Chapter 30: Corrupted Heart: Chapter 30

“You know, if dance doesn’t pan out, you’d make a great actor.”

Rage, pain, and heartache sizzle like acid in me as I glare pure hate at the woman smirking down at me.

“Be mad if you want,” Amaya shrugs. “It was meant as a compliment.”

“Fuck you,” I spit in reply.

She rolls her eyes. “Right back at ya, trust me. Seriously, you did well, Bianca.” Her lips curl poisonously. “And look on the bright side: you saved his life.”

My eyes close, as if to stop the pain from exploding though me.

It’s the only reason I did what I did: to save him. To stop this psycho bitch from having him killed.

When the knock came at the front door yesterday, I jumped up from the couch and ran to open it, assuming it was Kratos home early.

But instead of the man I love, I found myself face to face with Amaya, leveling a gun at my head, five men in full tactical gear with rifles standing behind her on the stoop.

Their brutal demands hit me so fast it sucked the very air from my lungs: pack a bag. Wait for Kratos to come home. Tell him it was over between us. I had ten minutes to convince him we were through and to walk out the front door alone, or Amaya’s men, who’d be waiting by the windows with guns aimed, would kill Kratos on the spot.

I watched helplessly as she placed a hidden mic and camera in the living room. She explained with an acid smile that if I let on what was happening in any way, or tried to warn him or signal to him that he was in danger, they’d kill him right in front of me.

So I did the only thing I could think of that I knew would stop him from following me, as much as it broke my heart.

I used the nuclear option.

Vanish.

Even remembering the way I said it, and the haunted look in his eyes when he heard it, breaks my heart all over again.

Like I broke his heart.

Because that’s what I saw in his face. I saw pain, and betrayal, and they almost broke me right there.

But if breaking his heart saved him, so be it. If my own broken heart is collateral damage, that’s a price I’d pay a thousand times.

I shift in the chair I’m tied to, feeling the bite of the ropes binding my wrists behind me. We’re in the old, mostly demolished executive suite on the top floor of the building Kratos’ family recently acquired from my mine. The only light comes from the few construction bulbs, reflecting dimly off the bare metal frames of the walls and ceilings. The windows in the wall overlooking the Hudson River below have been removed in preparation of the complete teardown the Drakos family is planning, and a chilly wind whips through the gaping frames.

Amaya’s phone goes off. She turns and walks away as she answers it brusquely.

The sound of a tongue clicking against teeth drags my attention across the cavernous space, where Grisha is leaning against the metal frame of a wall, leering at me.

“Yeah, great acting,” he sneers. “Too bad all it did was buy that fucking husband of yours one more day of breathing.”

I don’t respond.

I did what I did before because all I could think of was sparing his life. Whatever they were going to do to me, whatever came next, as long as I knew I was stopping them from shooting Kratos in the back right there in the living room, I was fine with it.

And when they hauled me into the van and drove off into the night the second I stepped out of the brownstone with my suitcase, I swallowed my fear.

Because I knew he was safe.

But now I know I was so blinded by that immediate fear for him I couldn’t see past the present, to what might come next.

Now I can.

Maybe Amaya’s only real plan for me is to use me as a bargaining chip. I was in the room when she made the call telling Kratos to bring the Bratva pakhan Drazen Krylov here in exchange for me. Maybe it’s all a trap, but I have to cling to some shred of hope.

When I look at Grisha, that hope shatters.

Amaya herself might genuinely just be looking to make an exchange. But there’s something vicious in Grisha’s eyes.

He’s not here because he gives two shits about any Bratva politics going on here involving Drazen.

He’s here because he wants to hurt Kratos. Maybe even kill him.

“Shame you’re not in charge,” I spit at him. “Just her little assistant.”

Rage clouds his face as he storms across the room. I gasp, flinching, but there’s no avoiding the back of his hand as it slaps my mouth, hard.

Grisha chuckles darkly as I wince, turning and spitting blood as my lip splits.

“You think I’m not in charge here?”

I swallow, glaring at him. “No one with half a brain would ever put you in charge, of anything” I hiss. “You’re Boris Chernoff’s errand boy. And now even his number two has you running around, taking orders from her.”

Rage sparks in his eyes and I brace myself for another hit. But Grisha just smiles coldly, chuckling darkly.

“I know what you’re doing, shlyushka,” he growls. “Trying to bait me. Antagonize me.” He grins. “It’s not going to work. Not yet, at least. Not until that fucker gets here.”

