My heart missed a beat as his words drifted into my ears, and I whispered, “The bringer of death.”

My blood ran cold when this man, this scarred Russian bringer of death, smiled. Two rows of straight white teeth gleamed under his full lips, the top marred by a red scar, and his smile brought fear to my core. Because I knew he spoke the truth. Nothing on this man screamed, Safe! In fact, it was the opposite: his appearance, his very presence, screamed, Danger!

Yet, even as he reached over to switch on the cold fan, all I could think of was how he had said designed to do only one thing. Designed. Not born, not chose to, designed.

Like Zaal and Anri had been designed to kill, too, by Jakhua.

Zaal who had been turned into a killer, now a man at peace and free.

Perhaps like this man could be. My stomach clenched as I stared at his scarred body and face, those tortured blue eyes. Suddenly all I saw was my twin brothers standing before me. My brothers forced into brutal slavery. My brothers, who had once been pure and good men.

And like Zaal, my captor too could have once been a good man.

It was the last thought I had as I lost consciousness … that maybe this man could be saved like Zaal, too.

I wasn’t sure how long the punishment had lasted. When I first passed out, I woke alone. But then he did return, because he always returned. He would come back, and every time he would douse me in water and both heat and cool me until I lost consciousness again. When I awoke, his questions were endless. He would demand to know my name. He would demand to know who I was to Zaal. He would demand to know who protected my brother—their names—and how he could get to Zaal.

But pride filled my chest that even in my time of weakness, even in my disorientated state, I stayed true to my blood.

I was Elene Melua from Kazreti, Georgia, and I knew nothing of a Zaal Kostava.

I stayed shackled to the slab, fighting to keep my eyes open, when the man appeared once again. This time, his presence didn’t cause a reaction within me. I wouldn’t allow it. I had to be strong to endure his torture.

My eyes drunkenly traced his every step. Suddenly he stopped, and the collar around his neck seemed to tighten. I watched in rapt attention as he threw back his head. The corded muscles in his chest, torso, and arms tensed and protruded with thick veins. But his neck, the collar was doing something to his neck. I watched as his teeth gritted together and his body shook with rage. He released a deafening roar and promptly dropped to the floor.

My racing heart pumped the blood around my body so quickly that I could hear the rush of liquid flowing through my ears. But as tired as my eyes were, they never once strayed from the man on the floor, seemingly now broken. Minutes and minutes passed, yet he didn’t move. His head dropped forward and his torso was slumped over.

The collar. The collar was doing something to him.

Drugs? I thought, my heart breaking. Because if this man had been captured and hurt like my brothers … what was his life? What had he endured?

As I watched him lying still on the floor, I couldn’t help but see my brothers before me. In my exhausted, pained mind, all I could see was my childhood heroes. Like this man, only filled with the need to kill.

That thought brought a new kind of fear to my heart. Because if he was being drugged, if the man last night was drugged, I knew the monster he would be when he awoke.

I frantically pulled on the cuffs, trying to break free, but as I heard a low growl I whipped my eyes to the floor. Staring at me was the captor from last night. His eyes were dilated to black and he stared at me like he wanted to rip me apart.

I froze. Sweat broke out on the man’s body, his scarred skin glistening with damp. Then he pushed off the floor, the veins in his bulging muscles so pronounced that they appeared unnatural.

The man approached, and his darkened eyes roved over my prone body. With a fury-ridden face, he reached for the cuffs at my wrists and snapped them undone. He then moved to my feet, repeating the action, all the time panting in harsh heavy breaths—as if something inside was burning him alive.

As the shackle was ripped from my ankle, I moved my numb limbs. I cried out at the molten pain coursing through my tired muscles. I gritted my teeth through the pain, praying to find some relief as I dropped to the floor, the man releasing me from his hold.

A noise from in front of me caught my attention. When I followed the direction of the sound, it was to see my captor pacing the tiled floor. His hands were balled, and his face was severe in expression. Every inch of his sweating ripped body broadcast the purest and most terrifying level of ferociousness. His entire soul seemed ravaged; by what, I did not know.

His gaze flicked to me, and without pausing his frantic movements he snarled, “Name. I need your fucking name!” His deep voice was urgent and dripping with venom.

I opened my mouth and rasped, “Elene—,” but before I had chance to finish my rehearsed response the man swung my way and he hammered his fist on the metal slab above me.

Glaring down, he roared, “You lying Georgian suka! Tell me your fucking name!” The pupils of his eyes were so large his eyes were two blazing coals.

Lips trembling, I replied, “That is my name.”

His neck tensed, and he hissed, “Lies. Georgians lie. Georgians only ever lie!”

Jerking himself away from me, he took himself to a lever on the wall and pulled it down. The sound of metal against metal echoed from the ceiling. As I lifted my head, a large hook was lowering down toward me held by a thick chain.

Suddenly he was at my side, holding yards and yards of thick rope. I swallowed on seeing the rope, my stomach coiled with apprehension. As he approached, loosening the rope in his hand, he murmured, “Pain to the Georgian whore. Nothing but pain to the one that took her away from me.”

At that point I knew this man was not seeing me. Whatever was being pumped into his veins by his collar caused him to be somewhere else in his head.

To his eyes there was someone else sitting here on this floor.

Someone he wanted to see hurt.

Someone else’s torture was about to be delivered to me.

7

194

I woke in the back room of the chamber.

A blinding pain shot through my head, and my muscles ached. As always, I felt the burning sensation in my neck first, then I tried to crack open my eyes. The dim light hanging from the ceiling felt like a flame scalding my eyes. Lifting my hands, I ran them over my eyelids, where I felt rough and broken skin. Pushing myself to sit up, I squinted and focused on the palms of my hands. Red rope burns were sliced across the skin, my fingers split and covered in dried blood.