“The first rule of chess,” I spat as Dima approached me. One of his hands covered his eye socket where his gleaming grey eye had once been, taken from the phantom memory of a child and turned into a nightmare. “The Queen always protects her fucking King.”
“You’ll suffer for that,” Dima said, but he swayed on his feet. His hand was covered in blood, the thick fluid leaking out of his empty eye socket and trailing down in thin lines onto his wrist.
“Go see Ivonova. See if he can do something to fix that,” Pavel barked to Dima. The disgust in his voice was evident, and I didn’t think it had to do with the blood. Considering his propensity to violence, I suspected it had more to do with the fact that I’d damaged his son.
Dima only glanced my way briefly, his lips twisting with a moment of concern that his father might hurt me. Despite his insinuation that he would protect me, that he would be the only one to punish me, he left me with Pavel so he could deal with his eye. I’d earned whatever consequence his father deemed appropriate.
The elder Russian turned his attention to me as soon as Dima was out of sight. “I will very much enjoy watching him break you slowly. Piece by piece, bit by bit until there’s nothing left of the bitch that Rafael Ibarra allowed to run rampant,” he said, closing the small distance between us. He wrapped a hand in my hair, hauling me to my feet and dragging me into the hallway. My feet scrabbled along the floor beneath me, struggling to find purchase and unable to support me given the fast pace he set. “You’ll do whatever he tells you by the time he’s done with you, and when he finally gets bored, I’ll enjoy rentingEl Diablo’swife out for use. If you thought his precious little island was Hell, you’ve seen nothing of the world.”
His voice strained with effort as he dragged me up the stairs. My limbs thumped against each step, my knees aching with the blows as my scalp screamed in pain. I dug my nails into the back of his hands, bleeding him as he pulled the hair from my head with his ironclad grip. He didn’t so much as flinch.
I screamed finally when he shoved open a door with his foot, dragging me into a bedroom. Flashes of my face stared back at me as he moved through the elaborate room, stepping up to the platform where the bed lay.
I was only a girl in the photos, the scar on my thigh gleaming in the sun as I tried to hide it on the rare occasions that it showed. Revulsion slithered through me as Pavel grunted with exertion and lifted me onto the surface of the bed.
I wanted to weep with relief when he let go of my hair, the pain lingering but not as sharp. It was short-lived, replaced by agonizing terror when he reached for the landline phone on the bedside table and dialed. Surging forward, I was pushed back with a strong hand at my throat. The breath left my lungs, stolen by the harsh grip as I gasped to try to suck in more air.
I kicked my legs, struggled and clawed at every part of him I could reach. But the edges of my vision went black, his voice lost to the overwhelming lightheadedness that consumed me. I’d have sworn I could hear the blood coursing through my veins, the sounds of everything around me deadened.
But even through that darkness, the twisted smile that consumed his face seemed to gleam like a Cheshire grin, while my heart fell into my stomach.
I’d tried to buy enough time, and if Pavel didn’t allow me to breathe soon enough, I would die with the knowledge that I’d failed. When he dropped the phone to the bed beside my head, he leaned closer. The smell of vodka and cigar wafted over my face as he ran the knuckles of his free hand over my cheek.
“Such a pretty little widow,” he said, squeezing his hand tighter around my windpipe. The confirmation of the strike against the plane stripped me of any lingering hope. There would benothingleft to live for without Rafael. The baby and I would be doomed to a life of misery, and I wondered if I was better off dead.
There had been a time when I would’ve said it would be a mercy for Odina. That a life of abuse was worse than a quick death.
Pavel released my throat suddenly, leaning back to stare down at me. His head cocked to the side as he waited, as if he was listening for something. I fought the urge to struggle, sucking back greedy breaths and raising a trembling hand to my aching throat. With his stare fixated on me and that eerie tilt to his head, he looked more animal than man.
The windows rattled, a boom resounding in the distance as a grim smile transformed his face. I knew, without a doubt, that he believed the explosion to be the plane. The house was too quiet in the moments following the blast, as if even the staff who moved about the manor constantly waited with bated breath.
The phone rang on the bed, and Pavel grinned at me as he lifted it and pressed the button for the speaker phone. A male voice said something in Russian on the other end of the line, and I stared at it. Swallowing my fear, swallowing the grief threatening to consume me, I touched a hand to my stomach and resolved to get free.
Somehow, some way, I would protect the baby. Even when I wanted to crawl into a hole and die alongside Rafael, for my baby I would not bow.
“In English for my guest,” Pavel said to the phone, interrupting the man’s slew of Russian.
“Direct hit,” the man said, his accented voice making something inside me clench. I couldn’t believe it, and I wouldn’t. Not until I saw a body. I’d been burned once before, thinking my sister dead while she lived on to take part in my abduction.
Pavel opened his mouth to speak, gloating on the tip of his tongue with a vindictive, evil smile taking over his face. He leaned forward, coming into my space once again as if he was compelled to taste my grief for himself.
He paused as sharp bursts of rapid gunfire came over the phone, the sound of a man’s shouts and pained grunts accompanying the noise. “Igor?” Pavel asked, the glee falling from his face. As if the gunfire had been the cue, the building shook with the force of an explosion.
I’d had the misfortune of being around enough bombs to know what it felt like when the noise reached us. When the pressure from the explosion itself sent a shock of pain through my head, the windows rattled in their frames and the walls shook in place.
Pavel’s face twisted with his panic, the smile that had been his finding its way to my mouth. My lips parted, revealing a broad, toothy grin. It wasn’t the relieved smile of a girl who knew she’d be rescued, but the deranged mutation of all things good, that came from a woman who was ready to shed blood. “I hope that wasn’t anything important,” I said, pushing myself up to a sitting position to face him more fully.
Bolstered by the reality that Pavel was under attack, that my husband and my family had come for me, I glared into his face as it twisted with fury. “Miguel was right about you all along wasn’t he, little witch? I guess it's time I fulfill the promise I made him.” He reached into the nightstand while I vaulted off the other side of the bed. I was halfway to the door by the time he turned his attention back to me.
A rough rope around the front of my neck stopped me, and he used it to haul me back to the bed as I wheezed and gasped. I fought for air, clutching at the rope with frantic fingers and thrashing my body to try to dislodge him. He pushed me onto my back, pulling the rope free from my throat and using it to tie my hands quickly. I kicked, aiming for his face, and screamed, but he was relentless in the way he wrapped my wrists.
The rope burned the wounds beneath the bandages, making me hiss in pain as he lifted me up to my feet. He draped the rope over a hook hanging from the ceiling, moving to the cord draped by the bedpost and pulling until the hook retracted into the ceiling once more.
It raised higher and higher as I screamed, until only the tips of my toes touched the top of the mattress. My wrists blazed with pain, my shoulders throbbing as all my weight hung from them. “Dima likes his women scarred,” he said, reaching up to pat my cheek sharply before he stepped down from the bed. “This would have been where he strung you up to whip you until you bled and then had his way with you. How fitting that it should be where you die slowly to distract your husband long enough for me to get away.”
“He’s going to cut you into pieces,” I seethed.
“Perhaps,” Pavel agreed, moving to the dresser at the other end of the room. He came back toward me, striking a match against the box he picked up and lighting the curtain closest to the bed. The stark reds and oranges of flames burned a path up the fabric, slowly consuming everything as they grew larger.
“Pavel!” I screamed as he made his way to the bedroom door.
He turned back to me, murmuring his final words so softly that I almost didn’t hear them as the fire on the curtains blazed higher toward the ceiling. “But you’ll already be dead.”
Then he was gone, leaving me to the fate that had been written from the moment I’d survived the river.
Death by fire.