“She has business with him, though,” I smile. “So does your boss. You can’t⁠—”

I choke on my breath as he surges into me, grabbing the nape of my neck tightly.

“Can’t what, bitch,” he snarls. “Touch him? Touch you?” His lips curl dangerously. “Let me make this clear. After the business has been concluded, and Mr. Chernoff and that bitch get Krylov, they’re going to let me do whatever I want to your husband.”

I shiver as he leans even closer.

“Whatever I want to you, too,” he leers, his tone sickening.

“First, I’m going to break his legs, so he can’t run away. Then I think I’ll slice his eyelids off, so he can’t close them.” Grisha grins. “He’s going to watch when I fuck you in every hole you have, like my own personal whore. When I invite my men to take their turns, too. Actually…”

I go cold as Grisha reaches for his fly. He smirks. “I’ll tell you what. If you suck my dick right now, and you suck it good, maybe I’ll be selfish later and not let my men have any fun. How about that? Just me using every one of your tight holes right in front of your little bitch of a husband.” He grins. “Fuck, I can’t wait to see him watching you on your knees, with my cock in your mouth.”

“Grisha!” Amaya barks coldly from across the bare office. She snaps her fingers impatiently before turning back to her phone.

“Go fetch, boy,” I hiss.

Grisha snarls at me, then obediently turns and starts to walk toward Amaya.

“He’s going to kill you, you know.”

The Russian stops and glances back at me.

“What?”

“Kratos. He’s going to kill you,” I say flatly, my voice even. “I don’t mean figuratively. I mean he’s literally going to kill you.” My eyes turn cold. “He’s going to break your teeth. Then he’ll rip off your tiny balls, and stuff them down your throat through your ruined mouth.”

Grisha’s brow furrows.

“It’ll be up to you if you want to choke on them or swallow them while he breaks every bone in your body before cutting out your heart. And you know how I know all this, Grisha?” I smile ruthlessly at him. “Because I’ll be right there, telling him what to do next.”

Grisha’s face pales, looking green around the edges. A dark power in me surges.

Maybe Kratos’ monster has rubbed off on me. Or maybe there’s been a beast in me all along, and it’s him that’s taught me how to let it off its chain.

Suddenly, there’s a commotion. Amaya starts snapping orders, and even Grisha pulls his shit together and starts barking at his men in Russian. I’m whipping my gaze around, trying to see what’s happening, when Amaya strolls over, her eyes lancing into mine.

“Your boyfriend’s here,” she snaps coldly.

Hope surges in my chest.

“Husband,” I hiss back.

She frowns.

“My husband is here.” My lips curl. “You took so much from him,” I say thoughtfully, shaking my head. “And yet you never got what you really wanted.”

Her eyes narrow. “Careful, little girl.”

“You’re desperate enough for human contact that you had to abuse a child to get it, and you even deluded yourself into thinking it was…what?” I laugh coldly. “A relationship?! Did you think he felt anything for you besides fear and hatred? Did you seriously tell yourself you loved him? The boy you were abusing?”

Rage ignites in her face. Her eyes turn black, her lips curling.

“Is that what all this is about, you pathetic old hag?” I continue. “That I got from him what you never in a million years ever could? His love?”

Amaya blinks, her mouth opening and closing and her body swaying a little, like I’ve just hit her. I just smile.

“He loves me. And he fucking hates you⁠—”

I cry out when her open palm connects sharply with my cheek.

“Ms. Mircari.”

With a quiet snarl, she whirls away from me and to the guard who’s just spoken.

“What?”

The man nods at the elevator, at the blinking lights signifying a rising car.

Amaya nods. “Get ready,” she barks, her lips pulling into a cold, poisonous smile. “They’re here.”

The elevator dings. The doors open.

Then I see him, and my heart lurches.

He’s wearing his mask.

Wordlessly, radiating a dark power, Kratos’ huge frame lumbers out of the elevator. He’s in black jeans and a black hoodie, wearing the mask I know all too well with the neon X’s for eyes and the leering smile.

He turns and grabs something in the elevator. With a yank, he drags a man across the floor on his knees. He’s wearing a dark gray suit, his hands bound behind his back. A black ski mask covers the man’s face, its eyes and mouth sewn shut, blinding him. With a grunt, Kratos tosses the man to the floor in front of him.

The whole place is deathly quiet. You can see and feel the uneasiness of the guards as they glance at each other and then to the giant masked psychopath standing before them.

“My my, Kratos…”

Amaya strolls forward, her brow raised as she hefts the gun in her hand.

