by Box Set
Shoving the gate open, I holster my gun, readjust my grip on Evelina, and run, tasting freedom but not daring to get complacent as I close the gate behind us. We’re still too close to the house for me to even think about letting my guard down. When I know we’re not being followed, I can stop and plan our next move, but first we need to get as far away from here as possible.
20
EVELINA
There’s no time to wrap my head around the fact we're out, Luka rescued me, and I don’t know what to think about that, considering he was the one who brought me here in the first place. He was following orders, and I'm not sure at what point from the time he took me until now that he changed his mind. Such a short span of time has passed, and I’m reeling at how much has happened. We're not out of this yet, though, as the sound of guns being fired, echoes around us.
Luka is still running, but from the heavy way he's breathing, and the weakening grip he has on me, he’s exhausted. I know he was forced to watch and maybe hear everything that happened to me, but I’ve no idea whether he was given food or water like I was. I can feel the abrasions on his wrists rubbing against my bare legs, and I realize he was just as much a prisoner as I was. The night surrounding us makes looking at him any closer impossible, his face is in shadow, obscured by the darkness and his hair falling across it.
Luka stumbles, and I can feel myself falling before we hit the ground hard. The rough dirt and gravel dig in, scraping at my skin.
“Fuck,” he curses, scrambling to his feet.
“Can you run?” he questions, and I nod, pushing myself onto my knees and shakily standing.
Grabbing my hand, Luka pulls me along, and we flee through the night into the raw and wild countryside. The uneven ground beneath my feet, the untamed surroundings, and the gunshots ringing out in the distance take me back to the night I fled Maksim’s. The night I met Luka only this time I’m running with him instead of from him. The bitter irony strikes me painfully in the chest. I silently wish for this time to be different, praying it doesn’t end with me back inside the monster’s lair.
Fear keeps me moving when all I want to do is stop, catch my breath, and rest until I have some semblance of strength back. Yet, every time I start to slow, Luka pushes me harder, not allowing me to break from the harsh pace he has set for us. My body aches all over from the treatment it’s received over the past few days, and the pressure on my feet is sending sharp pains up my legs until I feel like they are about to buckle beneath me.
After what feels like hours, Luka starts to slow down, and that’s when I see it. A small town just ahead, barely visible and covered in a blanket of darkness.
“This way,” he says, pulling me toward it, and a prickle of fear sparks in my heart.
The streets are empty, and I want to ask where we are, but wariness of who might hear us or be following, keeps me silent. One dark road after another, we walk through the town, winding through the unlit streets until we come to a house sitting slightly apart from the others. Luka squeezes my hand and drags me around the back where a security gate blocks our path. He taps in a code, which unlocks it with a quiet beep, and pushing it open, he hurries me through. The gate then closes behind us, locking with a double beep.
Worry sets in, and I wonder just exactly where he has taken me. Luka promised to get me out, but he didn’t say anything about it being any safer, not for me at least. For all I know, this could be another trap, and Luka is simply trying to lure me into a false sense of security before he tortures me himself.
Silence and an untended garden greet us when we make our way behind the house, but I don’t get a chance to take it in. I’m dragged toward another door, once again secured with a code, which Luka enters, and when the door unlocks, I’m shoved into the darkness of the house. Panic skitters through me, and I turn to try and get back out, but Luka’s arm wraps around my waist, preventing me from moving.
“Let me go, Luka,” I plead.
“Where the fuck will you go if I do? If you go back out there, you’re as good as dead, and all of this will have been a waste of time. Stop fighting me, because I won’t hesitate to tie you up if you continue. I won’t take what you don’t give me, but I’m finding you impossible to stay away from, Evelina. I might not want you dead, but the thought of you bound and helpless in front of me is far too fucking tempting, and I don’t know whether I have the fucking strength to resist you anymore.”
Luka’s lips crash down on mine. I’m breathless against the power of his kiss and unable to stop myself from kissing him back. We’re on the run and standing in a strange, dark, house, yet all I can think about is how his lips feel while he consumes me with a kiss.
When Luka finally breaks away, our breaths mingle as we both try to catch them.
“Stay here, I need to switch the power on. Don’t bother trying to get out, the security runs on a separate circuit, so it’s always switched on,” he says, and I can hear how tired he is.
Weariness and exhaustion are creeping up on me too, and I let myself sink to the floor. I haven’t got the energy to run anymore. I’m ready to curl up and sleep for days. Luka got me out, and we’re far away from that house, and those two monsters, Wes and Bernardo, are dead. Even though I don’t know where we are, all I can feel is relief in the knowledge that when I wake up, it won’t be to their faces leering over me ever again.
21
EVELINA
The feel of hands touching me, rouses me from my sleep, and I open my eyes to darkness. How many more times will I be woken to nothing but blackness greeting my sight? I’ve lost count of how long I’ve been here, and the way time seems to crawl as each day drags out endlessly in front of me, saps my ability to hope. The feeling I’ll never see daylight, taste freedom, or breathe fresh air again, fills me with an ache that threatens to tear me apart.
