“All of the children?”
It was Seychelle’s first question, and he welcomed the break. He lifted his head and got to his feet, reluctant to leave the solace of her warm body but knowing he needed to get water. He could barely talk with his throat raw.
“Only our group. You couldn’t trust anyone but those in your own ‘family.’ Even then, the others weren’t trustworthy with one another. Czar kept our group very small. He insisted we work out every day, no matter what. He taught us survival skills, like throwing little rocks through small holes until we were so good, we could throw a knife accurately and hit a target. We could blow homemade darts and hit a target. There were a lot of things Czar taught us that he didn’t pass on to everyone, nor could we let anyone know we could do them.”
“Why?”
Savage took his time, drinking the water, thankful it was cool on his burning throat. All those kids. He remembered every one of them. They’d tried to save them. Tried to talk to them. Tried to convince them that Sorbacov wasn’t a nice person and anything he said was a lie. The children were just too scared and wanted so badly to believe an adult was going to save them.
“They needed to believe everything Sorbacov said to them. Even when he gave them to his friends. Even when they came back broken, bloody and so bruised and swollen. He petted them and told them it would be all right. Said he was proud of them for doing what he said. They would be rewarded. They needed to believe him, so they did.”
“Honey,” she whispered.
He turned his face away from her and stared out at the turbulent waves he felt such an affinity for. He fucking hated the pedophiles who had run that school. The ones Sorbacov had deliberately recruited. The most vile, depraved humans the man could find so he could watch in delight.
“One traded favors with Sorbacov. He was older, an asshole. None of the kids were safe with him. One lied and taught her group to comply in order to curry favor. We couldn’t get them to see what was happening. We had to hide what we did. We couldn’t chance them telling Sorbacov. It was sick how he treated them, but they would do anything for his food or his pats on the back, including betraying one another.”
“Savage.”
“We actually attended classes to learn what we needed to know to be better assassins for him. The instructors were sadistic. We were expected to learn various subjects, and the punishments were severe if we didn’t get the material immediately. We helped one another the best we could. The other children were defeated and looked to Sorbacov, complaining and crying, but of course, that didn’t stop them from being punished. They would tell on each other for any infraction. Sometimes he would give one or two of them food. We were all starving. We always shared food. They wouldn’t.”
“I can imagine all of you were in a state of terror all the time.”
He frowned, wondering if that was true. He had been terrified at first. Then filled with pain and anguish when his sisters had died and he’d experienced rape and torture and the brutality at the hands of adults. Somewhere, that had quickly changed to anger. Anger had grown to rage. Rage to determination and the will to fight back.
“I just know it was impossible to trust most of the other children, and we could never let them see what we were doing. Even though we were just little kids, our skills with using homemade weapons grew over time, and we perfected our psychic talents. We spent a lot of time beat-up, cold and miserable, so we practiced a lot.”
He had opened the door in his mind, and those memories were playing in his head. The fists hitting him. A male dragging him by his hair into a room with two other men and two little girls, both with blond curls like him. That had been the first time he’d experienced pleasure, a mouth on his cock while he was instructed in using the whip. The pleasure had been a bright fire streaking through his body, lashes of fiery flames like the red droplets falling to the floor. Nothing had ever felt so good. He hadn’t known it could.
The man behind him, helping him wield the whip, had whispered to him how good it was when one could use a whip, how arousing it was. Did he see how good it felt? He was praised. Petted. The girl sucking his cock was forced to take him deeper while the whip cracked and someone else’s tears flowed, and that bright, hot flame inside began to burn because he’d experienced pleasure instead of pain for the very first time.