be rocked harder to one side than the other.
That’s when she knew.
A trunk.
She had been put in a trunk.
The panic was back.
The fear silenced her again.
Thick.
Visceral.
Raw.
Her body was tired from the last round, not to mention her attempt to escape, as fruitless as that had been. It didn’t seem to matter to her mind when it went through yet another war. She was ready to fight again—ready to try anything again.
Her fight renewed, and so did the tears.
Her shouts increased, and so did the pain.
Was it pointless?
Probably.
She still had to try.
Especially when every single time she closed her eyes in the darkness of that trunk, she continued to see bloody words written on the mirror in her bedroom. Words of a man who had clearly not had enough of her yet.
Who else would have done this?
No one.
Just the monster.
Only Boris.
She wasn’t going down without a fight.
Not for that piece of shit.
Never.
• • •
They’d shoved a goddamn hood over her head, and that more than anything else probably pissed Viktoria off the most. Wasn’t it bad enough that they’d tied and gagged her, but they had to cover her fucking head, too?
She cursed and fought against the people carrying her, not that it made much of a difference. Other than the occasional threat a man threw at her, and the mutter of someone else, they didn’t say anything to her.
Not even stop.
Not a quit it.
Nothing.
It was scary in the way that it felt like they had been prepping for this. It was as though they already knew what their job was with her, and how they were supposed to act once they had her in their possession.
Viktoria kept her struggle up as doors were opened, and more voices filtered to her through the thick, black hood they’d shoved over her head. She didn’t even get to see their faces when they did it—they opened the trunk, still wearing those ski-style masks, and in seconds, had her hooded and pulled out of the trunk.
Bastards.
Then, all at once, without any warning, Viktoria was dropped. She hit the ground hard, landing on her wrists and back. Her head cracked against the floor, too, but that was the least of her fucking worries. She could feel hands at her back—touching her.
Someone was touching her!
She screamed and tried to jerk away from the stranger’s hands, but it didn’t do her any good. Her words and threats fell into the gag, and more tears spilled. Soon enough, those hands were gone, and it was over.
She could move, then.
Her ankles had been cut from the ties at her wrists. Someone grunted under their breath, before a hand landed on the top of her head. Fingers curled into the hood and her hair underneath it before she was dragged upward and forced to sit on her knees with her hands still tied firmly at her back.
Oh, God.
“Sit there and shut up,” came a familiar voice.
Vomit found the back of her tongue.
She never wanted to hear that voice again.
Ever.
Boris.
“I see you haven’t learned very much in our time apart,” her captor taunted.
It was made worse by the fact she couldn’t actually see him or where he was. If he got behind her, what might he do? What could he do in front of her? That was the thing … Viktoria didn’t need to wonder at all. She knew exactly how this man could hurt her. She knew all the ways he could rape her, tied or not. She’d lived it once.
“That’s fine,” he told her in a murmur.
She wasn’t expecting his touch again, but when his knuckles reached out to stroke her cheek behind the hood, she did all she could do not to jerk away. That wouldn’t work well for her, it would only piss him off more.
That meant bad things.
Bad things would happen quicker.
She didn’t realize until right then how fast her mind had dropped the panicked state from earlier and gone into a whole other mode. She remembered this—she knew exactly what this was, and what her mind was trying to do.
Survive.
It was trying to survive.
Again.
“You’ll learn, Viktoria,” Boris said, his voice closer now as the sound of shoes squeaked against the floor. Had he kneeled down to be at eye level with her? God. “And I did miss you. I didn’t lie about that. I have waited so long, suka.”
She sucked in a breath that tasted like her own blood and tears.
“You deserve this,” he added. “After everything, he owes me. Vadim owes me, and so,