“Bit early for Halloween, isn’t it?”

“I brought what you asked for.”

Jesus fuck. He’s using that same voice changer from before: the one that makes him sound like a demonic robot from hell.

Around me, everyone—the guards, Grisha and his men, even Amaya—stiffens a little, looking creeped the fuck out. Then Amaya recovers.

“You sure did,” she purrs, eying Drazen as he kneels on the floor.

Kratos walks over behind the Serbian and roughly kicks him in the middle of the back, shoving him flat onto the ground.

“You have what you wanted.”

He turns and jabs a big finger right at me, making me shiver.

“Now I want her.”

Amaya half turns, nodding to two of her men. They lower their guns and walk over, grabbing Drazen under the arms and hauling him to the side of the room where they drop him back to the floor in a heap.

“You want her?” Amaya smiles, turning to me. My heart leaps into my throat as she raises her gun, waving it at me. “Her?”

Kratos doesn’t react. He merely cocks his head to the side, that unnerving neon smile leering into Amaya’s face.

“Her,” he rasps in that creepy voice. “Now.”

Movement catches my eye. My gaze snaps past Kratos to the four Chernoff men creeping up behind him with guns drawn.

“KRATOS!”

I scream, but not soon enough. Just as he starts to whip around, the men tackle him to the ground. Two of them roughly pin him to the ground on his knees as I cry out. The other two jam their gun barrels into his back.

“Get comfy, Kratos,” Amaya sneers. She walks over to him and slowly slides the hunting knife out of the holster on his belt. A chill ripples down my back as she slowly turns to me, turning the blade in her hand thoughtfully. “I want you to watch what happens next.”

She starts to walk toward me.

“Hold up,” Grisha spits. “Mr. Chernoff and I had a deal.”

“Really? What deal was that?” Amaya mutters.

Grisha grins salaciously. “I get to do what I want with the bitch.”

Amaya rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s…sad and pathetic. It’s also not happening. She’s mine.”

She pushes past him, grinning darkly at me as she twirls the knife again. I shudder when she stops right in front of me and leans down close.

“You think you got something from him I never did?” she sneers quietly. “You think the little fucking games he plays with you are love?”

“I know abusing him sure the fuck wasn’t,” I spit.

She laughs uproariously. “A boy that age? Being given what I gave him?”

Bile rises in my stomach. Pure hatred and a brief, horrible twinge of jealousy rear up inside me. But mostly, what I feel is pain. Pain for the childhood that was torn from him. For the innocence she robbed him of.

Amaya chuckles quietly. “Oh, he loved me, you little cunt. I had him wrapped around my fing⁠—”

Ballet is all about core strength. And I’ve been honing mine for eighteen fucking years. In one motion, I flex, lifting my body and the chair it’s tied to about two inches up in the air before slamming back down.

The metal foot of the chair jams right into the open toe of Amaya’s high heels.

She screams in agony, dropping the knife and collapsing to the ground. She clutches at her bleeding foot, howling in pain.

“That,” she seethes, scrambling to her feet, “is going to fucking cost you!”

She snatches up the knife again. She lifts her arm, ready to plunge the blade into me.

“Not fucking yet!!!”

Her arm jerks to a violent stop as Grisha yanks it back.

“You’re a fucking tourist in our organization, bitch,” he snarls at Amaya. “Mr. Chernoff promised me I could use her as my fucking whore. And I’m not into necrophilia,” he spits.

Amaya cocks her head to the side. “Necrophilia. Hmm. Funny, not my bag either. But you’re still fucked.”

Grisha’s eyes bulge as a horrible gurgling sound burbles from his lips, together with red froth. His throat splits where Amaya just sliced it clean open, and a deluge of blood gushes out.

I choke out a scream as his eyes go dim and his body slumps to the ground.

Some of the guards start to aim their guns at Amaya. She stops them cold.

“I’ll remind you all that I report directly to Mr. Chernoff!” she barks. “You’d do well to remember that!”

The men glance at each other. Guns are lowered.

Kratos laughs maniacally through his mask, the mechanical sound raising the hairs on everyone’s neck.

“Is this your idea of leadership, Amaya?” he growls. “Do you feel in control and in charge?” He laughs again through the creepy vocoder. “How pathetic.”

Rage clouds Amaya’s face as she whirls on him.

“You think I’m not in control, Kratos?”

Without warning, she storms over to him. A scream rips from my mouth as she jams the edge of her knife right against his throat as the four men keep pinning him down.

“I’ll show you what control is,” she hisses, grabbing the top of his mask. “When I let her watch you bleed.”

