Page 98 of Kingmakers, Year Four

“I think you come up with plenty of ideas on your own,” Marko growls, giving one last glance around my empty cell.

I’ve never tried to escape—that he knows of. I’m sure that only makes him more paranoid. He knows me too well to believe that I’m patiently biding my time.

“Chair,” Marko barks at his lieutenant.

Kuzmo lifts the chair from the wall and sets it in the center of the room. I take my place upon it, crossing my arms behind my back so Kuzmo can handcuff them behind me.

These security measures are, perhaps, overblown—after all, Marko has four soldiers with him and two more out in the hall. I’m alone and unarmed.

On the other hand, he knows me well.

I’m sure he tells himself the handcuffs are to humiliate me further. The stare that passes between us tells another story.

“Are you looking forward to going home, my friend?” Marko says, his eyes fixed on mine, his pupils dark and dilated in the dim space. ”Excited to see your wife again? How lucky that she stilllivesfor you to see her.”

I don’t like when he mentions Sloane. It takes effort for me to hide my anger.

It’s nothing but effort, controlling the almost irresistible impulse to snap the chain on these cuffs and tear his throat out with my fingers.

If I had no wife and no children, I would do it. I’d rather die riddled with bullets from his soldiers’ guns than suffer another minute of his taunts or another month in this sunless torture chamber.

Imprisonmentistorture, make no mistake about it. Marko may not burn my flesh or break my bones, but he is making deep cuts to my soul, every day that passes. He is trying to twist and break me on the rack of boredom, rage, and loneliness.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I look forward to going home.”

Marko is too clever to ever let an enemy as dangerous as me free in the world to seek my revenge. He will never let me go.

My family pays the ransom to buy time, not because they believe him.

His amusement draws out the game.

We play into his enjoyment to drag it on. But eventually he will reach the end of his diversion. When that happens, either he will die, or me.

He’s too angry that I have Sloane while Daryah is dead.

In his fury, he has decided that I took his wife from him, not Taras Holodryga.

Taras is a ghost. He’s no fitting target for Marko’s anger—he can’t be punished anymore.

I’m the one alive. The only person left to rage upon.

That’s why he comes here every month, to drive the knife in deeper. To satiate himself on the sight of me: filthy, pale, and trapped in here like an animal in a cage.

He takes a sick satisfaction in my phone call to my family.

He listens in every time, wanting to hear the desperation in their voices, and the bitterness in mine.

He’s never caught what I actually say to them.

“Bring the phone,” he says to Kuzmo.

Kuzmo is the only person Marko trusts, at least to some degree. Kuzmo is tall and well-built—Marko wouldn’t respect anyone who wasn’t. He has a stern, unsmiling face, a narrow, lipless mouth, and the same close-shaved haircut imposed upon him during his days in Stark prison. The dark stubble on his cheeks and scalp has a bluish tinge, repeated in the steel blue of his eyes. His military clothing has an old-fashioned look, like the BlackBrunswickers. On the wool sleeve of his jacket, I see a single perfect crystalline flake, not yet melted.

Kuzmo rarely speaks, except to bark orders at his subordinates on Marko’s behalf. He certainly doesn’t engage in any of Borys or Ihor’s idle chatter.

He brings the cellphone to me, already dialing my brother Dominik’s number.

Dom answers at once, expecting the call.

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