by Loki Renard
“The job you always had, Vadim. The job you did so well. You need to remove someone from this world.”
“Murder them, you mean.”
My mind is full of a hundred deaths. I have snuffed the lives of so many out that I know my soul will never be clean. Sophie never asked me what I did in Russia, but I think she knows. I think it is written on my heart. I think it sears from my eyes. I think she senses the parts of me that are missing, that slipped away every time I killed. Now Ivan wants me to kill again.
“Who?”
He looks at me with that calm expression he always has. Nothing shakes Ivan. He is cold to the core. Completely soulless. I used to take the scraps of what passed for his affection and approval, but no more. I can be cold like him. I can be ruthless and I can cut off my feelings for the man who raised me, the same way he cut his off for me.
“Who?” I thunder the question at him.
“I think you already know.”
“I don’t.”
He lets out a sigh. “You were always loyal,” he says, “but all too often, slow. Think, Vadim. Who have you been sent to? Who is almost impossible to reach except by a trusted few?”
Sophie.
He means Sophie.
It’s not possible. There is no way he could have known she would come to a slaver’s and buy me. There is no way he could have arranged all of that without somehow manipulating her. It’s too coincidental a series of events to be real. I refuse to believe it.
“No.”
“Yes,” he says.
“She’s just a girl. I don’t kill women.”
“You kill who you need to,” he says, speaking for me, to me. I do not have my own mind where Ivan is concerned. I am nothing more than a robot built to do his bidding.
“I. Don’t. Kill. Women.” I repeat myself, making every word loud and slow.
“Yes, that’s what you’ve been allowed to believe,” he says. “But you’ve killed women before, Vadim, remember it or not. You should have killed this one the moment you saw her. Your programming must have failed.”
“My programming?”
I do not know what he is talking about, and I do not like it. I am not a computer. I cannot be programmed. I am a man. My own man. And I do not kill women.
“We had you conditioned in the days before you left. You can’t remember, but you were trained, Vadim. We made it easy for you.”
“Made it easy?”
“When you saw the girl for the first time, what did you want to do?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Think!” He bellows the word from across the world and my mind snaps into obedience. I remember how I felt when I first saw Sophie. I felt something like anger, but more intense, and less emotional. Prey drive. That was what I felt. I looked at her and I saw a little animal with big eyes and delicate limbs. I saw a woman who would be so easy to break and yet did not behave like it. She walked among evil men as though she belonged there. She was tainted, I thought. Just like them. Inseparable.
And then I was alone with her. In those first seconds of solitude in the elevator I remember wrapping my hand around her throat, wanting to squeeze, but stopping myself. I thought it was because I was angry at her for buying me, but now that I think on it, it was a strange and uncharacteristic impulse. I have never put hands on a woman that way, and I never will again.
“Do you remember, Vadim?”
“I did want to kill her. But I also did not want to kill her.” I clench my fists. “You should never have sent me here. You put me through hell. You made me believe I had lost my brothers, my whole family was taken from me...”
“It had to be that way, Vadim,” he says, his voice patient again. He is a master of manipulation. I always knew that. I used to admire it. Maybe I still do. I don’t know what I know anymore, and I certainly don’t know what I think.
“It is a difficult job,” he says. “A challenge, even for an expert killer like you. We thought you might encounter difficulty. So, when you didn’t kill her immediately, we had to organize a reset. At the empty house. Yesterday. That explosion should have jolted you into kill mode, and I had a man administer a fresh chemical dose, but still she lives. That is why I have called, Vadim. To remind you who you are. And to remind you of your duty.”
I breathe deeply. If he is to be believed—and Ivan is always to be believed—then everything has been a lie. Not just since I found myself in captivity, but everything my entire life. There was never a brotherhood. There was never family. There were only ever lost boys grown into lost men, muscles and brawn turned to Ivan’s will. He has treated me like a tool, but should I be surprised?
“You used me.”
“Everyone must serve a function, Vadim,” he says. “Even I serve something higher than myself. Even I obey.”
I snort at the idea of Ivan obeying anyone.
“It is true,” he says. “There are orders older than ours. There are missions and promises and covenants that must be kept throughout many lifetimes. I do not serve myself, and you do not serve me. I serve something much higher, and in turn, so do you.”
I would not have known what he was talking about before I met Sophie, but now I have heard the word so many times I know without the shadow of a doubt I know precisely who and what he speaks of.
“Vristok,” I say. “Is that who we are?”
“Vristok is just one of the names we go by,” he says. “It is an old name, and a powerful one. It is your inheritance, Vadim. This is how you earn the right to the name.”
I stare in silence. Ivan always told me I was made for greatness. Is this what he meant by greatness? Slaughtering defenseless women for reasons too old for anyone to understand?
“Kill Sophie Mortari,” he growls.
“No.” I have never outright refused an order from Ivan before, but exile has made me my own man, not this sick fucker’s puppet.
