Page 26 of Pageant

“Russian, tattooed, dark hair and eyes, two sandwiches short of a picnic?” I ask, looking around my cage, searching for any sign of the woman who was in here before me. No words of comfort or despair are scratched into the bricks. There’s not so much as a bobby pin to show another woman was ever locked in here. Just that awful stain on the floor outside.

Olivia shudders. “That’s him. But who is…” she takes a breath “…Elyah?”

I am new driver.

I knew that was rubbish when he spoke the words two years ago. The first moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he was a violent criminal, but growing up like I did, coming face to face with violent criminals wasn’t out of the ordinary.

I stare through the bars at the cellar beyond. This, whatever this is. It’s sick.

“I used to know him. He worked for my husband who was in the Russian mafia in the United States. Elyah was in the mafia, too.”

From the looks of it, he still is, and he’s working for a newPakhan. Once a man is in the mafia, he rarely gets out alive, nor does he want to. The Bratva is a brotherhood, one where members are linked by a code rather than blood.

That code is law to these men. It’s life.

“Where’s your husband now?” Imani asks.

“He’s dead.” I feel nothing when I remember Ivan. Not sadness. Not even hate. Just an empty, cold spot in my life, inhabited by a ghost. “Who else is keeping us locked up? Is it just two men in charge?”

“There’s a third,” someone whispers. “I’ve heard the dark-haired one call him Kostya.”

Kostya, a diminutive of Konstantin. Probably another Russian as the Bratva prefer their own.

Before I can open my mouth to ask if this Kostya is in charge, I hear the sound of heavy footsteps coming downstairs. There are gasps from up and down the cages, and everyone falls into silence. Terrified silence.

A tall, muscular man in a black T-shirt crosses the threshold and looks up and down the row. His face is cast in shadows, but I can make out the tattoos inked into his biceps, forearms, and fingers.

Then he steps into the light.

It’s him. The dark-haired man who killed the Lugovskayas.

His voice is a deep, accented purr. “Who is talking?”

A faint echo comes back to me, that same voice murmuring in my ear as he held me close, “Welcome to the…”

Welcome to the what?

The man pulls a telescoping baton from his belt and expands it with a vicious downward flick of his arm. “Someone is going to tell me who is talking, or I will drag you out of your cages by your hair and beat you, one by one, until you all confess. And then I will beat you all again.” He disappears from view as he heads for the first cage.

I sit down on the edge of my bed. “It was me. I was asking for help.”

A clattering sound fills the air as the baton drags along the bars of the cages. The sound gets louder and louder, closer and closer, until the man appears in front of my cage. The baton stops with a clang.

I keep my eyes low, my shoulders slumped. I’m so weak. So confused. Just a stupid little woman.

The man laughs, low and deep. “And did anyone help you?”

I shake my head.

“These women will not help you, Number Eleven. If one does, her death will be slow, and I will do it out of Kostya’s hearing so she can scream and scream. I love to take my time,neordinarnaya.” He says this with pride, like a man boasting about his stamina in bed. “Do not think that you’re safe from me because Elyah has claimed you as his.”

Elyah’s to torment. Elyah’s to kill.

“Hey.” He slams his baton against the bars. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Slowly, I raise my eyes. It makes my heart pound to behold his sleek, handsome face. Every drop of blood has been washed from his jaw, his lips, his hands, but the frenzied killer who murdered the Lugovskayas still lurks behind his eyes.

A crazed smile tilts the corner of his mouth. “Elyah will choke the last breath from your lungs, but I will play with you first. We already had hours and hours alone together. Do you remember? Killing makes me so fucking horny.”

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