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)
Upstairs in the old foreman’s office with the concrete walls was a single scarred metal desk, a heater, and one battery lantern casting long shadows across the room. I pushed her down into the chair opposite the desk and leaned against the edge of the desk. She sat rigid, wrists still cuffed, chain coiled on the floor between us like a sleeping snake.
I used my foot to nudge the small propane heater closer to her. The low flame flickered behind the grate, just enough to take the worst edge off the freeze without wasting fuel. It wasn’t a mercy. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
A frozen girl was no good for leverage. But my hand lingered on the edge of the desk a second longer than it needed to, watching the faint warmth hit her skin chasing away the gooseflesh.
I took the thermos off the desk, unscrewed the cap, poured a measure into the lid-cup, and set it on the desk in front of her.
No words. No offer. Just the steam curling up like smoke in the cold air. She stared at it, then at me, but I turned away before her eyes could ask the question I wasn’t ready to answer.
Sitting at the desk, I opened the laptop and pulled up the reply file Andrey had uploaded to the dead-drop an hour ago. It was a grainy audio clip. No video. Just his voice snarling over a static-laced line. I turned the computer toward her.
She stared at the screen and didn’t look away.
His voice came through rough and edged with that familiar guttural rasp. It was the kind of anger that left people buried six feet under.
“Zoya. You listen to me, girl. Whoever this piece of shit is, he’s dead. I don’t care what he thinks he knows or what he has. You stay quiet. You stay alive. You belong to me, and no one touches what’s mine without paying in blood. I’ll find you. And when I find him, I’ll gut him slowly. Keep your mouth shut and your head down, no matter what he does to you. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”
The clip ended with a sharp click. There’d been no tears. No “I love you.” Just the cold promise of violence and control.
Zoya’s face twisted, not with fear but with something darker, like she’d bitten into rotten fruit. No surprise. No softening. She’d heard that tone before, I’m sure, many times when he was laying hands on her. It was the same tone that came right before a locked door or a backhand.
She looked at me instead. “That’s the man who raised me,” she breathed, her voice steady but laced with acid. “The man who locked me in rooms and called it protection. The man who gave me diamonds to shut me up while girls vanished under his orders. The man who smiled over breakfast like the screams I heard from the basement the night before was just a bad dream.” She tipped her chin up in defiance. “You think showing me this will break me?”
I closed the laptop with a soft click.
“No,” I said. “I think it will break him.”
She let out a hollow laugh. It was short, ugly, and edged with something close to hysteria but not quite. “He’ll send men first. Bastards with no morals who follow his orders and carry guns. And if they fail, he’ll come himself. Not for me, not really. For the insult. For the property you stole and the threats you made.”
“I know him better than you do.” I stood, walked around the desk, and crouched in front of her chair. I took her chin between thumb and forefinger in a firm but gentle hold and forced her to meet my eyes. “He filmed my mother,” I told her again, voice low and steady, watching her face for the break that hadn’t come yet. “But that’s just one piece of the rot. Your father doesn’t just deal in guns and drugs, Zoya. His real empire—his most lucrative business—is in flesh. Human trafficking. Girls like your staff, ones younger than you. He takes the broken and sad ones and drugs them so they are hooked and pliant, ships them off, and sells them to the highest bidder.”
She made no sound, but fat, beautiful tears rolled down her cheeks.
“And the snuff films? That’s where the big money flows. Videos of people dying slowly, screaming for the camera. He doesn’t do it just for the cash, though. It’s not just business. He gets off on it. The power. The cries. The way they beg until the very end.”
Her pupils blew wide, but she didn’t gasp or recoil. She’d already heard the core before… the part about my mother, the payment, the tape. The doubt was there, festering like an open wound, but surprise?