“Kill her, and you can come home,” he says. “Return to your brothers as the hero you are. Do not be the traitor you were sent away as. Come back to us. We are your family. There will be riches, Vadim. More than you can imagine. You will have your own lands. You will be titled. More power, more women, more riches. Everything you have worked for your entire life comes down to this one act of obedience.”
He lowers his voice, makes it sound as though I am interested in houses or women or riches. I never had a home to call my own, not really, and even if I were to do his bidding, I would not have one. I would not be human anymore. I would be a demon inhabiting a sack of flesh. I would be worthless.
I watch his expressions, and I realize that he believes these are reasons enough for me to do as he says and kill the woman who warms my bed, my lover. The heart was never an obstacle to Ivan; it was only another weakness to be exploited. I don’t think he knows that I have one. He certainly did his best to beat it out of me over the years.
“What do you say, Vadim?”
I move the mouse, sending the cursor to the upper right corner of the window where a little white X sits inside a red box.
“Goodbye, Ivan.”
Chapter Nine
Sophie
I am changing my skirt for the thirtieth time. I didn’t know how much camo I actually had in my closet. It’s a genuinely surprising amount. I want to look good for Vadim, which should probably be the very least of my concerns given that we are undertaking a seriously dangerous task. Before him, I wouldn’t have given any thought to fighting the Vristok. I thought it was the best I could do simply to survive.
I have only just pulled the fabric up over my still-tender ass when the door opens behind me, but it isn’t Vadim who comes in. It’s two of his men. I think I might have been introduced once. I can’t remember. I know I’m surprised to see them.
“Ma’am, you need to come with us.”
“Wrong. I don’t need to do anything. Where is Vadim?”
“He’s indisposed. He asked us to...”
“I’m not going anywhere without him.”
>
“Please, ma’am. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. We’ve been authorized to use full physical force. We just want to keep you safe.”
“Where is Vadim?”
They don’t answer me. They just move toward me and put their hands on me, and that’s when the screaming starts. Theirs, not mine. I am never defenseless. Under the sleeves of this blouse, I have wristbands that extrude sharp blades. They’re a holdover from my teen years. Under normal circumstances, they just look like leather cuffs, but when a button is depressed, sharp surfaces press out a quarter of an inch. Small, but effective.
“Jesus! She’s slashing me the fuck up!”
They’re making a mess all over my room, but I’d rather get the carpet replaced than be abducted from my own home. Fortunately for the pair of them, their wounds are superficial. So far, at least. If they come for me again, I will be aiming for softer, more delicate spots.
“I go nowhere without Vadim,” I tell them. “You bring him to me. Now.”
“He cannot come.”
“Why?”
“Because he needs to go.”
“Where?”
Vadim wouldn’t leave me. He promised me he was taking me with him, and in all the time I’ve known him, he’s never lied to me. Why would he start now? What the hell is going on?
“Get him. Now!”
* * *
Vadim
I terminated the call with Ivan, but something inside me had already changed. The purpose of reaching out to me wasn’t to tell me everything. It was to activate the killer they sent to Sophie. And I can feel that it has worked. Over the years, Ivan has manipulated me so many times that he seems to have hot button access directly to my subconscious. It is the most fucked up thing to feel as though one is not fully control of one’s actions. It’s like Sophie reaching for another candy bar, even though she’s said she won’t have any more sugar. Except it’s not candy I’m craving. It’s murder. And only one death will do.
“Sir, we can’t extract Sophie. She’s refusing to go.” My soldier appears in my presence. This is one time failure is not an option.
“She’s one woman, how can you not move her?”
“She’s feisty, sir. She’s wounded two men already and the others don’t want to go in there because they’re not sure what else she has in the room. She wants you.”
She wants me.
But by wanting me, she wants her own death. I don’t want to face her. I don’t want to put her at risk and I don’t want to see the inevitable heartbreak overwhelming her when she realizes that the man she loves is also the man she has to fear.
I need time. Time to fight the programming. Time to break whatever hold Ivan still has on me. It should be simple. All he has to offer me is a return to the family I once knew, a family who turned on me, made me exile, destroyed my sense of self—all so I could kill a woman who does not deserve to die. It is not an appealing proposition. Not on a logical level. But he does not deal in logic. He is appealing to the gut, to the part of me that does not think, but only acts. Ivan has entered my subconscious, and there he pushes buttons and pulls levers and makes me whatever he wants me to be.
“I can’t see her.”
“We can’t get her out of that room,” he says. “She won’t come out. She’s barricaded the door now.”
“Then leave her in there,” I say. “I have to go. Now.”
“What should we tell her?”
“Tell her that I will be back when I can be. If I can be.”
“Vadim!”
Sophie appears from behind him, popping into my field of vision like a foolish angel. I see her face. I hear Ivan’s words in my head. Memories start to flash. It is as if something that was locked away inside me and sealed tight has been opened, and suddenly I can access events in the past that didn’t seem to even exist before.
* * *
Something just broke. The pain is searing agony, but I can’t focus on it because there is more to come, and there was more before. These are not my enemies hurting me. This is my family.
“Stop.”
