Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
“What’s the fee?”
“They’re changing things up this time.”
I draw in a deep breath and grip my phone, pretending it’s his neck. “How so?”
“This time, the entry fee will be a tribute, as it were. An offering.”
“A tribute?”
“Your new brotherhood demands you become party to their trade. In this case, the auction. They demand a virgin tribute.”
He goes on relaying the finer details of my quest. I listen, closing my eyes when I realize what this will mean when he goes through the new details of who I will become.
Aleks Ambramov.
Twenty-nine years old, former Russian military.
Served time in prison in Russia for larceny, extortion, and racketeering.
And as he talks, I absorb this. I welcome my new opportunity. It’s a dangerous line I walk, and if my true identity is discovered, my enemies will kill me. And Marissa will be gone forever.
But I can do this. I must do this.
It will mean compromising even more of who I am. Breaking even more of the rules that bind me to ethics and morality.
It will mean truly becoming one of them.
But everything comes at a price. Even one’s soul.
And I will sell my soul to the devil to find her.
I just hope that when I do, I haven’t become the very monster I need to protect her from.
Chapter 9
Marissa
I tell myself the screams I hear aren’t real. They are recordings or… or something. Designed to scare us into submission and obedience, not because our keepers have any compassion, but because they’re lazy. They’d rather hold the end of a whip and make us cower than break a sweat wielding it.
But tonight, the screams sound far too authentic. I cover my ears with my hands, but I can’t drive them out, and the happy thoughts I conjure up to distract myself don’t come as easily as they once did.
I’ve held onto hope all these days… months… is it years? One loses track of time when kept prisoner. My mind has degenerated into bits and pieces of memories. And one solid hope, one solid memory, keeps my heart beating.
The hope and prayer that one day, I will find Nicolai. That one day, he will find me. That when they captured us, they didn’t kill him.
I have no way of knowing. No contact with anyone or anything from my past that could trace him, and even if I did, if he somehow survived the ambush, he’d have gone into hiding. For stealing me betrayed the brotherhood. And the punishment for betrayal is so severe, death itself is a kindness.
But my heart still beats, and he owns my heart. Knowing it beats on is the one hope I have that somewhere, somehow, he isn’t gone. That he rose from the dead.
I didn’t see them kill him. I saw him restrained by vicious hands, hooded in black, falling to his knees and dragged from me, while I screamed until my voice was hoarse. But knowing I didn’t see his lifeless body brings me hope. The tiniest filament of light in the darkness.
“Get up.” The vicious voice tears me from my memory and I leap to my feet. When left on my own, I can remember a little, and it’s then that I rally myself with hope of escape. But when they talk to me, and I’m dragged into their presence, I remember almost nothing. Who I am. Where I am. Who I was. My only focus, blind obedience.
We are quickly taught we have no choice but to obey, though there’s a hierarchy of command, and the man standing in front of me now is on the lowest rung. Still, it doesn’t hurt to choose the path of least resistance.
“What is it?” I ask, keeping my voice humble and meek. I have to, or they punish me.
“You’re wanted,” he sneers. Our guards wear hoods or masks to protect their identities, and it’s just as well. It’s easier to hate someone whose eyes you can’t see. I don’t know what it means to be “wanted.” I’ve lost track of nearly everything I knew before my abduction.
They brought me here to be prepared for something, but I don’t know what. I’ve been fed a strict diet, and given proper rest. Every hair on my body save my head has been plucked or waxed, but the worst of it all has been the training.
Dozens of us, forced to our knees in a room that resembles a dance studio. Taught to obey. Taught to submit. Taught to respect our future masters. Violated in as many ways as they can get away. But I can’t think of that.
As I walk with my hands cuffed behind my back, I keep my head bowed as I’ve been instructed. No eye contact with anyone. Submit to those in authority. My guard keeps his hand on my arm, and doesn’t speak until we’re right outside the door.