“Was the trip … worth it, then?” Konstantin asked.
Viktoria sighed. “If you’re asking if it helped me with anything, then the answer is no.”
“I figured.”
“Where is Kolya?”
“Busy with Maya. You know how he is about that wife of his. She comes first.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Konstantin smirked. “No, I don’t. You simply hear it that way, sestra.”
“You can’t tell me what I hear. Unless, of course, my ears have suddenly become attached to your head. Let me know when that happened.”
She didn’t even try to tamper the coldness in her tone. She didn’t particularly have a reason to be icy to her brother, but this was her life, now. It was easier to keep people at a distance, and let them know their place, than it was for her to keep fighting them when they tried to get too close. Better to make that line in the sand clear before they ever got started.
Konstantin nodded. “I take it you don’t want to tell me the things you discussed with Vadim, then?”
“Nyet.”
“A hard no, huh?”
Viktoria smiled thinly. “Take it how you may.”
“You seem like you’re feeling …”
“What?”
“Extra nasty.”
Viktoria stared at the people passing them by instead of her brother. It was just easier. She didn’t need him to see the war in her gaze—a battle of emotions that was ever-present, and always constant in her heart and mind.
Life was not nice to her.
Not lately.
“We have an upcoming party,” Konstantin said when Viktoria kept quiet. This was typical for them. He’d try to engage her, and she just stayed silent until he gave up. “A baby shower for Maya and Kolya. I expect you to be there, be pleasant, and bring a proper gift.”
“Fine.”
“Oh, and since I know how Vadim always puts you in a headspace, perhaps you should go see your therapist while you’re back in the city, yes?”
Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching her teeth.
He wasn’t wrong, though.
It wasn’t just Vadim and her brothers who left her with a complex whenever she was in her father’s presence. It was far more than just that. It was like every conversation with Vadim thrust her right back to a time when he had failed her the very most.
That made her feel angry.
Guilty.
So ashamed.
Dirty.
She didn’t want to blame him for what had happened to her, but she still did. She loved him, and she hated him.
“I think I will visit her, actually,” Viktoria said.
Konstantin smiled briefly as she looked back at him. “Good.”
“But not because you told me to.”
“Of course not.”
2.
THERE WAS nothing comforting about the smell of musty cement. The putrid mixture of dampness having seeped and collected for far too long inside the walls of the chambers of the Compound was ever-present. It lingered on everything, too.
Dying bodies.
Clothes.
Skin.
It didn’t matter which chamber Pavel entered to do his job, that same smell remained. And though he occasionally left the Compound at night when he was allowed, that scent followed him. He often kept clothes tucked away in a plastic storage box, just to keep the smell from remaining on the items, but he still smelled it.
He figured he always would.
After living and working in this Compound for fourteen years, the smell was as much a part of him as this place was. It was strange, in a way. He could walk these dank, dark halls with his eyes closed. He knew the scars on each prisoner’s body and he could still hear their raspy, pained voices long after he’d closed his eyes to go to sleep. He could pinpoint each and every creak or moan from this old building.
But he couldn’t remember his own birthday, although, from his occasional trips out of the Compound where he could find out the date and year, he knew he was twenty-six, now. A lot of the time, he didn’t know what day of the week it was because that wasn’t an important detail for him. Or that’s what he’d always been told.
Pav had learned to find comfort in discomfort. In a way … Here, in the deepest part of the Compound where the light rarely touched, fresh air was rare, and the mold was beginning to grow in the corners, comfort was nonexistent. Even his living quarters felt a little too much like the cells where the Boykovs kept their prisoners.
Not that it mattered.
Here, he felt at home. Here, he did his best work. In the musty darkness. Alone, usually. With death all around …
Pav walked into one cell with a bucket of cold water ready, and a cloth hanging from his other hand. Most of the cells didn’t even have doors to close—although there were a couple that did—not that they would need them, anyway. His gaze found the man who stayed in this cell huddled into a corner, and the reason Pav had brought the bucket and rag smeared on the wall beside him.
Shit and vomit.
The man, shackled to the wall by a thick rope of chain connected to his ankles, and one around his neck, too, looked Pav’s way when he came into the cell. His eyes connected with Pav’s, but he found no life staring back. Just a wild gleam and a rotted smile.
Pav blinked.
The man’s teeth hadn’t been rotted before.
Blyad.
Fucking hell.
Shit—that’s what was covering the man’s mouth. Shit. His feces. Pav had seen far worse things in the chambers, that was for sure. He’d seen