Ivan’s voice cuts through the hurt. I feel a rush of relief. My arms are bound. My legs are too. There is no escaping these thick irons, heavy chains designed to hold beasts. That is what I am to them now. Nothing more than an animal.
“This woman. She is the reason for all your pain. She is the reason you hurt. And when she dies, that is when you will be free.”
I try to ask him to stop, but I can’t. My veins are full of drugs; a cocktail we use on our enemies has been injected into me. I knew it hurt by the way they reacted, but I didn’t understand how it really felt. It is like dying slowly. I feel an overwhelming sense of doom.
* * *
The memory enters my consciousness and I remember it as if for the first time. They hurt me. They tied me down and took electricity to me. They doused my face with water and they made me feel the pain of death without actually passing. There were needles. There were knives. There was pain—endless, senseless, vicious pain. And the entire time they showed me images of her on a screen before my eyes. They linked her with the hurt. They embedded hatred. And they taught me that the pain would only end when she was dead.
“What’s happening, Vadim?” Sophie’s question is so innocent and so profound.
I look at her and I want to embrace her, but I don’t trust myself. I can feel the murder lust inside me, and I know I am not safe.
“Go back to your room, Sophie.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on!”
She doesn’t understand. Every word she says is a pull of an invisible trigger. She is playing roulette with my addled brain, and soon her luck will run out. My heart is pounding, feral rage is filling me, and red mist is beginning to infiltrate the corners of my vision. I do not want to hurt her. I would rather hurt myself a thousand times over, but she insists on being here, on looking at me, at putting herself in the danger she was trying to avoid when she purchased me.
“You need to kill me, Sophie.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The Vristok are here.”
“Where?” She looks around, and narrows her eyes at the two guards.
“Here,” I tell her. “It’s me. I am the Vristok.”
“No, you’re not, you goddamn asshole,” she curses at me.
I almost laugh at her response, it is so comedically simple. I wish I could deny it so easily.
“Why would you say that? What the fuck is going on?” She tries to storm closer to me, but thankfully the guard pulls her back, even though it costs him a hard kick to the shin as a result.
“I received contact from the Vristok this afternoon,” I tell her. “They are the same men who raised me. They sent me. To kill you.”
“Well, you’ve done a shitty job of it so far,” she says, tugging and pulling at the man who is currently saving her life. “This can’t be true, Vadim. You’re fucking with me, aren’t you.”
“I was a killer, my entire life,” I tell her. “The first time I took a life, I was twelve years old. I killed one person a month after that, at least. Ivan made sure I did. They used me all the time. I could go places other people couldn’t. Once I killed a man in his own bathroom. He thought I was his son’s friend.”
She looks at me, her mouth dropped open. There is so much she doesn’t know about me. I have hinted at it, but we have never really talked about my past. She knew it was painful. She didn’t know that the pain was not random or senseless. It was designed to hone me into the kind of weapon capable of anything. Or perhaps almost anything.
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because it is true and you need to hear it.”
“So you’ve been lying to me all this time? You fucked me just to have me before the end?”
“I didn’t know,” I tell her. “There’s a process my people use. It makes people do things. They don’t know what they’re doin
g, or why they’re doing it until it is too late.”
“That sounds like bullshit.”
“All the worst things do.”
“Let me fucking go!” That curse is directed at the man holding her, not me. She wants to get to me. I don’t know what she’ll do when she gets to me. I think she might try to kick my ass. God, I love her.
“Let her go,” I say. I think I can trust myself in this moment. Maybe not forever, but for these few minutes at least.
He lets her go and she comes to me. She is so fucking fragile. My eyes run over her and I don’t see her soft beauty. I see a hundred points of weakness where I could end her. Neck. Heart. Arteries. Back. Spleen.
I blink to stop myself, but the thoughts keep charging. This isn’t me. This is programming. This is the man Ivan wanted me to be, and I have to kill him. For Sophie to live, I might have to die.
“Please, Vadim,” she says, reaching for me. “Don’t do this. Whatever it is you’re doing. Please don’t.”
“I’m trying very hard not to do anything,” I say, gritting my teeth and putting my hands behind my back, tucking my fingers into my belt so my hands can’t come free and do something unspeakable.
I owe her the truth, but if she cannot accept it, then all I can do is ensure that she survives. I give myself sixty, maybe ninety more seconds in her presence before everything goes very, very wrong.
Looking over her head, I speak to the guard. “If I do something to her, shoot me. Aim between the eyes.”
“Vadim! Stop!” She wraps her arms around me and tries to kiss me, but my lips are tight. I can’t feel her love, and I don’t trust myself to not use my teeth as a weapon. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she says. She’s so fucking trusting. But she’s wrong.
“I need some time,” I tell her. “You have to give me time to get this under control, or something bad will happen.”
She draws back from me and looks at me with miserable eyes. “You wouldn’t hurt me, Vadim.”
I want her to understand what has been done to me, but she can’t. I take a deep breath to try to settle the screaming voices inside my head.
“I am a time bomb,” I tell her. “And I’ve just been activated. Soon, I’ll detonate, and we cannot be in the same house when that happens.”