head as her distress level rose with her brother’s telling of the past.
“Sorbacov held a huge dinner for his political friends, a fund-raiser, but he brought along several men and women as well as Storm, Rurik, Calina, Alena and me to the event. The men and women he brought were clearly to be used by his political friends who wanted to play. We were barely into our teens, the girls not quite there, but Sorbacov was selling us to the highest bidder. Not everyone knew it, of course. He was in his element, acting the wonderful statesman while brokering the sale of children for his perverted friends.”
Alena looked up at Czar. “Do you really need to hear this?”
Czar just nodded. “It isn’t like we all didn’t suffer rape and torture, Alena. It was a daily occurrence. Continue, Ice.”
“Once everyone else was gone and the winners of the bidding had thoroughly used us all, Sorbacov proposed a new game to be held, a challenge between Rurik and my brother and me. We were a year or so younger and he was, well, colder and a little deadlier. So Sorbacov thought it would be fair to pit two against one. While we met the challenges, the two girls would be passed around to the men and women to be used any way they liked. They could use them together, beat them, hurt them, whatever they wanted. And we’d know. The money had to equal the raised stakes. We would be shown what was happening to our sisters between each of the challenges to spur us on. The winner would be allowed to leave the schools permanently. Go live with other relatives.”
“I see,” Czar said. “And the challenges?”
Ice shrugged. “Those betting were allowed to help choose. Clearly, they wanted time with the girls, so they made each of the challenges difficult and as long as possible, involving running and climbing, physical fighting, that sort of thing. Rurik was extremely fast, but there were two of us and we had Alena to protect as he had Calina. It was … ugly. In the end, he won.”
Czar turned his cool, piercing gaze on Alena. Absinthe knew what it was like to have those eyes on him. Czar had a way of seeing too much. “You are holding a grudge against a man because he won a fight as a teen against your two brothers? He was fighting for his sister as your brothers were fighting for you. Is this your reason for disliking this man?”
Alena looked down at her hands, refusing to meet Czar’s eyes.
“Answer me.” Czar’s roar nearly shook the table. When she still didn’t respond, he flicked his gaze to Absinthe and then back to Alena. “Are you truly that fucking petty?”
Swearing, clenching his teeth, Absinthe wrapped his hand all the way around her wrist and, just for a moment, let his mind open to hers fully. He saw the young girl giving herself, opening her heart and soul fully, for the first time trusting a male with her bruised and battered body and emotions. Rurik was so loving toward her, tender even, kissing her, showing her that the things the men were doing to her were wrong, that it could be good, could be beautiful with trust, with someone worthy. The betrayal had been visceral, tearing her apart, shattering her soul, making her realize that she was only worth something to those brothers and the one sister who claimed her in Torpedo Ink. No one else.
Absinthe let go of her wrist. “She is not that petty. Rurik didn’t do anything to her that one of us wouldn’t have done for our flesh and blood. It is just something difficult to overcome, a childhood trauma. She was left behind to see her brothers raped and tortured, as she was over the next decade or more while his sister and he went free.”
Nothing he said was a lie. Alena’s business was her own. No one else needed to know any of the details of her dealings with the man called the Destroyer. He had destroyed a young girl’s dream, shattered all hope of a future and condemned her to living in a dungeon, growing up with the ugliness of depraved humans.
“They didn’t go free,” Czar said. “Rurik and Calina were never set free. Sorbacov didn’t allow them to leave. I suspected as much the moment I got wind that such an event had taken place. I crawled through the vents and eventually found them.