Raze & Reap (66 page)

I breathed through my nose; in and out, in and out, trying to dull the pain. Suddenly, two feet stood in front of me. Fueled with venom and hatred, I raised my head, and met the eyes of Jakhua. His face contorted with fury as I met his eyes. Pulling his arm back, he slammed it straight into my stomach. But I didn't react. I didn't even flinch.

Redness spread on Jakhua's face. Gripping me by my hair, he wrenched back my head and spat, “You fucking dare to look me in the eye.
You
.”

My eyes never moved from his, and I hissed, “I remember. I remember, everything.”

When the cunt didn't react, I said, “I remember you walking into our country house. I remember you killing my family. I remember being brought to you. Remember being tied down to a bed, along with my brother. I remember you experimenting on us. Injecting us, beating us, forcing us to fight as children. Forcing us to kill others, to learn to be savage. I remember you tying us to the wall, just as I am now, hitting us until we called you master. Beating us until we forgot our own names.”

Jakhua stepped back and smirked. “And here you are again. Back chained to my wall. About to call me Master once more.”

I pulled on the chains holding my arms as anger pumped scalding blood around my veins. “I'll kill you,” I spat. Jakhua stilled.

“In a matter of minutes you'll be back on the drug. In a matter of days, after being chained to this wall, you'll be bowing at my feet, like the fucking
dzlieri
you are.”

Gritting my teeth, I couldn't stop the furious roar that burst from my lips. But Jakhua just stood there, looking at me like I was nothing, like the dog he believed me to be.

“I'll kill you for murdering my family. I'll kill you for taking my brother from me, and I'll fucking kill you for taking her from me!”

Jakhua laughed. He walked to a table. He picked something off it—a chain—and walked back toward me. “So, you finally remember Anri?”

I froze. I watched him circle the bed in the center of the room. He'd mentioned my brother … the brother I barely knew, only fractured memories visiting my dreams at night.

I stayed silent as Jakhua planted his feet before me. “Funny. When I had him sent to the Arziani gulag, when he was screaming for you to help him, you didn't say a thing. You watched him with blank eyes. Eyes under the control of my drug.” He leaned in closer. I could smell smoke on his breath, the distinctive scent from the cigars he always smoked. “You looked right through him as he begged you to see him. Didn't react as he whispered in your ear, and you didn't even shed a tear as he was dragged from the room screaming your name, and you never saw him again.”

At his words, my head ached, a sharp pain striking through. My eyes closed, and I could see it. I could see Anri fighting a guard to get to me, he was older than the other memories I had. His body was bigger, his hair was longer, and the tattoo, he had a tattoo. My eyes widened, and I gasped for breath. 362. I could see the number 362 in black bold letters across his chest. And his face, his face as he begged me to see him, to fight the drug, and I … I …

My heart squeezed in my chest as I remembered his words, his final words to me. Suddenly, pain ripped across my chest. I looked up to see Jakhua had struck me with the chain.

I would kill him.

Klavs. Klavs. Klavs.
I repeated in my mind, trying to set the order in my subconscious for when the drug took hold. With every blow, I forced myself to commit important things to memory. Talia cleansing me. Talia stroking my hair. The feel of her palm on my face, and her telling me she loved me. That her heart was full for me.

“You are … for me. No other male. Just me. And me … for you. This is my, ‘I love you.' These are my words from my scarred soul. They are not borrowed words, but words from my full heart, and my heart only.”

Talia sobbed as I leaned down to kiss her soft, wet mouth, repeating, “You are … for me, you are … for me…” Then Talia holding my face and whispering back, “I am … for you, Zaal … eternally. I am forever … for you…”

The blows kept coming as I kept circling the cherished memories through my head. Then he stopped. Opening my eyes, my chest raw with chain marks and blood, Jakhua stood before me, sweating and panting. His dark eyes were burning with rage. I knew it was because I didn't react.

I wouldn't. When he pulled me from Talia I died inside. I would never give him the satisfaction of seeing me weakened by his hand. I would resist until I couldn't resist anymore.

