Rain pattered quietly at the windows, as if the house were breathing quietly in anticipation. In front of the mirror stood Lila, wrapped in a towel, steam rising off of her wet skin from a scorching hot shower that had washed nothing away, hadn't cleansed a thing.
Her reflection no longer belonged to her. The girl that once existed—the quiet, shaking doll that had been sold by her parents and passed between men—was dead. But the woman who stood in front of her today? She wasn't, she wasn't sure what she had become.
All she was aware of was that something within had decayed magnificently and rotted beautifully, and she no longer cared about saving it.
Standing in the doorway behind her, Viktor observed. Usually, when he saw her this way—naked, exposed, skin still flushed where he had held on too hard—he experienced ownership, possession, lust.
Tonight, he experienced and felt uncertainty.
"Come to bed", he whispered, but his voice wasn't commanding.
She smiled faintly at his reflection. Not the gentle smile he had seen in the previous months. This smile had an edge and was sharper, like a blade, like the cutting blade thinly disguised behind painted-on lips.
"Know what I used to dream about?" she asked, tracing the bruises on her neck with her fingers. "As a little girl?"
Viktor stepped into the room, but stopped just short of reaching her. "What?"
"Revenge." She spoke in a gentle, wistful tone. "Not freedom. Not love. Revenge alone. I just wanted to make each of the men who touched me pay for it."
His jaw hardened. "You're not that girl any more."
She slowly turned, the towel falling down her shoulder, revealing the line of his fingerprints on her skin like spectral tattoos. "You're right. I'm not that girl."
She walked across the room barefoot and quietly, coming close enough that he could feel the heat emanating off of her skin. "But you made me worse than before."
Viktor's fingers stretched towards her, but she grabbed his wrist in midair. Her hold was falsely gentle—before her nails bit into his flesh.
"You made me dangerous." Her tone had the smoothness of silk wrapped around venom. "You love it, don't you?"
He swallowed hard, his foreign discomfort harsh against his chest—fear. Not fear on her behalf, but of her.
She wasn't just his anymore. She had become a weapon. And the frightening aspect of it all? She was learning how to aim herself. She was learning how to point herself.
"You want to hear how it felt?" she whispered, her breath gliding across his ear. "With Dmitry touching me. Throwing me into that wall and making me smile while he shattered me?"
Viktor's hands curled into fists. "Lila—"
I did not scream. My smile crept across my face, cold in its tranquility. "I timed it in seconds. I committed each word, each breath, to memory, because someday I would ensure he choked on them all."
He grabbed hold of her shoulders, shaking her once. "He's dead. There's nothing left for you to prove."
Her laughter was gentle and melodious—and thoroughly insane. "You don't understand, do you?" She inched forward enough for their foreheads to be touching. "Slaying him wasn't enough."
She ran her fingers up his chest, tracing the scars and tattoos that mapped his tale of violence. "I'm not satisfied, Viktor."
His breath hitched. "What do you want?"
Her mouth touched his—soft as down. "I want to be their nightmare."
He slammed her up against the wall, hard enough that the picture on the wall beside them canted at an angle. "You're mine," he snarled, but even he could hear the break in his voice.
Her eyes sparkled—dark, shining like wet obsidian. "Then you had better keep up, husband."
______________________________________________________________________________________
Later that night!
Viktor woke up to a space beside him. He contracted, gut clenched—Lila had been agitated, restless for days, but tonight it felt different.
He discovered her in the basement
The space that had previously been used for storing retired crates and abandoned weapons had been repurposed for something different now. The walls were lined with photographs—men that Viktor had known from all corners of the underworld. Old clients. Foes. Traitors. There were some already dead. Others? Alive.
Standing in the middle of the room, Lila stood barefoot on the circle of broken glass, fingers stained with crimson where she had slammed the vodka bottle into the wall.
She composed something, carving letters into the concrete with a shard of glass, her knuckles raw, her eyes unfocused, scratching out letters in the concrete with the jagged edge of glass, her bare knuckles scraped raw, eyes not focusing.
Viktor moved in close, reading the jagged letters:
EVERYONE WHO HAD TAKEN ME, TOUCHED ME WILL BURN!
She faced him, smiling so widely that she looked almost frenzied. "Do you wish to assist me? Do you want to help me out, Viktor?"
He glared at her, his savage queen soaked in blood and insanity, and for the first time in his life, Viktor Volkov—the one who shook kings in their boots—was as helpless as can be.
Since he had made her.
And now?
She didn't require saving.
She didn't need saving.
She needed fuel.
She needs to be pumped up!