“Now I want her.”
Amaya half turns, nodding to two of her men. They lower their guns and walk over, grabbing Drazen under the arms and hauling him to the side of the room where they drop him back to the floor in a heap.
“You want her?” Amaya smiles, turning to me. My heart leaps into my throat as she raises her gun, waving it at me. “Her?”
Kratos doesn’t react. He merely cocks his head to the side, that unnerving neon smile leering into Amaya’s face.
“Her,” he rasps in that creepy voice. “Now.”
Movement catches my eye. My gaze snaps past Kratos to the four Chernoff men creeping up behind him with guns drawn.
“KRATOS!”
I scream, but not soon enough. Just as he starts to whip around, the men tackle him to the ground. Two of them roughly pin him to the ground on his knees as I cry out. The other two jam their gun barrels into his back.
“Get comfy, Kratos,” Amaya sneers. She walks over to him and slowly slides the hunting knife out of the holster on his belt. A chill ripples down my back as she slowly turns to me, turning the blade in her hand thoughtfully. “I want you to watch what happens next.”
She starts to walk toward me.
“Hold up,” Grisha spits. “Mr. Chernoff and I had a deal.”
“Really? What deal was that?” Amaya mutters.
Grisha grins salaciously. “I get to do what I want with the bitch.”
Amaya rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s…sad and pathetic. It’s also not happening. She’s mine.”
She pushes past him, grinning darkly at me as she twirls the knife again. I shudder when she stops right in front of me and leans down close.
“You think you got something from him I never did?” she sneers quietly. “You think the little fucking games he plays with you are love?”
“I know abusing him sure the fuck wasn’t,” I spit.
She laughs uproariously. “A boy that age? Being given what I gave him?”
Bile rises in my stomach. Pure hatred and a brief, horrible twinge of jealousy rear up inside me. But mostly, what I feel is pain. Pain for the childhood that was torn from him. For the innocence she robbed him of.
Amaya chuckles quietly. “Oh, he loved me, you little cunt. I had him wrapped around my fing—”
Ballet is all about core strength. And I’ve been honing mine for eighteen fucking years. In one motion, I flex, lifting my body and the chair it’s tied to about two inches up in the air before slamming back down.
The metal foot of the chair jams right into the open toe of Amaya’s high heels.
She screams in agony, dropping the knife and collapsing to the ground. She clutches at her bleeding foot, howling in pain.
“That,” she seethes, scrambling to her feet, “is going to fucking cost you!”
She snatches up the knife again. She lifts her arm, ready to plunge the blade into me.
“Not fucking yet!!!”
Her arm jerks to a violent stop as Grisha yanks it back.
“You’re a fucking tourist in our organization, bitch,” he snarls at Amaya. “Mr. Chernoff promised me I could use her as my fucking whore. And I’m not into necrophilia,” he spits.
Amaya cocks her head to the side. “Necrophilia. Hmm. Funny, not my bag either. But you’re still fucked.”
Grisha’s eyes bulge as a horrible gurgling sound burbles from his lips, together with red froth. His throat splits where Amaya just sliced it clean open, and a deluge of blood gushes out.
I choke out a scream as his eyes go dim and his body slumps to the ground.
Some of the guards start to aim their guns at Amaya. She stops them cold.
“I’ll remind you all that I report directly to Mr. Chernoff!” she barks. “You’d do well to remember that!”
The men glance at each other. Guns are lowered.
Kratos laughs maniacally through his mask, the mechanical sound raising the hairs on everyone’s neck.
“Is this your idea of leadership, Amaya?” he growls. “Do you feel in control and in charge?” He laughs again through the creepy vocoder. “How pathetic.”
Rage clouds Amaya’s face as she whirls on him.
“You think I’m not in control, Kratos?”
Without warning, she storms over to him. A scream rips from my mouth as she jams the edge of her knife right against his throat as the four men keep pinning him down.
“I’ll show you what control is,” she hisses, grabbing the top of his mask. “When I let her watch you bleed.”