Jakhua slammed the chain to the ground. I watched him wipe his sweating brow, then saw the door open.

Every muscle tensed when a man in a white coat walked through. My heart began to race when I saw the needle in his hand. My body shivered. A cold sweat broke out on my body. It was as if my body remembered what was coming.

Jakhua pointed at me and gave the order, “Do it. The sooner that dog is under the better. I need him to kill. I need him doing everything I command without hearing his fucking mouth.”

I thrashed on the chains as the man drew closer. I snarled and roared as he flicked the needle. The chains grew tighter. I shook with the tension on my arms.

Just as the man held the needle to my arm, gunfire exploded down the hallway. Jakhua snapped his fingers at the guard and the guard ran from the room, rifle held in readiness.

My hands fisted. I stared at the door. My heart pumped as the sounds of screaming reached my ears. Jakhua reached for his gun. He scurried to the back of the room. The man in the white coat dropped the needle on the floor, and the glass bottle holding the liquid smashed into the floor.

Crashes and the sound of bullets ricocheting off walls flooded the hallway just beyond the door. I pulled on the chains, and I thundered a roar. I bellowed and bellowed, wanting the fight to come to this room.

I searched for Jakhua. His eyes met mine. My lip curled and I saw the blood drain from his face. My stare was a promise. A promise that if I got free, his life would be mine.

I would kill him. I glanced to the man in the white coat cowering in the corner of the room. I would fucking slaughter them all.

Jakhua pointed his gun in my direction. I saw in his face his resolve to kill me. I pulled harder on the chains, using my feet for purchase. I needed to get free. I needed to kill. I couldn't miss my chance to kill the fucker.

I wanted revenge.

I wanted his blood on my hands like my family's was on his.

As he pulled back the safety on the gun, rapid fire sounded just outside the room. Jakhua dropped his gun as the door burst open. I smiled. I smiled as he pathetically fumbled for his gun.

Men spilled into the room. I tried to recognize them, but all were dressed in black, holding their rifles before their faces, aiming them right at Jakhua.

“Mine!” I thundered, causing some of them to avert their attention my way. “He's mine!” I snarled, just as another man entered the room, a man wearing a hood over his head, bladed knuckledusters dripping with blood on his hands.

Then he turned to face me, and I relaxed.

Luka.

Storming forward, Luka pulled back his hood and met my eyes. He turned to one of his guards. “Get him the fuck down!”

A guard ran toward me. Pulling something from his pocket, he worked on the lock. The chains pulled on my arms, but my gaze locked on one man. One man cornered in the room. One man who needed to die. Slowly. Painfully, by
my
hands.

The sound of a shackle opening hit my ears, and one of my arms dropped free. Blistering fire surged through my arms and the blood filled my muscles. Then the second shackle was unlocked. Both of my arms were now free.

Rolling my neck and shaking out my hands, the chains that had owned me most of my life dropped to the floor. I stared down at the pile of metal on the ground. My chest constricted. I was free.

My eyes shot to Jakhua.

I was
almost
free.

Luka's eyes followed my gaze and he lurched forward with his fist held high. Reaching out, I gripped his wrist pulling him to an abrupt stop. Luka's eyes met mine. I shook my head and growled, “He's mine.”

Luka's jaw clenched as though he was fighting the need to take Jakhua himself. I released his arm and said, “He killed
my
family. Anri was
my
blood. The cunt is mine to kill.”

Luka stared at me in silence, but eventually he nodded and said, “You're right. He's yours. Make the fucker reap what he sowed.”

The guards moved out of my way as I strode forward. Jakhua stood against the wall and watched me. He never took his piss-small dark eyes from me. I stood before him, fire filling my veins.

I breathed. Just worked on breathing as the man that slaughtered my family stood before me. And I was free. No drugs depriving me of my memories, making me forget who I was.

Just me and him.

Me and the man who was about to die.

Walking to the table where Jakhua kept his weapons, the very weapons he'd used on me as a child to bring me under control, I looked at them all lined up in neat rows.

