Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
In his right hand, he carries a long, curved knife. The blade gleams under the overhead lights, its hooked tip designed for one very specific purpose—gutting fish. Or anything else that needs to be opened up and emptied out.
“Beautiful girl,” he purrs in heavily accented English, running the flat of the blade along his palm. “Pavel, he tell me you are very brave. Very stubborn. I like stubborn girls. Their screams make for best music.”
He approaches slowly, savoring the moment. I keep my face blank, refusing to give him the fear he’s looking for. I’ve played this game before. And as scary as this fucker thinks he is, I’ve faced far more evil monsters. I grew up with one who amused himself with far darker entertainments, and while Anna disconnected and went into the deep box in our mind, I was the one to take it. To watch what he forced us to watch. To take the occasional beatings when we weren’t a good girl—the suffocations and the half-drownings.
The key is to scream into the pain and not run away. Because if my father ever sensed fear, he would chase it with more and more insidious psychological tortures. He loved fear almost as much as he loved pain. If you showed an ounce of it, the punishment would last three times as long. After a while, fear itself burned away along with every other emotion except rage. His perfect little trained animal.
Until I wasn’t.
“Nothing to say?” Mikalai asks, stopping just in front of my chair. The knife hovers near my face, close enough that I can see my reflection in the polished steel. “Most girls, they beg by now. They cry. They promise things.”
“I’m not most girls.” I smile up at him.
His grin widens. “No. I think you are not.” He grabs my left hand, examining my fingers like he’s selecting fruit at the market. “We start small, yes? Work our way up.”
The knife moves to my pinky finger, the hooked tip sliding under the nail. I feel the sharp bite of steel against tender flesh, the warm trickle of blood as he begins to pry upward.
The pain is immediate and excruciating—a bright, electric agony that shoots up my arm and explodes behind my eyes. I bite down hard on my tongue to keep from crying out, tasting copper as my own blood pools in my mouth.
I swore to myself when I escaped my father that I’d never ever be in a position like this again.
“There we go,” Mikalai croons, applying more pressure. “Let me hear those pretty screams—”
The world tilts sideways.
It’s not the pain; I’ve handled worse. It’s something else. Something deeper. The familiar sensation of slipping away, of consciousness fracturing and reforming into something new.
No, no, no. Anna can’t switch now. She can’t handle this. Then I frown even as the swimming, dizzy sensation swings more violently.
Am I passing out from the pain? Usually it takes a fuck more than just losing a fingernail to—
Oh fuck. No. I feel her even as I start to lose my grip. Something else entirely. Something cold and calculating and utterly without mercy.
Her consciousness brushes against mine like a handshake as she takes over, and I gasp in shock, my last aware thought—oh fuck, Anna was right. It’s not just the two of us in here after all.
RED
When my vision clears, I’m looking at Mikalai through different eyes. The pain in my finger has faded to background noise. Everything feels sharp and crystalline, like I’m seeing the world through a high-definition camera.
Mikalai is still focused on my fingernail, his tongue poking out slightly in concentration as he works. He hasn’t noticed the change. Hasn’t seen the shift in my posture, the way my breathing has altered from rapid and shallow to slow and controlled.
Poor, stupid Mikalai.
He’s leaning in close, knife hand extended, completely absorbed in his work. He’s forgotten the first rule of restraining dangerous people—never get within range of their legs.
I shift my weight slightly, testing the chair’s balance. Heavy, but not immovable. My legs are free, and years of survival have taught me that legs are the strongest weapons that too many people ignore.
I wait until he leans even closer, savoring his handiwork on my destroyed fingernail.
Then I strike.
I shove the chair back just far enough so that when my right leg shoots up in a vicious kick, my heel connects with his wrist with a wet crack. The knife goes flying, clattering across the expensive hardwood floor to land several feet away.
Mikalai staggers backward, clutching his broken wrist and cursing in rapid-fire Belarusian.
Before he can recover, I drive my other leg forward and up, the top of my foot catching him squarely in his dick. The air rushes out of him in a whoosh, and he doubles over, gasping.
I use his momentum against him, hooking my ankle behind his knee and yanking forward while pushing with my other foot.