So Lila invited Dmitry to a motel. and pretend that she knew nothing, she still wants to seek Dmitry di**.
She went on a drive with Viktor.
The journey to the motel was in silence.
Viktor remained silent. Lila remained still. Her only movement was her nails gently clicking on the windowpane in slow, rhythmic taps — a countdown she alone heard.
She was not scared anymore. Part of her had passed away the instant she unraveled her doll from the dusty box. What entered Dmitry's snare tonight was not the quivering girl who used to snuggle in his bed.
It was the specter she had left behind -- now encased in her skin like a shield.
It was the ghost she left behind — now wearing her skin like armor.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
The motel remained unchanged. Same neon sign that flickered. Same cracked concrete. Same smell of bleach barely covering what was underneath.
There was Dmitry, waiting for Lila to come. Costumed as a bridegroom in a suit too neat for his rotting soul. Behind him, the room was arranged like a grotesque wedding bower — roses, candles, and a dirty mattress sullied by memories that both of them were unable to erase.
"My little doll." His grin crept across his face, the way mold grows on a wall. "You returned home."
Lila entered. Viktor remained in the entrance, his hand resting on the gun nestled in his waistband — though Lila did not wish for this to end in a bullet. Not yet.
"Take off your dress," Dmitry instructed quietly and softly.
Lila complied and obeyed his command — but her hands weren't shaking. Not today. Not this time.
She stood there in front of him in nothing but her skin, as she had done countless times previously, yet there was something in her eyes that was different. Not shame. Not fear.Hunger.
"You missed me that much?" Her voice was silk wrapped around razors.
He licked his lips and moved closer — that's when she struck.
A flash of silver - that knife she had concealed and hidden in her palm - sliced/slashed across his face in a blur too fast to feel. Just a trail of heat running down his cheek.
He stepped back, laughing as though it was a joke. "Think you can hurt me, little doll?"
Lila smiled. "I don't wish to hurt you."
Moving closer, she forced him onto the bed, crawling over him as she had done so many previous times. Her knife was to his throat, though it did not cut, rather sitting there – a cold caress upon his pulse.
"I wish to change you."
"I want to change you."
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Viktor was standing in the doorway, observing. Not halting her. It wasn't his revenge. It was hers.
Lila's blade sliced down Dmitry's chest, etching shallow cuts onto his skin — not deep enough to be fatal, yet ample enough to scar him.
"You made me your doll," she whispered. "So now, I'm going to make you my toy."
She flipped him onto his back, pulling his wrists toward his spine, cuffing them together in the same child-size handcuffs he'd made for the doll. Metal bit into his skin, his bones grinding under the pressure.
Dmitry struggled, but Lila moved close, lips in his ear. "Fight harder," she whispered. "I enjoy it when they scream."
He struggled and bucked underneath her, but she was stronger now, not in muscle, but in madness. It was the strength that one gains when you've come back from something that was meant to kill you.
She moved the blade lower, slicing through the seam of his pants, baring the flesh that he had previously owned. Now, she owned him.
"You wanted a wedding night, didn't you?" Her tone was that gentle, she almost sounded tender. "Let's consummate."
Dmitry gasped for air — yet for the first time, it was not for excitement. It was fear.
She did not chop off his cock. Mercy would have included that.
In lieu, she used the blade to incise her name, letter by quivering letter, onto his thigh, making his skin a page and her name bleed in bold lettering across it.
"Who belongs to you today?"
He remained silent.
She drove the knife in harder.
"Say it."
"Y-you." his voice cracked. "You do."
Lila bent over, kissed the wound. "Good boy."
____________________________________________________________________________________
Viktor entered finally and pulled Lila away from Dmitry's trembling body.
"Have you finished?" he whispered.
Lila cleaned the knife across Dmitry's chest. "Not yet,"
She turned, producing a small box of velvet taken from her coat pocket — one she had pilfered from the desk of Viktor days prior. It contained a ring.
She placed it onto Dmitry's quivering finger.
Until death do us part.
Then, finally, she allowed Viktor to raise the gun.
The room was silenced by the single shot. One bullet through the skull.
Lila kissed Dmitry's cold lips. "Goodbye, Daddy."
Outside in the neon lights, he pulled her close, his arms going through the blood and tears and perspiration.
"You did it,"he whispered.
Lila shook her head. "No."
She raised her chin, her eyes glinting, her mouth twisting into a smile that made a shiver run down Viktor's spine.
This was only the beginning.