Page 14 of Dangerous Beginnings

‘Come here,’ his voice is a dark whisper. His green eyes unravel my soul, while he spreads his legs. His finger points at the space between them. I don’t move an inch. I am frozen to the ground underneath me, hoping it will swallow me.

He snaps his fingers again, taking my attention back to the man in front of me. I don’t know anything about him. The conversation with Nick repeats in my head. So many puzzle pieces, but how they fit together I don’t know. I only know the clear finished picture is bad, very bad.

As all my pride leaves my body I get down and crawl over tohim. With every inch I crawl I feel my soul leaving my body.I reach the place where he is sitting, his boots come into my vision. I have never been this close to him, but I now know why.

I keep my gaze on the floor. I don’t even hear anything anymore; I just hear blood rushing through my ears. Leaving me with a static sound. I can see in the corner of my eyes that he is reaching for something on the desk. He is going to kill me. He is grabbing the gun. I am going to fucking die. I don’t want to die.

I am spiraling into something I had when I was younger. I am on the verge of having a panic attack. Not right now, please. When I was younger, I used to have one almost every day. My breathing becomes fast and I suddenly feel like I am a child again. Alone in my room, hiding in my closet as my stepfather would yell my name. Chasing me around the house, ready to beat me whenever I had done something wrong. Tears start to fall uncontrollably from my eyes to the floor. I am going to die, he is going to kill me.

Diable

This is not how I expected this to go.

Something is off. No fight, no temper, no nothing. Just a cold silence.

As I reach over to the desk next to me to grab a fucking cigaretteshe breaks loose, perfect. Her tiny body starts to shake, and sobs escape her mouth. The room fills itself with crying sounds. But not just sobbing sounds, she is screaming and crying, pure agony.

‘Isabella,’ I taunt her name, trying to pull some control back into the situation. But it only makes her sobs louder, her cries more desperate. “Blyat.”Fuck.

I reach over to grab her chin, forcefully making her look at me. Her skin is wet, her tears soaking my hand within seconds, and her face is blotchy, raw from the crying. Her lips tremble, and her breath is coming in shallow, erratic gasps.

Even through my gloves, I can feel how cold her skin is. These gloves are not to keep me warm in any sort of way, they are to not leave any traces of DNA. Like I said before, time ticks slowly in hell, but now it is passing by like a snake.

Green meets brown eyes, but not in the way they met before. Before me kneels a young broken girl. Even if I wanted to have some fun in breaking her, there is nothing left to even begin with. My frustration is growing, I am not used to these emotions. Her black cat eyes stare straight into the leftovers of my soul.

“Please,” she cries, “please don’t kill me.”

It comes out as a mere whisper, but I heard her. The words linger in the air, haunting. It’s a hollow surrender, something I deal with often. My fingers dig into her skin, my frustration growing, yet something keeps my hand from going further.

Chapter 8

While I Breathe, I Hope

Isabella

My assumptions about his tattoos were right, he is indeed connected to Russia.

One of his men just walked inside and they exchanged words, his dismissive look towards me said enough. I don’t speak any Russian, and God I wish I had taken more than two weeks of my Russian classes right now. He is moving behind me, circling me like a predator. Suddenly he appears in front of me, kneeling to reach my eye level.

“Da, are you going to be good or not?” He takes out a needle from his pocket with a clear unknown syringe. I’m quick to move away. I crawl to the door, fear taking over me. I can’t think clearly. He is going to drug me.

I start screaming like a mad woman, and with that, I dig my own grave. The only sound escaping my lips are screams of terror as he moves towards me. His eyes fill with nothing but a dark void as he moves closer to me.

“I take that as a no,” he states simply. He does not look fazed by any of my terror screams. As he reaches down for me, I plead to him like he is a priest at my local church.

“No, no, no, please. No, stop!” I try to pull away from him, but there is absolutely no use. Before I know it, he injects the syringe into my neck. I feel like I have limited time and try to stand up, but the drugs already kick in straight away, and right before I fall, he catches me. He lays me down on the ground.

My limbs start to feel numb, but I don’t lose consciousness. I try to produce any sound, but they come out as tiny sobs. I feelparalyzed and extremely tired. I can only look and hear, from the corner of my sight, I see he starts gathering his stuff. A couple of lone tears fall from my eyes. My vision becomes blurry, but my nose is very much still active, the smell of alcohol filling my nostrils. Alarm bells go off in the building,fire. He is going to burn the place down.

Diable

I gather my things, ensuring no trace of me is left behind. The acrid smell of gasoline permeates the air, a prelude to the inferno that will consume this place—and her with it. The fire will destroy everything: the files, the evidence, and her.

The drugs I slipped into her system are already doing their job, slowing her, trapping her. There’s no escape for her now, and I’m doing her a mercy by making it swift. Painless.

I slip on my mask, the last barrier between me and the world, and grab my bag. As I turn toward the door, ready to leave her to her fate, a soft sound stops me in my tracks.

It’s barely heard, but it rings through me. It’s not a plea, no begging. ‘I-I-I’m sorry.’ She is apologizing, apologizing for that one time she did not listen, leading towards guards beating me up. Right now, she isfuckingapologizing?

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