She snapped back away from his touch, but never once looked away from his face.

She wanted to see those eyes. Then, maybe he would know. Yes, she was scared. Yes, he did this.

But yes, she hated him. Yes, she was going to fight.

He could take from her again and hurt her. But no … she was never going to be his. He could take but if she didn’t give, then it wasn’t his.

He was evil.