Page 10 of Code of Captivity

His eyelids flickered, and his facial muscles began to twitch, with crimson streaks of blood running down his face—the same slick blood on the doctor's white gloves. The doctor worked withprecision, removing the top of his skull as if it were the lid of a teapot to expose the fragile pink brain tissue beneath.

"See, little rabbit? This is what happens to those who betray me. This is the price of disobedience. Remember that,” I said, wanting her to break, but remember who was responsible.

Vadik set the drill aside, picking up a smaller instrument. Ania can’t look away, frozen, trapped in the nightmare that I created for her. I glanced at Viktor, but his eyes were gleaming with a twisted fascination as he watched the doctor.

What a sick fuck!But we both loved to watch when the light went out of their eyes.

“Now, let’s see what secrets you’ve been hiding,” Vadik said with a dark chuckle as he picked up a scalpel.

“You will be having a small procedure with the doctor. Anexplosiveone should you try and hop away from me,” I said to her as she whimpered. “I trust you understand the new terms of your employment?”

The traitor began to speak, but the words merged into one another as the doctor sliced away. The words became incoherent babbles until his mouth opened, and drool began to drip down his lips. There was a vacant look in his eyes as Vadik worked on his brain. He couldn't have timed it any better as the rabbit started to sob, beautiful gut-wrenching sobs that sent shivers of delight through me. She collapsed on the floor with her forehead touching the grimy floor.

Ania’s body trembled as Viktor yanked her upright by her hair, her sobs reduced to hollow, broken gasps. Her face was pale, streaked with tears and smudges of grime from the floor. But it was her eyes that struck me the most—those once-bright, defiant eyes now dull and lifeless, like the glassy stare of a doll. They were empty, void of the fire that had once burned within her. Itwas as if the horror of what she was witnessing had extinguished something deep inside her, leaving behind only a shell.

“Do you understand?” I growled at her, my voice dangerously low, insistent on her answer.

Ania’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Her gaze flickered to the traitor on the chair. Her eyes returned to me, but they didn’t truly see me. They were distant, haunted as if she were staring through me into some unimaginable abyss.

“Yes...” she said, her voice a broken whisper.

The word was barely audible, but it was enough. My lips curled into a satisfied smile. Though her empty gaze concerned me about her future performance, it didn't take away from my ultimate victory. No one said no to me.

There wasn’t fear in her eyes. It wasn’t defiance. It was something far worse—surrender. The kind of surrender that came from a soul already halfway to the grave.

“Good. Remember this moment, little rabbit. And remember—you belong to me now,” I said, stepping closer to her.

Ania didn’t respond. Her eyes remained fixed on some distant point, unblinking, unseeing. The spark of life that had once made her unique was gone, replaced by a hollow emptiness that even my cruelty couldn’t penetrate.

She was broken.

And I had been the one to break her.

???

“This is diabolical, even for you,Batushka,” Viktor said after he returned from dropping the rabbit off to ourgospozha. “I left Pyotr with her as you instructed.”

Madam.

I took no offence to his words because he meant them with reverence by calling mefather.

“You know I am a sore loser. I needed her intact for a number of reasons,” I said, thinking about her naked body that the madam would be working on cleansing from the inside out. “She named herself a rabbit, and now she will become one.”

“She bought the idea of an explosive being inside her,” he said as I nodded for him to help himself to a drink. “When she woke up, she kept touching the back of her head.”

I smirked, remembering when she passed out, thinking we were planting an explosive device inside the base of her skull.

“A simple tracker that she won't be able to remove,” I said.

Viktor shook his head and drained his vodka back in one go like a savage.

Chapter 8

Ania

Adrik dealt in the flesh trade. I’d seen all the data for his operations, but to be in the place where they trained the woman sickened me to my core. Some were willing participants, but most looked scared. And who wouldn't be with such a cruel madam in charge? She was as vicious as every swipe of her cane. The truth was that when I lay on my lumpy mattress at night, listening to the other women cry—the pain from her cane made me feel alive.

The man’s muffled cries at the end still echoed in my mind. His terrified expression as the sawing began was a sight I would take to my grave. The image of the doctor’s hands, slick with blood, the sound of the saw grinding against bone—it was all etched into me, a living nightmare I could never escape. I touched the scar along the base of my skull. Pyotr shadowed me wherever I went, but I wondered if he could detonate the explosive inside me.

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