When the door clicks open, I no longer look up to see who’s there… nothing good ever comes through that door, only monsters. My Master is the worst of them. and once again he wants to use me. I no longer fight him off when his hands roam my body, touching me in all the places I’ve been used before. The role I’ve been given, I’ve accepted because after all this time, I’ve learned that things will never change.
Jerking awake, I scream and thrash when the touch of hands on my body doesn’t fade, and I can’t see anything in front of me. “Shh, Evelina. It’s Luka. You were asleep on the floor, I was just moving you,” Luka says, and I fight to calm my racing heart.
A light flickers on, and Luka is in front of me, looking at me with concern written all over his face. A nightmare. Why do they always feel so real? Yet when I reflect back on the memories, it’s as though I’m looking through clouded glass, and I wish I could erase them like condensation from a mirror, so I can see who I really am beneath them. An ache starts to build in my chest, working its way up my body until it wells up, and there’s no way to stop the tears from falling. There’s nothing and no one that can erase the horrors of my past.
Warm hands tug me close, and I’m stunned when Luka wraps his arms around me as I continue to crack straight down the middle. The surprisingly comforting gesture leaves me feeling dizzy. I don’t know what to think, but neither do I pull away, because in this moment, I need him.
When the sobs subside into little hiccups and I feel calmer, Luka lets go of me and stands with a strange look on his face. Backing away, slowly, he leaves the room and me, all alone. Looking around, I realize I’m in a small bedroom, lying on top of a single bed that is up against the wall. There is very little in the room, which has plain, neutral furnishings, and no personal effects, presumably a guest room.
A deafening crash downstairs draws my attention to the closed door as the sound of men shouting, filters through the crack. They’ve found us already, and so soon after we got here. It was too good to be true: a mere taste of a freedom I’m not fated to have in a world where the villains don’t stop, and the monsters always win.
Slipping from the bed,
I drop to the floor, and just as I’m crawling under the bed the door flies open. The shriek that bursts from my throat bounces off the walls as a pair of hands grabs me by the ankles, hauling me from my failed hiding place. A knee on my back, and another set of hands, pin me to the floor when I attempt to scramble away while the heavy grip on my legs prevents me from kicking out.
“You must be Luka’s little blyad. You thought you’d escaped us did you?” A thickly accented voice growls in my ear, and I cry out weakly when my face is pushed into the carpet.
“Hold her down,” the man who whispered to me says, and I can’t stop the terror, shooting through my blood like poison straight to my heart.
The hands holding my legs squeeze tighter, and when the pressure on my back is released I suck in a breath and scream as loud as I can manage, “LUKA!”
A blow to the back of my head cuts me off, and my airflow is restricted when once again my face is pushed back into the rough carpet, the fibres making my face itch as they rub against my skin.
“Suka, he’ll be dead soon if he isn’t already,” The other man laughs, and the sound chills me to my core.
I can’t breathe, and my head starts to spin as I struggle to take in air. Helpless and unable to move, I can’t do anything to stop them from touching me as fingers creep up my thighs, inching closer and closer to my pussy. I’m choking on my panic, the lack of oxygen, and the restrictions being imposed on my prone body.
My head is pulled back by my hair, and I gasp down the air that suddenly floods my lungs like water as tears stream down my face, burning hot trails on my skin. I’m being straddled by the man who is holding me by my hair, his knees pinning my arms to the floor while the other has removed his filthy hands from my body, and from the sounds coming from behind me, is unbuckling his belt.
“Time to see what all the fuss is about,” he growls in my ear, his breath hot on my skin.
Too out of breath to scream, all I can do is whimper over and over, “No, no, no.”
The shouts from the floor below have stopped, and footsteps are pounding up the stairs as a hand touches my inner thigh, and I flinch just as two quick pops fill the air and something wet splatters all over my body. I let out a high pitched scream as I’m released, only to be crushed beneath the weight of the man who was sitting on top of me.
22
LUKA
Just as I get to the bottom of the stairs, the front door blasts in, sending me crashing onto my back where I lie dazed as a small group of men swarm into the house. Two immediately rush up the stairs, but I’m unable to do anything more than watch them. Evelina crosses my mind, and I hope she’s able to hide somewhere before they reach her. Two of the men zone in on me, and I’m dragged from the hallway into the living room.
One of them pins me to the floor, and I fight against him, trying to throw him off, while the other proceeds to pummel me wherever he can reach with his fists and boots. Agony spikes through me when he catches me in the side of the ribs, winding me briefly. Kicking out, I land a lucky strike to his knee, and he buckles as I give him a second kick to his face, knocking him unconscious.
The one holding me loosens his grip when his friend goes down, and I seize the opportunity to wrench my arms out of his grip. My attention is diverted when I hear Evelina scream for me from the floor above, and the fucker swings for me. Barely managing to avoid the fist flying at my face, he yells out when his knuckles connect with the concrete floor.
He clutches at his hand, and judging by the way the knuckles look, he’s probably broken a few. Good, I hope it fucking hurts. He lunges at me as I pull away, and I kick him, clipping him across the jaw with my foot and sending him flying sideways. As he tries to get up again, I tackle him back down to the ground, slamming his wrists to the floor and grinning when his shout of pain rips through the air as his broken hand smacks against the hard surface.