She yanks off the mask, and my jaw drops as Drazen Krylov smiles cruelly up at her.

“Surprise, shlyushka.”

The lights go out. The guards roar and turn on gun-mounted flashlights. In the shadows, the man bound on the floor suddenly springs to his feet.

And his balaclava suddenly glows.

Two X’s for eyes.

A leering, neon smile.

Two flashes of steel in his hands.

And then comes the carnage.

Gunfire explodes. Men’s screams turn to wet, gasping gurgles. In the dim, flickering light, I see Drazen shake off the men pinning him. He whirls, savagely yanking a rifle out of one of the guards’ hands and immediately using it to blow a hole through the man’s head. I scream as he spins again, his face expressionless and cold as he cuts down half of the guards seemingly without any emotion at all.

Behind him, my neon-masked psychopath snarls and dips and dodges, cutting one man down, then another, and another.

I gasp sharply as I’m grabbed from behind. A blade cuts the ropes off me, and an arm wraps around my throat from behind. I choke, flailing and trying to scream as Amaya drags me away from the fray.

The neon mask turns to us. It tilts to the side and lets out a snarl of pure animalistic fury. Kratos charges across the carnage toward us, the knives in his hands glinting.

Suddenly, the cold metal of a gun barrel pushes against my temple. Instantly, Kratos stops. He reaches up and yanks off the mask, his face twisted with rage and worry as his eyes stab into me.

“Babygirl…” he says quietly.

I’m about to open my mouth when I feel cold air rippling up my legs. I glance behind me, and my heart lurches into my throat.

Amaya has us standing right by one of the glassless floor-to-ceiling window-frames overlooking the black river below. The sounds of traffic blare from outside. The lights of the city glitter like diamonds. Another gust of air ripples the construction plastic wrap covering some of the other window frames.

“Not another step, Kratos,” she whispers.

Her arm trembles a little as she grips me tightly. Her other arm juts out, brandishing the gun at Kratos. But she’s lost her advantage. Behind Kratos, all the Chernoff men lie on the ground, either dead or out cold. Drazen stands in the middle of them, looking nothing like the put-together, suit-wearing businessman I’ve met before, and everything like a blood-soaked monster.

“You lost, Amaya,” Kratos growls quietly. “It’s over. Let her go.”

Amaya shakes her head, her fingers tightening around the gun.

“I—Kratos…”

I hear her swallow behind me as my eyes fix on my husband’s.

“We…you and I…” she chokes. “We⁠—”

“There never was a we, you miserable cunt,” he snarls viciously. “We never dated,” he hisses. “What you did to me was never a relationship.”

“Kratos…” Her voice breaks.

“You stole my fucking childhood, you goddamned psycho,” Kratos growls. “You raped a fucking child and convinced yourself you were in love.” He shakes his head. “That wasn’t love. I didn’t want that. It was torture. I fucking hated you for it.”

The breath leaves her body in a rush.

“And I still fucking do. So let her go. Because every second you keep me from my wife,” he rasps, “whom I love, is another hour I’ll drag out your suffering before I kill you.”

“You… You needed me, Kratos!” she screams.

“Like I needed a hole in my head, you psycho bitch. Let. Her. GO.”

The room is silent and still. Amaya shakes as she keeps hold of me. Slowly, I watch her thumb draw back the hammer on her gun.

My eyes start from my head as her lips curl into a sneer.

“No.”

Everything goes into slow motion. I shriek as the gun goes off. The bullet explodes out and punches through the air just as Kratos lurches toward us. My scream sounds like it’s underwater, a slow, drawn-out wail as the bullet slams into Kratos’ chest. Blood explodes out of his back like a ketchup packet popping.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow. He just mouths the words “I love you” as his eyes lock on mine and he grabs me out of her arms and tosses me to safety.

My head snaps around. My breath leaves my body and my heart rips in two as Kratos slams into Amaya and the two of them topple backward.

Out the window, and into the night.

I scream so loud my ears pop, scrambling to my feet and bolting for the window. The silence is punctuated by a loud splash of water way down below. My fingers cling to the edges of the window frame, my eyes wide as I stare down into the inky blackness, waiting for him to surface.

And waiting.

He’s not coming up.

Something changes in you when your love is ripped from you. Something snaps, and you forget yourself, all your demons, all your fears.

At least, I do. Because in an instant, ignoring whatever Drazen is yelling at me, I’m bolting to the window, leaping out into the night, and plummeting into the dark abyss below.