Page 6 of Regal Queen

Two

I took in deep,even breaths as I struggled to make my way towards the small ice box in the corner of the room. Opening it, I leaned inward, a small smile gracing my face at the feel of the cool air. It was a small relief, but appreciation for minor things in my new world was essential. After a few moments, my fingers grappled with a plastic bowl, pulling out the last few blocks of ice. Wrapping them in a washrag, I winced as I put them to my cheek.

“You okay?" The gruff voice of Ivan interrupted the pain pounding in my head.

Sighing heavily, I nodded, plopping down in the lone chair on the room. “Yes."

Every day, Dimitri drug me from this room, kicking and screaming down the stairs that led into the cold basement. It was so frigid down there, I could barely stand to walk down the long corridor, passing rows of cages filled with men and women.

Pale and haunched over, they shook with the cold, their dead eyes staring but unseeing.

These were the army of dead that Dimitri employed, wanted for their secrets, or possibly merely for his amusement.

It was a tactic used to scare me, of course. If I didn’t give him what he wanted, then soon I would be in one of those cages. However, instead of it scaring me, I searched for Knight, Coulter's goon who'd ran after us after the shooting began. Somehow he’d made it through them unscathed and his valiant effort to rescue was met with a gun whip to the head.

As soon as we entered Dimitri’s estate, they'd separated us, and I hadn't seen him since. But I never stopped looking for him, feeling guilty because it was because of me that he was here.

If he hadn't come running after me, he'd probably still be bathing in the Vegas heat.

And, every day, the bodies became a blur as his face escaped my notice.

I knew I was lucky.

I had a somewhat decent room, with my own dirty mattress on the floor and a thin blanket. There was an old, wooden table and chair, and even a small fridge where I stored what little food they gave me. The ground was a cold, dirty concrete, the walls made from a grey, concrete brick.

It was no resort, it was a thousand times better than the men and women held in the cages. I even shared it with someone, so I didn’t spend these months in solitary.

Ivan was a scientist Dimitri had kidnapped. HIs drug was the one currently being pushed in the markets, and even though Dimitri could make it without him now, Dimitri kept him prisoner so that he wouldn't share the formula with anyone else.

It had been two months since I'd been here, and I'd discovered the real reason why Dimitri bought me.

He wanted to know Aster's location.

I still didn't know why she was so important to him, but there must be some reason why I'd been taken prisoner and then tortured for information about her.

I wasn't an idiot.

Keeping my mouth shut was the only thing keeping me alive.

That was my true value. It had never been my virginity, as I'd once thought, but the information inside my head.

Something that even my father couldn't give him.

Aster's father had insisted on it, that the journey to visit her kept secret from him, and now I was grateful for it. Because I genuinely believed that my own father would give that inforation up, and he wouldn't even need to be tortured for it.

Just offer him enough money, and the information was yours.

But I wasn't like him.

I didn't care what Dimitri did to me.

Even if he locked me up in the ice cold basement without a blanket.

Even if he canned my feet and cut me so much that I bled out on his floor.

Even if he ripped off all my fingernails and cut off my toes, I wouldn't give up my sister.

The secret would die with me.

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