“How did you find us?” I demand, pushing down more firmly when he tries to fight me off.
He laughs at my question but doesn’t answer. Adjusting my position on top of him so my knee is pressed into his elbow, I reach for my knife and unsheathe it. Before he can react I’ve stabbed it into his palm, the blade slicing through his hand like butter.
“Ubludok! Tell me!” I shout, wrenching the blade out and stabbing it into his shoulder joint, feeling it scrape against the ball in the socket.
His screams of pain are addictive, and if I wasn’t trying to find out how they found us so I can get to Evelina, then I’d turn him into a pincushion.
“The tracker!” he yells when I lean back and shove the knife into the meaty part of his thigh.
Pizdets. Now I have my answer, I need to go get Evelina. Finishing him off with one last plunge of my blade straight through his throat and into his spine, he gurgles for a moment and then stills. Once he’s dead, I pull the blade free and wipe it clean on his shirt before tucking it away and hurriedly getting to my feet. Grabbing the gun from the other man who remains unconscious, I fire a quick round into the back of his skull, then fly up the stairs to find Evelina.
The door to her room is open and when I see her pinned beneath one man while the other is desperately trying to get his pants undone, I see fucking red. Raising the gun I fire off two quick rounds and watch when one and then the other fall as the bullets shatter through their skulls. Blood sprays everywhere, and the man on top of Evelina falls limp, trapping her underneath.
“Evelina!” I call out.
“Get him off… get him off,” she moans, crying and struggling to get free.
I rush over to her, shove the dead man off, and pull her from the room.
“We can’t stay here,” I tell her, and I’m sure she can hear the urgency in my voice as I begin dragging her down the hallway to a door at the other end.
As we pass the stairs, a figure darts up them, slamming me into the wall. Letting out a grunt of surprise, I manage to punch the new assailant across the jaw, stunning him. Something in Evelina seems to snap, and she rushes at the new man like a fucking warrior, throwing her body into his as hard as she can. Before Evelina can hit the floor, I snatch her around the waist, catching her just in time. The man steps back, overbalancing on the edge of the stairs and falls, his arms flailing. As if in slow motion he tumbles down them, his neck smacking the bannister with a sickening crack before landing sprawled at the bottom with blood pooling under him.
“I think that’s all of them,” I say, panting, as the effects of the adrenaline decrease and weariness starts to kick back in.
“How did they find us?” Evelina asks, confusion and worry pulling her eyebrows close together.
“The tracker Maksim put in you. It’s how I found you before, and I fucking forgot about it until now. I was too busy trying to get us out of that house alive to even consider it,” I tell her as I take her hand and lead her to the master bedroom.
“The tracker,” Evelina repeats faintly, allowing me to gently pull her along the hallway.
Opening the door, I scan the room to make sure there are no more lethal surprises lurking in there, waiting for us to let our guard down. The room is empty of people, and on passing the chest of drawers, I stop to grab a couple of t-shirts and some sweats as I take Evelina into the attached bathroom.
“Get in the shower. I need to get that tracker out of you before more of those men arrive, and then we’re going to have to run again. Luckily, I’ve a car parked in the garage we can use to get away from here, but a car is going to be of no use if they can track our whereabouts.”
Evelina hesitates before opening the shower door and stepping inside, watching and waiting to see what I’ll do next. I turn on the faucet and wait for the water to heat up before drawing my blade and running it under the flowing stream until it’s clean and too hot to touch.
Glad I remembered, from the file Pavlo gave me, that the tracker is underneath the skin on her left hip, I step inside the shower with Evelina. Getting to my knees, I rub my hand firmly over her soft sk
in to locate the device, and then using my thumb and forefinger, I work it closer to the surface.
“This is going to hurt… breathe,” I tell her, raising the knife and as quickly as I can, slicing through the skin.
Ignoring her flinch as Evelina reacts to the pain, I cut the tracker free, watching as it lands on the shower floor with a quiet plink. Then slamming the handle of the knife down onto the tracker, I smile as it breaks under the force of the blow.
23
EVELINA
The pain as Luka cuts into my hip is excruciating, yet it is nothing compared to the pain of being taken against your will. Blood starts to run down my thigh, and when he switches the shower on and water hits it, the sting makes me hiss out a breath. Stepping under the spray, I’m still partially clothed, but I don’t care about the sopping wet fabric now clinging to my body. Instead, I relish the burn of the water as it cleans away the blood, and the lingering touch of monsters from my skin.
Luka palms my hips; I’d almost forgotten he was still in here, and when his eyes track the path of the water running down my skin, I can feel the strength of his gaze sweeping over me. Then Luka’s eyes lift to meet mine, his dark blue ones, nearly the color of midnight, stare into my brown ones.
Something passes between us, and I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it is, but what I do know is it’s intense, electrifying, and I’m not sure I want this moment to end. I’m certain he can hear the pounding of my heart over the sound of the shower; the heavy thumping that’s beating a rapid rhythm against my chest. My thoughts and feelings are so confused, but with each minute that passes, they start becoming clearer.
“Luka,” I mumble, his name barely more than a whisper.