Dmitri returned, knife in hand. “You’re going to regret that.”
“Fuck you!” I whipped the chain toward his knife hand, but it was several inches too short.
He took the opening and launched himself at me, his thick frame pinning me to the bed. I fought until he pressed the blade against my throat, warm blood trickling across my skin.
“Let’s start our first lesson. You need to learn who owns you.” He shoved his knee between mine.
“All of this belongs to Nate!” I yelled in his face. “You can’t take anything from me, because I’ve given it all to him. You can do whatever fucked up things you like, but I will never be yours.”
He blinked, his dark eyes growing narrower. “I’d like to test that theory.” His other knee joined the first, and his cock head pressed against my inner thigh.
Bile rose in my throat as I tried to send my mind somewhere far away from the monster on top of me. Nate’s eyes, my favorite green flecked with hazel, and his smiling face appeared. How could seeing him hurt so much?
“Spread wider, kukla.” Dmitri’s hot breath at my ear brought me back to the here and now. He pushed closer, his cock nearly at my entrance.
If he’d been telling the truth—if Nate truly was dead—maybe I should simply buck up against Dmitri, let the knife slide inside me and cut off my life. End the torment before it began. It would only take one swift movement.
Before I could move, a painful crack across my nose pulled a scream from me. Then Dmitri’s weight shifted, his knife dropping to the bed as he grabbed at his neck. I shoved him away, then saw my mother behind him, her chain wrapped around his throat as she pulled with all her strength. “Don’t you touch my daughter, you kusok der’ma,” she hissed.
Dmitri tried to stand up, and my pushing was helping his momentum. Instead of letting him go, I latched onto him like a monkey, wrapping my legs around his torso and using my weight to pull his body down, the chain tightening as my mother pressed her knee against his back.
He shot one hand out toward the mattress, reaching for the knife. I grabbed it first, slicing his fingers as I pulled it from his grasp. I clutched it close, then shoved it up. My arm jerked as the blade glanced off his ribs, then sank between them.
Surprise lit his dark eyes as I twisted the knife. He gurgled as hot blood poured out of the hole in his heart, coating my chest as the blood vessels in his eyes popped.
Blood leaked from his throat where the chain dug in. When I was certain he was dead, I let go and shoved him to the side. He lay face down on the bed as I scrambled from beneath him. My mother perched on his back, still pulling the chain with all her might, her thin body shaking from the effort.
“Mom.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s dead.”
She shook her head and kept pulling. “He’s not. It’s a trick.”
I squeezed her frail arm. “It’s over.”
She blinked hard, her wild eyes adjusting, as if she were finally seeing me. “He’s dead?”
“I promise.” I gestured to myself, covered in his blood. “I stabbed him in the heart.” I glanced down at his body. “And you are on the verge of taking his head clean off.”
Her grip loosened on the chain, her hands red and raw from pulling so hard. “I couldn’t let him.” Her eyes watered. “Couldn’t let him hurt you, too.”
I pressed my palm to her face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”
“You couldn’t have.” She grabbed a handful of the duvet and wiped some of the blood off me. “No one knew where I was or what happened to me.”
I tugged the sheet from beneath Dmitri’s body and wrapped it around her shrunken frame. “I’m here now. We’re getting out of here. I promise.”
“But the chains…” She glanced at my ankle, then her own, her eyes reminding me of the ones I saw in the mirror every day. There was so much I wanted to know, to tell her, but there was no time. If we didn’t find a way out soon, we’d be dead before our jailbreak truly began. Killing the warden was only half the battle.
“There has to be a way to get free.” Dropping to all fours, I felt beneath the bed for where my chain terminated into a metal loop.
“His guards won’t come back in. Not for a long while.” She shuddered. “They know not to bother Dmitri while he’s having his fun.”
I felt around the loop and the metal plate that had been set flush into the wood floor. I wouldn’t be able to budge it. Sitting up, I inspected the cuff at my ankle. It was similar to a handcuff, but not as seamless. The homemade mechanism had a couple of screws holding it together.