Page 28 of Shadows of the Past
One second too long. A fatal mistake.
In that instant, my mind floods with memories: the feeling of his hands grabbing me, his breathless moans echoing in my ears. I couldn’t move back then, because he used to tie my wrists down. He never gagged me; my screams only fueled his excitement. That’s how I learned not to scream anymore. I can still feel his breath against my ear, that fucking stench of tobacco and decay overwhelming me.
Get out of my head.
“Maksim.”
One word, just one, and it’s enough to pull me out of the vortex I’ve fallen into.
Ilya is staring at me with concern, his eyes darting to my hand wrapped tightly around the girl’s neck as her face begins to turn purple. I immediately take my hand off her neck and push her aside, seeing tears well up in her eyes.
Damn it.
Ilya gestures toward one of the private rooms without saying anything further, and I follow him without looking back at the girl gasping for air behind me.
“Too ashamed to let us see you with a woman, Maksim?” Aleksandr’s voice cuts through the air like a knife, stopping me dead in my tracks.
I can’t kill him, not yet, not without creating problems with Ivan, who still relies on him for his legal dealings. But God knows how badly I want to end him right here and now.
“If I were you, Aleksandr, I’d pay more attention to the girl clinging to you for the past five minutes. It’s painfully dull to watch from here,” Ilya says, his tone light but laced with sarcasm.
The other men burst into laughter, but my eyes instinctively dart to Ivan. His gaze is locked on me, sharp and calculating.
I’ve never given him a reason to suspect I’m not sexually active. After Vera’s death, he stopped touching me altogether. I don’t know if the look on my face that day convinced him I was truly unhinged or if he simply grew bored of me in that way. Either way, I’ve had to find ways to keep up appearances ever since, to convince him that I don’t have a problem with any of this.
No one says a word as I follow Ilya into one of the private rooms, the two women trailing behind us. Orgies are nothing new in these circles, though they won’t involve me anytime soon, not if I can help it.
“Care to explain why you reacted like that?” Ilya murmurs as the women dive onto the mattress and start undressing.
I don’t answer. My jaw tightens, and he sees it immediately. That’s enough for him, so he doesn’t push further. He’s not the youngest pakhan for no reason. Unlike most people who either fail to see or choose to ignore what’s right in front of them, he understands.
“You won’t hear a word about this from me,” he says quietly before turning back to the women.
He leans down and kisses the redhead on her neck before addressing both of them in a commanding tone.
“What happens in this room, or doesn’t happen, stays in this room. Got it? Unless you want to find out what it’s like to end up on my shit list.”
The blonde who had been on top of me earlier has tears welling in her eyes, and it should bother me. It should. But how could it when I’ve seen girls half her age beaten and raped? When I’ve seen children sliced apart like slabs of meat and left to bleed out because some depraved monsters draw power from their suffering?
Forty minutes pass, filled with moans from the women meant only to create an illusion, and then Ilya and I leave the room together.
I don’t like that my secret now rests in the hands of the pakhan, but I know his stake in all this. Until he gets what he wants, he won’t say a word about what happened tonight. Because Ilya’s a partner, not a friend.
Outside, Ivan is sprawled across a couch with a woman between his legs, looking entirely unbothered as usual.
“Fiodor?” I ask, already knowing the answer from the look in his eyes earlier.
“He doesn’t have the gold,” Ivan replies coldly. “Make him pay, and not just him.”
I nod silently and head for my motorcycle, which waits for me outside. Without wasting time, I ride toward Fiodor Popov’s mansion.
Luckily, my apartment is on the way, so I stop briefly to grab some tools for what needs to be done. Ivan will want tomorrow’s news headlines to make a statement, and I know exactly what that entails for Fiodor’s family as well.
The guards at his main gate are laughable; two shots to the head each and they’re down within two minutes. That’sthe problem with people who think their wealth makes them untouchable: they stop investing in real security.
The mansion itself is an English-style monstrosity covered in ivy climbing up to the second floor. Flanking the entrance are two lion-headed statues, gaudy and tasteless, like everything else about these people who think money can buy class.
Using an app loaded with a virus capable of cracking nearly any domestic security system on the market, I input the code and step into the kitchen.
