Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 127461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
She choked on her silent sobs. “I was two, almost three. I remember him looking at me after she died. She was on the floor in a pool of blood, her eyes glassy, and I knew when he looked at me he meant what he said. My mother hadn’t made a sound. Not one single sound.” She choked again and jammed her fist into her mouth as if that would stop the tears from falling down her face or the silent screams she refused to allow anyone to hear.
He heard. Gorya heard. Not through Rogue. Just as he had been aware of Maya when he’d entered the hallway, just as his entire being seemed to be tuned to her, he could hear the screams of anguish, and it tore at him as nothing else could. He despised where he had come from. If he could have torn that part of him out of his body and mind, he would have.
“He told my mother that he would train me himself to please his guests. He would let his men use me. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, eventually I would. Right there, with that little girl lying dead on the floor, he attacked me. He was deliberately brutal, and he hurt me. His men laughed. I didn’t make a sound. Inside, I screamed, but outside, I didn’t make a sound. That only made him angrier.”
Gorya could well imagine. In the pakhan’s mind, he’d been defeated by a child. He would retaliate in ugly, vindictive ways.
“I was raped constantly by his men and by him after that. Then one day he became so angry with my mother that he whipped me with a thin wire on my back until I was so bloody no one could hold on to me. He killed her the way he killed that little girl. I was taken to a house where there were several women and girls. He would sell them to outsiders as brides or allow his men and guests to use them. That was more hell for me.”
She bit her lip and lifted her gaze to his. Once again, he could see she was deep in the past. “A couple of days after my fifth birthday, several men came in and they gang raped me. Then the door opened and more came in. They were some of the worst, the pakhan’s guards. They really liked to hurt me and the other women. I just felt like I couldn’t take any more. I was going to fight them and force them to kill me.”
Gorya’s heart dropped. His breath left his lungs in a long rush, leaving him frozen, staring at her in shock. He shared images in her mind—all too familiar images. That moment she was sharing with him was the exact moment that had changed his life. Evidently, it had changed hers as well. He’d temporarily lost all sanity. Rogue had as well.
Gorya was in his teens and the men he’d arrived with were used to bullying him, beating him and treating him as if he were one of the sex slaves instead of one of the ruling members of the Amurov family. They paid no attention to him as they began to join in on the fun the guards were already having.
Gorya’s gaze had been instantly riveted to the child with the platinum-blond hair. She was so tiny, her body smeared with blood. The men surrounding her appeared monstrous. Evil. Gorya forgot all about hiding who and what he was. He didn’t think to hide his superior gifts or what the cost to him would be. The men in that room weren’t human beings. They were depraved demonic beasts and had to be destroyed.
He used a curved blade, one that he had concealed in his sleeve, slashing throats and arteries as he moved through the enormous room with blurring speed, killing every man in his way. He saw a pattern in his mind and had already marked each target for maximum efficiency with the least amount of effort or risk to him. Most were dead before anyone knew their friends were falling.
Rogue and Gorya shifted back and forth—one moment the leopard ripping throats out, the next the knife slicing through insides of thighs and driving into the backs of skulls as he pulled the men off the child. He found the room eerily silent as he kicked the dead bodies away from her, adrenaline rushing through his veins.
The other women in the room said nothing. Although one just looked at Gorya and shook her head. It was Rogue who warned him. He spun around to find that the little girl had picked up a knife and was about to cut her own wrists.
Gorya caught her arm and took the weapon from her. “You don’t let them win. You’ve been strong this long. Let me tell you how to live. I know you’re strong enough. I’ll tell you, and Rogue will tell your leopard. He says you have one.”