Chapter 3 THREE

3,

The trio that had dragged me from campus filed out, their laughter bouncing off the walls as they went, leaving me, Judea, and that monster of a man in an unpainted room that reeked of blood and sweat.

You know that saying—every day is for the thief, one day for the owner?

Yeah. This was that day.

First Dad had been killed.

Now Judea was paying for his own shit.

And I was sprawled on the floor, watching his face get carved in with the edge of a fucking butter knife.

It wasn't the act that was traumatizing, it was because that method of inflicting pain was agonizing. The force it took for a knife used to spread butter on toast to be used on human skin to cut through that deeply, till blood trickled was extremely horrifying.

Twenty bullets would have been merciful.

But even amidst his pain, and shrieks reverberating off the walls, his pride hadn’t subsided. “Anya don’t you fucking….” he wheezed, trying to put words together, “Don’t you fucking listen to what he has to say. He’s a psychopath. He’s fucking insane.”

I pressed my eyes shut, utterly terrified by the mutilation. Breathe, Anya. Count. Because counting helps you stay calm, even in the presence of death, chaos—one, two, three—Judea’s screaming.

“—kill him if you get the chance…. Don’t fucking listen to him…He’s a liar. Everything that happened to his family….”

I heard a grunt, and Judea's scream pitched, “YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!”

I didn’t scream, or sob, but I trembled so much from the fear, I was sure my sweat had turned to blood. Mother had thought her sweet son had gone into hiding, but instead he had taken a trip to hell. And now, it made me wonder what had happened to my mother.. had she been kidnapped too?

In my moment of terror, I began to piece everything together.

Sergei had to be the boy from fourteen years ago.

The boy with the cut in the cheek.

The boy whose screams I’d heard down the hallways.

It all made sense now.

I was fucking done for.

No, we were fucking done for.

The Vescovis.

The moment Judea’s screams turned into wheezing pants, I opened my eyes to see what my brother had become, his face—usually arrogant, handsome, and flawless—had become shredded roughly on the left cheek, enough that I saw the chunks of his flesh hanging down, and his blood soaked into the front of his shirt.

Sergei Morozov straightened then, an absolutely giant mass of a man who stood at nothing lower than seven feet tall, cleaning the knife on a bloodied towel without looking at it.

His grey—grey—hooded eyes were fixed entirely on me.

He wasn’t laughing. Fuck that, he wasn’t even blinking.

The scar that ran all the way from beneath his left eye to the edge of his mouth left me breathless.

A cheek for a cheek.

A smirk at the tips of his lips.

Radiohead, Creep, thrumming in the background of Judea’s whimpers and wet sniffles.

He knew that I knew who he was.

Spawn? Son?—of Aleksei Morozov.

"Welcome," he finally said, in a gravelly voice. His English was perfect and unaccented, which somehow made him even scarier than the heavy Russian. He gestured with the knife toward my brother. "That, malyshka, is my surprise. We’re going to discuss your family business and how it has somehow put mine to an end."

Nothing but ragged pants escaped from my chest.

"Aren’t you just curious, Anya Vescovi?" His head tilted, eyes running over me like he was checking inventory. "Curious about the enmity within our families? Who started it? Why you were left in the dark for so long? What started it?”

He didn't wait for an answer.

Sergei turned swiftly, his movement impossibly fast for his size, and wagged the knife toward the whimpering Judea. "Tell her, Judea. Tell your little sister what the great Vescovi family secret is. The one that means everything you ran from… you never could have run from."

Judea flinched violently at the proximity of the knife, his chest heaving, his wide eyes locked on mine. He couldn't speak. He just shook his head, pathetically whimpering.

My mind raced, slamming against every locked memory. Secrets? Dad was a criminal, Judea was his enforcer… what could possibly be a bigger secret than the body count?

The number of innocent lives that had been lost.

Child trafficking?

Organ harvesting?

Drugs selling?

Insurance fraud?

I dismissed them all.

Anya, you’re missing something.

But Sergei looked like he wasn’t the type to be patient.

His eyes on me, he rotated the knife between his bloodied fingers, warning, watching, lazily while Judea whimpered behind him.

My brother’s eyes—puffed, bleeding, were locked on me, and he didn’t look like he was going to spill anything soon enough.

“Judea,” I croaked. “Judea, speak.”

My heart was thudding behind my ribcage, bile rising up my gut. “For God’s sake, tell me. Tell me what you did.”

Just as I’d expected, my brother shook his head, wet strands of hair sticking to his forehead in damp threads. “I can’t…”

“At the expense of your life?”

“I fucking can’t!”

I scrambled forward, dragging my body closer to him, ignoring the giant shadow that was Sergei. “You can't?!”

His head lolled, shoulders quaking as he sobbed, “I can’t, Anya!”

"Fucking coward!" I screamed in disbelief.

Growing up, I and Judea barely got along; we were two magnets pushing apart. He was the big bad wolf of our childhood, the one who could take on the world, the boy I genuinely thought could chew bullets and spit out fire. He was terrifying.

But now, tied to this chair by the Morozov demon, he was reduced to a whimpering, useless man.

“Look at you! You’re going to die like Dad, you fucking bitch!”

A whimpering—I caught the yellowish liquid that spread beneath his groin and almost lost my mind—peeing, stinking, fucking thirty years of useless man. I didn’t care for him. I didn’t care for him just as much as I didn’t care for Dad, but tears stung the corner of my eyes, and my throat filled with lumps. It was hard to see him strapped to that chair. It was hard to see those ropes around him cutting deep into his skin, leaving red marks and purple bruises, it was hard to.

Sergei shifted from one foot to another and that one movement heightened the panic swelling in my chest.

“You’re going to fucking die like dad, you fucking bastard!” I screamed even louder. My voice, over the thrumming music in the background, reverberating off the walls. “You’ll die and take me with you…”

I nearly collapsed off my knees, drenched in layers of sweat, holding onto Judea’s knees, shaking him gently. “I don’t want to die, Judea. Pleaseeeee—I don’t want to die!”

With the veins in Judea’s neck and head popping, he choked out. “I’m sorry!”

I FUCKING LOST IT.

“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Spittle flew from my mouth. “Spill! Was it the children you killed? The ones Dad sold to the Emir? The little girls you had on your list? Was it the organ harvesting? The hospital you bled dry in the slums, Judea? The people who vanished with no trace?” I was screaming every awful thing I knew, every atrocity I had suspected, hoping one would hit the truth, hoping to break him.

Judea’s eyes, wide and terrified, kept shaking no, no, no. His voice was a high-pitched, strangled “I can’t! I CAN’T!”

Before I could even get the next words out, Sergei leaned in, the heat radiating off his massive frame as he reached for me.