of line and needed a reminder about who exactly was the boss.
It didn’t matter.
He’d never asked for more details. His curiosity was not important enough to risk his own safety. He could be the next person shackled to a cement floor getting cold water poured over his head regularly with daily beatings in between.
Wasn’t it bad enough he was here?
That he’d been here for ten fucking years?
It was easier this way.
Hauling the water across the floor, Pavel tipped the bucket over the sleeping man’s head. How he was able to fall asleep while a man was killed just two chambers down—making sure he screamed the entire time, right up until his last few seconds on earth—was anyone’s guess.
Maybe because they became numb.
This was life now.
It took the cold water splashing down over the man’s shaking body—even in his sleep, he trembled, his bruises darker than normal and his one arm twisted at an awkward angle—for him to wake up. The man gasped and his eyes flew wide. Bloodshot and terrified. Like for the moment, he was somewhere else in his dreams. Now, he was awake again.
“Welcome back to hell,” Pavel murmured.
Bending down to be at a similar height to the man, he used the rag he’d tucked into the pocket of his black jeans to wipe at the mess of the man’s face. No one had ever told him not to be kind to these prisoners. No one had ever told him that while he often was made to deliver harsh punishments, and keep them alive until their next ride through hell, that he could not give them some sort of reprieve.
If anything, it helped him.
The man’s trembling didn’t let up, but he was far more relaxed to see Pavel standing in front of him and not someone else. Pavel knew that who woke this man up would determine how the remainder of his day would go.
Either pain, or … well, less pain.
Sometimes.
“Death,” the man croaked.
Pavel’s hand slowed from wiping the rest of the dried vomit from the man’s mouth. “What did you say?”
They were the first words he could ever remember saying to the man. He rarely spoke—if he didn’t indulge conversation, it was highly unlikely that he would learn anything about them. Learning things about them might cause him to get attached. He could not afford to be attached to people who were only destined to die.
Possibly by his own hand.
“When I see you,” the man whispered, “I see death.”
Pavel stilled in place. “Why?”
“Doesn’t death always offer a kind hand before he pulls you to the other side?” Swallowing hard, the man said, his voice tired and raspy, “Your kindness only hides what you’re here to do. You will use that same kind hand that you use to feed me and help me, to kill me someday, won’t you?”
“I—”
“You are the Zhatka—the Reaper.”
Pavel hadn’t realized it, then, but conversations always traveled in the chambers. This man hadn’t been the only one to hear that nickname. He wouldn’t be the last one to use it, either.
It was not a name Pavel wanted.
Not one he needed.
And yet, as the days melted into months, and then into years … he found being Zhatka in the chambers was easier than being Pavel. He even started to forget who Pavel was.
1.
Present day …
“YOU CANNOT stay here forever, Viktoria.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Of that, Viktoria was most sure. Not that she needed to tell her father that—she was sure the man already knew, like he always did.
That was the thing about Vadim Boykov … he was far too intuitive for his own good. He simply needed to look at her, the same way he had done time and time again during her life, to know she was struggling in her mind and heart. On the outside, she appeared cold and calm. Nothing new for her. Inside, she was a ball of blackening human, dying and disappearing.
Vadim only needed to look at her to know.
She wished, often, that wasn’t the case.
“Are you pretending to be deaf now?” her father asked. “I’ve spent twenty-four years helping to raise you, I know you can hear me.”
She sighed, and glanced away from the window overlooking the private property, which was surrounded by a rather large stone fence. Despite being Russian, she wasn’t fond of the Russian countryside. Perhaps because she much preferred the cement and noise of a city. There, it was always cold and distant.
A lot like her.
Here, the countryside was none of those things.
She