Alena looked down at her hands, refusing to meet Czar’s eyes.
“Answer me.” Czar’s roar nearly shook the table. When she still didn’t respond, he flicked his gaze to Absinthe and then back to Alena. “Are you truly that fucking petty?”
Swearing, clenching his teeth, Absinthe wrapped his hand all the way around her wrist and, just for a moment, let his mind open to hers fully. He saw the young girl giving herself, opening her heart and soul fully, for the first time trusting a male with her bruised and battered body and emotions. Rurik was so loving toward her, tender even, kissing her, showing her that the things the men were doing to her were wrong, that it could be good, could be beautiful with trust, with someone worthy. The betrayal had been visceral, tearing her apart, shattering her soul, making her realize that she was only worth something to those brothers and the one sister who claimed her in Torpedo Ink. No one else.
Absinthe let go of her wrist. “She is not that petty. Rurik didn’t do anything to her that one of us wouldn’t have done for our flesh and blood. It is just something difficult to overcome, a childhood trauma. She was left behind to see her brothers raped and tortured, as she was over the next decade or more while his sister and he went free.”
Nothing he said was a lie. Alena’s business was her own. No one else needed to know any of the details of her dealings with the man called the Destroyer. He had destroyed a young girl’s dream, shattered all hope of a future and condemned her to living in a dungeon, growing up with the ugliness of depraved humans.
“They didn’t go free,” Czar said. “Rurik and Calina were never set free. Sorbacov didn’t allow them to leave. I suspected as much the moment I got wind that such an event had taken place. I crawled through the vents and eventually found them. It took me weeks. Months. They were in an older part of the building.”
Alena looked up quickly. Ice and Storm turned their heads toward Czar. Savage shifted in his chair. The others all came to attention.
“Calina was in bad shape and there was no way to save her. I could see that. I was aware that Rurik knew it too. He whispered to her night and day. He hung in the loom, and they raped him. Sorbacov’s buddies—the ones that liked to smell blood and bathe in it when they fucked—they’d hurt him and then hurt her. He was a mess, so woven up tight in that torture device. I snuck him food and water as often as I dared. One night I got there too late. There were two men there, two of the worst ones that were always training Savage.”
Absinthe glanced at Savage, but he didn’t flinch. He never did. He owned who he was and made no apologies anymore. He couldn’t change it, and if he raged against his nature, he did it where the others couldn’t see it—only Absinthe.
“They used an actual whip on Calina until she was dead. They did so in front of Rurik, which was a big mistake. He went berserk, something they should have known would happen. Anyone would have seen he was a fighter. He was like us. He tore himself off the loom, destroying it, mangling his body. He killed both men and the loom master. That’s why the punishments with the loom stopped for so long. Rurik stopped them. He earned the name the Destroyer.”
“If he did all that,” Alena challenged, still not ready to believe, “why didn’t Sorbacov have him killed?”
“What do you mean, if?” Czar challenged. “Didn’t I just say I saw Calina die and Rurik woven into the loom? That he tore himself free and killed the men who murdered her? Sorbacov didn’t kill Rurik because he’s a first-class bastard and he thought he’d make it far, far worse than death for him. He sent Rurik to Black Dolphin Prison.”
There was a collective gasp. “He was a minor,” Code said. “That’s a prison made of serial killers, cannibals, pedophiles, all the worst possible criminals with life sentences. Minors don’t go there.”
“Sorbacov knew everyone at that time. His candidate by that time was president. Sorbacov ran the secret police. He could do anything he wanted, including throw a fourteen-year-old boy into the worst prison he could think of.”
“How did he get out?” Alena whispered; her voice slightly hoarse.
“He was trained as an assassin and inside the prison he’d made a name for himself. He was too tough to kill. Inmates left him alone. Guards were leery of him. Sorbacov checked on him, and in the end, wanted him back. He decided he could use him if he could find a way to control him.”