Peter’s gaze turns opaque. “Nothing. It was something to do, that’s all.”
“That’s a lot of ink to do on a whim.”
He’s silent for a few seconds. Then he says quietly, “I had a friend at that camp. Andrey. He was into this stuff—a real artist, you know. After we were there for a couple of years, he ran out of space on his own skin, so I let him practice on me. Every time something happened to us, good or bad, he wanted to commemorate it with a tattoo, and because he was so good, I gave him free reign with the designs.”
“Oh.” Intrigued, I rise onto my elbow. “What happened to that friend?”
“He died.” Peter says it casually, as though it doesn’t matter, but I hear the dark echo of grief underneath, the rage that passage of time wasn’t able to cool. Whatever happened to his friend, it had been bad enough to leave a scar… bad enough that remembering it now still has the power to hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, but Peter doesn’t respond. Instead, he reaches over to turn off the light, then pulls me against him in our usual sleeping position.
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, trying to calm down enough to fall asleep, but it’s impossible. Even the heat of Peter’s large body can’t chase away the lingering chill from his revelations. My mind buzzes like a ravaged beehive, the questions refusing to leave me alone. There’s so much I still don’t know about the man who holds me every night, so many things I don’t understand about his past. Everything about his life in Russia is foreign to me, as strange and mysterious as if he’d come from another planet.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. Wriggling out of Peter’s hold, I turn on the bedside lamp and turn over onto my side to face him. As I suspected, he’s not sleeping either, his silver gaze shadowed with memories as his eyes meet mine.
“You said you were recruited from that place straight into your unit,” I say, propping myself up on my elbow again. “Why? Do they normally do that in Russia?”
He gazes at me silently, then turns over onto his back, lacing his hands under his head as he stares at the ceiling. “No,” he says after a moment. “They usually recruit through the army. But in this case, they needed someone with a specific psychological profile.”
I sit up, holding the blanket against my chest. “What kind of profile?”
His eyes cut over to meet my gaze. “No inconvenient family ties or attachments, no scruples, and only minimal conscience. But also young enough to be trained and molded into what they needed.”
“Which was what?” I ask, though I suspect I already know.
Peter sits up, his expression carefully neutral as he leans against the headboard. “A weapon,” he answers. “Someone who wouldn’t balk at anything. You see, the insurgents were getting more ruthless, more fanatical with every year. The bombing of the subway in Moscow was the last straw. The Russian government realized they couldn’t limit themselves to civilized, UN-approved methods of combatting terrorism; they had to meet them on their level, fight them using every tool available. So they formed this off-the-books Spetsnaz unit, and when they couldn’t find enough trained soldiers to fit the desired profile, they decided to get creative and look elsewhere.”
“In Camp Larko,” I say, and Peter nods, his eyes like polished steel.
“Those of us who lasted there for any extended period of time tended to be strong, able to handle long hours of physical exertion under extreme conditions. Hunger, thirst, cold—we could endure it all. And as you can imagine, many of us fit the profile they were looking for.”
A shiver dances over my skin, making me draw the blanket tighter around myself. “So why did they choose you over the others?” I ask, fighting to keep my tone steady.
His lips quirk in a dark smile. “Because right before they arrived, I killed a guard,” he says softly. “I staked him out in the snow and made him admit his crimes before I gutted him like a rabbit in front of the entire camp. My methods were… Well, let’s just say it was exactly what they were looking for. So instead of getting punished for the guard’s death, I got a new career, one that fit both my inclinations and my skillset.”
My palms grow slippery where I’m holding the blanket. “What were the guard’s crimes?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to know.
The darkness in Peter’s gaze deepens, and for a moment, I’m afraid I went too far, brought up too many bad memories. But then he leans back against the headboard and says evenly, “He liked to boil boys alive.”
I stop breathing as bile surges up my throat. “What?” I gasp out when I’m able to speak.