Chapter 56: Chapter One

Andrei

Then.

“You know what you have to do, son,” Alexander Petrov was many things to many people.

What he wasn’t was a father.

Son, son, son, son.

I ached to hear it more than I would ever admit.

Son.

I was of his blood.

I was damned.

Son.

“They are nothing, simply scared girls who need to be shown to their rooms. Can you do that, Andrei? Can you get them to their rooms?” He always made it sound so simple.

It never was.

Rooms.

I almost laughed. A room meant they had comfort, a room typically conjured up good feelings of rest, windows, bright colors, and teddy bears.

I wasn’t escorting them to their rooms.

I was taking them to their deaths.

We didn’t call the path Red Row for nothing.

Because they would paint the cement red with their blood, with their screams, before ever seeing death, calling it Red Row, we figured, would be a kindness.

“Son.” There it was again. I squeezed the tears in.

After all, I’d learned my lesson on my sixth birthday when I let myself shed them over my dead dog, when my father and stepmother made me shoot it in the face because I hadn’t cleaned up my dinner plate… and then laughed when I burst into tears over the warm blood splatters of my best friend all over my skin.

Fourteen. Fourteen years old, and I was already a monster.

I felt it shift within me.

Yes, I would remember this day for the rest of my life. I just didn’t know why. So, when I nodded my head to my father, when he gave me the approval he knew I would kill to gain.

I felt the monster smile.

I sighed in relief. “Yah, Dad, I got this.”

“Good job, Son.” He put his hand on my shoulder then. It was covered in the ever-present leather glove; no fingerprints, no skin-on-skin contact, not even for his own son.

I didn’t blame him.

Skin made me flinch.

It was too personal.

Too warm.

Too soft, delicate.

I did better with death.

At fourteen, I was better off with corpses.

I moved down Red Row and stopped in front of the cage. I slid the key in the lock and pulled the metal door open.

There were three of them. They were my age, maybe younger.

Dirt caked their faces, scratches marred their feet, and I couldn’t tell if they would get to keep their hair since it was matted so close to their head. They were dirty. Ugly.

Not human.

They had one thing in their favor.

They were virgins. Dirty. Virgins. So, it didn’t matter what they looked like, did it? They had something men would pay for, die for.

Something I would kill to keep.

“This way,” I said in a hollow voice. “Now.”

Nobody moved.

I glared at the three of them. Didn’t they realize? If I didn’t do this right, I would get punished? They were being fucking selfish! My father called me son! Didn’t they know?

I walked into the cage, to the first one, and kicked her in the feet. She let out a scream so piercing that I covered my ears.

When she was done, I pulled out my gun. “You either die here or you move.”

Slowly, the girls held on to each other and stood.

They were soundproof.

They were death.

They also had showers and food.

It was like leading a starved animal to the slaughter. We fattened them up, and then we gave them everything they’d been begging for, for days.

And then—they died.

“In there.” I shoved the girls into the small windowless room, with its one shower and a bunk bed. The only table in the room had an array of fruits, vegetables, and meats.

They ran to the table and started eating. I turned away from the disgusting view of their knobby knees and dirty fingers as they shoved food into their mouths.

They didn’t realize the food was laced with drugs.

Or that in a few short hours they would wish for more.

Beg for it, actually.

The younger-looking one lowered a piece of beef jerky and turned to me.

She had blond hair, and she reminded me of my sister, the one I barely knew, the one with the boy’s name, the one who had died.

She wasn’t with us.

It was better that way.

Sometimes I imagined she was free.

Sometimes I hated her because of it.

“Thank you,” the girl said in a small voice that made me want to commit violence toward her. It made no sense, but her thank you was worse than a scream or a threat. I would welcome her violence.

I had no clue what to do with her thanks, maybe because I knew how misplaced it was. “For the food, and the beds.”

My heart thumped against my chest—it thumped with anger and defiance all wrapped up in one.

“Thank me when you’re finally dead,” I said in a harsh whisper. “Only then will you be free. Only then.” I slowly backed out of the room and locked the door with a resounding click.

I held my head high as I walked back down the hall to my post, and when I sat at that metal desk, alone in the darkness as the cold from the dungeon-like surroundings seeped into my bones, I realized.

And I was playing the game wrong.

All wrong.

I was trapped just like them.

Drinking the poison, just like them.

The only way out wasn’t playing into his hand.

It was making him think I was the one controlling it.

I pulled out the old revolver my dad had given me after my first kill and emptied all but one bullet. Then I did what any sane Russian would do.

I spun the cylinder—the sound slicing through the dark cave like a knife.

I squeezed the trigger.

And shed the last tear I would ever shed, over the fact that I was still breathing.

Now

I jerked awake the minute I felt the tear on my cheek and quickly slapped myself. I was lying in a pool of sweat.

Something about my father calling me son.

Something about my desperation tested my sanity.

I wasn’t a man desperate.

I was, however, a man barely sane.

Because I gave into the madness and fed the darkness.

I wiped down my face, and then I reached for my revolver—it was a bit tarnished with age on the outside, just like I was on the inside.

I emptied all but one bullet.

Spun.

And held the gun to my forehead.

And I prayed to a God who never heard.

For death.

I pulled.

Click.

With a scream, I threw the gun across the room and collapsed onto my knees.

Twenty-two years old.

And sadly.

Still living.