It’s a question, but it sounds rhetorical. The words are injected with enough disdain to cause my skin to crawl.
I start to get up, but he shoves me back down with a mere hand on my shoulder. In this position, he’s so close, I smell his aftershave, or shower gel, or whatever that smells clean.
“Have I given you permission to rise?”
“No, sir.” I swallow, and the sound echoes in the surrounding silence.
Still, I stare into his frightening icy eyes, even as I feel frozen in place with no way out.
Yes, his eyes are frightening, but there’s nothing scarier than my fate if I’m kicked out of the military.
And, most importantly, everyone else’s fate.
“I might not have the power now, but I want it.” I speak in a harsh tone, unable to control the emotions flooding through me. “I will work hard for it. I will be the most disciplined soldier you have if you just give me a chance.”
“Give you a chance.” It’s not a question this time. A mere repetition of facts. “There are more competent soldiers than you. Why should I pick you?”
“I don’t have the answer to that, sir, but I do know that I never give up.”
He raises a brow, again looking at me in that funny way I can’t put my finger on.
“Prove yourself first,” he says with ease, as if the method is a given.
Confusion must be written all over my face as I ask, “How do I do that?”
“Now, that’s the part you have to figure out yourself.” He pushes back and gives me another stern glance. “Let’s see if you have it in you to take a man’s place, Lipovsky.”
And then he spins around and leaves.
My brow furrows at his last words. He didn’t say another man’s place. He said a man’s place.
I wonder why he phrased it that way.
Anyway, that’s not important now that I finally have a chance to regain control over my life after the massacre that took away my everything.
3
KIRILL
Cold sweat covers my skin as I sit on the hard surface of the military bed.
Deafening silence surrounds me, and I jump up, my feet making no sound on the floor.
The images from the nightmare redden my vision and play in slow motion in the dark corners of my subconscious.
Everyone and everything I cut from my life have been slowly returning to my immediate presence. Not in person, but as ghosts and shadows.
I stare down at the cuts and marks slithering over my skin, serving as a constant reminder of what happened before I got here.
The reason I escaped it all.
It’s also the reason I have this fucked-up need to return and rule it all. Every last bit of it.
No one can control me if I’m the leader. No one can deny or order me to do anything. In fact, it’ll be the other way around.
But that’s neither for here nor for now.
I throw on some pants and a T-shirt, then slip out of the room and into the empty training camp. The soldiers were granted a night out, so they all fucked off to get drunk and get some pussy while they could. Including my own men, who usually follow me like wannabe shadows.