I knew what I was looking for. The weapons he'd made me train with as a child in a cage. Made me kill others in a cage to prove my strength.

My hands twitched as my eyes fell on a flash of black metal. My heart pumped as I reached for a set of black sais. Sharp and deadly black sais.

I moved before Jakhua. His eyes widened as I twirled the sais in my hands. The room was silent as the guards and Luka all watched me.

Walking to Jakhua, I lifted my right sai and placed the thin blade at his stomach. I pushed forward, all the time looking into his eyes … eyes that bulged as the hard steel slowly pierced his gut.

Lifting my other hand, I dropped the sai to the ground. I wrapped my fingers around his throat. I squeezed hard and made sure he looked right into my eyes as he struggled for breath.

His arms tried to hit at my back, but I didn't even feel them. Jakhua's face reddened as I slowly and painfully stole his life.

Then with the sai still plunged inside his stomach, I twisted and slowly dragged it up. The blade sliced through flesh. It tore through organs and scraped against bone in agonized slowness.

And all the time I stared into his eyes. The last face he would ever see would be that of a Kostava, the only surviving heir of the family he hated most.

Blood tried to surge up his throat. I squeezed my hand tighter, Jakhua choking as my hand tightened. Still my sai continued to cut. Then just as the life left his body, I ripped the sai from his torso, released my hand from around his neck, and watched as his body slumped down the wall, blood pouring from his wounds.

Stepping back, I looked at the guards all holding their rifles in readiness. With Jakhua's dying eyes looking at me, I ordered, “Fire!”

The Bratva's guards followed my command, raining bullets straight into Jakhua's flesh, the force of the bullets at such close proximity ripping his body to shreds.

I watched as his eyes glazed with imminent death. When the firing stopped, a weight fell from my chest. He was dead. Jakhua was
dead
.

Silence filled the room. Hearing a noise from behind, I whipped around just in time to see the man in the white coat drop to the ground. Luka stepped back from the man, wiping his knuckledusters on his pants. He'd slit the white coat's throat.

My eyes fell on Luka, then on the man in the white coat, then finally back to Jakhua. I glanced down at my hands; they were shaking. I stared at my bloodied hands, and images of my family raced through my mind. My chest grew tight. I felt like all of my blood had drained from my body.

My knees hit the ground. A pressure built in my stomach, traveling up my throat. Shaking with too much emotion, too many memories blocking my mind, I tipped my head back and screamed.

I screamed and screamed until the pressure left me. One single realization took its place as I sat, weakened, on the ground.

I was free.

I was finally
free
and completely free.

Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I turned. Luka Tolstoi was behind me. He met my eyes and said, “We need to leave.”

“Where do I go?” I asked, my voice rough and raw.

“To Talia,” Luka replied. Any tension, any anger I had remaining, left my body at the simple mention of her name.

I nodded and got to my feet. “Yes,” I said, “take me to Talia.”

*   *   *

“Let's go,” Luka said as we pulled up to a house.

I stared at the large house and took a deep breath. It was the Tolstoi house. I looked to Luka. “I will not be welcome.”

Luka sighed and opened the van's door. I followed him onto the dark street. I stood, looked at the house and my heart clenched. Talia was in that house.
My
Talia was in that house.

And I needed her. I wanted to see her again so much that all my muscles ached at the thought.

Luka laid a hand on my shoulder. I wore a sweatshirt and pants. But my skin was covered in Jakhua's blood. My hair was not smooth.

Talia liked my hair smooth.

“She's inside,” Luka said, and walked up some stairs. He glanced back, and taking a deep breath, I walked behind him.

Luka opened the door and walked toward a room. I could hear voices and, with each step, my heart beat faster and faster.

I was a Kostava in a Tolstoi house.

I was hated.

My father had killed Talia's
dedushka
.

They had cause to hate me. I should not be here.

Luka walked into the room first. I heard relieved voices rushing to greet him. I remained behind the wall.

I had no family.

I did not know how it was to be in a family. I did not know how to act around people.

The room then went quiet. Luka came back into the hallway. “Come,” he said, and walked back into the room.