A car engine revving.
All normal, considering the loft was situated in the art district of Chicago, a massive urban center. Noise was common. It was everywhere. And yet, something about that sound was quick to drag him away from the sleep he craved.
He listened for more sounds—the walls of the loft were thin, which was why he knew Grisha brought in extra heaters during the colder months to keep anyone who was living there for a time warm while they needed it.
A horn honked.
Then, another.
Although he wanted to stay right where he was with Viktoria in the bed, Pav rolled over slowly as to not wake her up, as he reached for the jeans he’d discarded to the floor earlier. His jacket with his knives were all the way across the room, thrown over the back of a wooden rocking chair.
He never even got the chance to get to his jacket. He only managed to get his pants yanked up around his waist when the noise got a hell of a lot louder. First it was boots against wood—kicking the front door of the loft in, and then beating against hardwood floors as someone, many, someones stormed the loft. Their shouts came next.
Pav was stuck between turning to calm Viktoria as she woke up in a sleepy daze, and darting across the room to where his jacket and knives were waiting for him. He had one arm reaching out for her, and another going for his jacket when the screams started.
The people using the loft as a temporary safe haven were woken from their beds as their bedroom doors were kicked open—a baby cried, and a slightly older child called out for their mother.
“Pav?”
“Don’t move,” he told Viktoria.
He darted for his jacket, but he didn’t get to it in nearly enough time. He’d just grabbed the leather to yank it off the back of the chair when the door to their room was kicked open, too. He didn’t recognize the masked men who stormed the bedroom, but one must have known who they were when they found them inside.
“Found ‘em,” one of them growled.
Pav slipped a hand into the pocket of the jacket, his fingers slipping around the cool, firm handle of a knife but it was too late. The butt of an assault rifle cracked him right in the face and sent him sprawling to the floor.
Blood bloomed in his mouth. A ringing echoed in his ears, but even over the sound, he heard Viktoria cry out for him.
Pav blinked when his back hit the floor with enough force to take his breath away. He didn’t waste time down there, or rather, he tried not to. He was already attempting to get back up, that knife still firm in his grip, when a boot landed right in the middle of his chest. The next kick hit his kidneys.
The third?
His face.
“Pav!”
He cursed under his breath in Russian, thick blood slipping from his lips as he spat to the floor and another kick landed to his back at the same time someone else kicked him in the stomach. If they were intent on kicking him to death like a bunch of cowards, then they were doing a damn good job of it.
“Leave him alone—hey, let go of me, you fucking piece of shit!”
Viktoria’s words quickly turned from English to Russian. In the darkness, because no one had yet to turn on a light, and they’d stormed the bedroom—how many were there again?—without any kind of flashlights, he fucking panicked.
He couldn’t see her.
Couldn’t help her.
Wasn’t he most terrifying in the dark? Wasn’t the nighttime and shadows his safe haven? He did his best work where no one could see his face, and he couldn’t see theirs. And yet, in that moment, he could do nothing.
They took his greatest strength and turned it into a weakness. They made him useless, and he felt it in every part of his body. It hurt far worse than the pain they were causing him with this beating.
Far worse.
“Don’t … touch … her,” he snarled between kicks to his body.
It was pointless.
The last thing he heard before a particularly hard kick left his vision and mind black?
“A waiting king never sleeps. Do let the Boykov brothers know.”
• • •
Pav’s vision was blurred—blackened at the edges, and fuzzy directly in the middle. And still, even with shaking hands, he tried dialing the number on his phone again. He knew he fucked up the numbers when the call failed and continued to not go through.
“Fuck,” he mumbled.
“Pav, what in the hell happened?”
Grisha’s voice was too close, and right then, he didn’t want the man near him at all. For Grisha’s safety, but also for Pav’s own selfish reasons. He continued walking past the huddled people in the loft, his face bruised and bleeding, his lips stained with cracking blood. He could feel the aching in his jaw and bones. If something wasn’t broken, he was going to be a lucky man, honestly.
But he could ignore it.
Right now, he could.
Surely.
“Pav!”
“Don’t,” Pav snapped over his shoulder. “Just … don’t.”
That was the best warning he could give Grisha. He knew the man had questions. Although no one in the loft had been touched except him and Viktoria—which should have been a clue that this was about them to Grisha—the man still had questions.
It wasn’t that simple for Pav.
He was in a bad fucking place.
His mind, so dark.
His heart, tearing itself apart.
His soul?
Entirely gone.
He hadn’t even realized he had a soul until Viktoria came around. All the vicious parts of her had clawed
