Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Instead of shutting down the laptop and ordering me to stay upstairs, Dmitry closed it with a quiet, final click and stood. “We’re done up here.”
He didn’t raise his voice or look at me to confirm I was following. He just walked toward the door with the kind of certainty that didn’t need permission.
I didn’t hesitate to follow him. The office was freezing; the concrete and steel holding on to old winter, the wind outside hissing through busted window panes like a warning.
Dmitry would never have admitted it, but keeping me up in that draft was never an actual consideration. He could pretend he didn’t care if I froze, but the choices he made already betrayed him.
He led me down the same concealed staircase as earlier, farther down past rusted meat hooks and grated drains from the slaughterhouse days. Farther still, past the cold rooms where carcasses once hung, and finally down to the reinforced bunker he had carved out beneath all of it.
Once inside, the warmth hit me. It wasn’t excessive but just enough to make my skin prickle as blood returned to places the office had numbed.
He waited until I stepped inside and the heavy door thudded shut behind us. “The buyers come tomorrow,” he said. “I need you rested. You’ll speak again, and he’ll listen differently.”
There it was. No more “leverage.” No more “asset.” No more language that reduced me to a bargaining chip. He didn’t call me important, either. Dmitry simply treated me like someone who needed her strength for what came next.
I nodded once, and it surprised me how natural that felt. Not obedient or submissive. Just aligned.
Outside these walls, war was already moving with brokers recalculating risks, soldiers shifting positions, financiers preparing exit strategies, and men who profited off other people’s daughters, deciding whether the margins still justified the blood.
But down here, the world was quieter, cleaner, and less complicated. And for the first time, I wasn’t just the object they were fighting over. I was an instrument.
I thought of Lucia Rossi with her ink-stained fingers and pastries wrapped in napkins. I wondered if she slept soundly in whatever villa or penthouse the Rossis called home. I wondered if she had any idea her family dealt with refrigerated containers and crates that screamed when they were loaded.
Dmitry must have read my thoughts rushing across my face. “The Rossis don’t involve themselves unless the margins are exceptional,” he said, checking the vents and the heater as if he’d done it a hundred times.
“If Lucia knows,” I murmured, “she’d never say it out loud.” But I refused to believe she knew or approved of that.
“And if she doesn’t know,” he replied, switching off the overhead light so only the low lamp glowed, “she’ll learn.” A simple truth but a brutal one. In our world, innocence wasn’t preserved. It was delayed, used, and then destroyed.
He moved toward the door, but his eyes lingered on me before he opened it. Something crossed his face. “Get warm,” he said, voice lower now. “You’ll need your strength for what’s coming.”
The door didn’t slam. It didn’t even fully close at first. It lingered for a breath, as if he were waiting to see if I’d break or shatter or beg. When I did none of those things, I was sealed inside.
The heater hummed, and the room smelled faintly of detergent and cedar. I curled onto the bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I thought I knew but realizing nothing had been true. My life had been a lie.
But my eyes were open now. I was done being afraid of the unknown. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel small.
I felt dangerous.
Chapter 10
Dmitry
Ilocked the bunker door once Zoya settled beneath the blanket, the propane heater humming beside the cot. She didn’t resist being put down there. She was smart enough to understand it wasn’t punishment. It was security. And I found that I didn’t see her compliance as weakness as I normally would have.
It was survival disguised as obedience.
The slaughterhouse swallowed the sound of my boots as I crossed the processing floor. Rusted hooks hung from overhead rails like ghosts of animals long bled out. Snow rattled through the broken panes, turning the building into a wind tunnel.
St. Petersburg at this hour wasn’t a city. It was a carcass stripped by men who did their best work while the honest slept.
I drove out through industrial routes where frozen cameras glitched and streetlights died in patches. After twenty minutes, I cut down toward the canal, parking behind the abandoned textile mill. It sagged against the water like a corpse that forgot to drown.
I keyed a six-digit code into a lock on the steel door. Hydraulic bolts released. The burner phone vibrated against my thigh before I could push the door open.