Page 19 of Dangerous Beginnings

Not Born

Diable

If panic had a name, it would be called Isabella. I watch her tiny body in the cell on my phone. I shut the lights off, leaving her in complete darkness.

The fresh fear rises into her eyes when the realization kicks in that she will be left in complete darkness. The realization of her dangerous position sets in. When will she receive food? When will she see light? When will she be let out, will she be let out at all?

I wonder about all the questions that could bother her mind right now.

No one is afraid of the darkness, she’s just afraid of what’s in it.

I walk over to the head of the meeting table, my men standing up as they greet me. I tell them to sit down, and they do. I am back, and I could not have been more excited to carnage. The meeting takes about an hour, providing a plan for revenge on the men that have set me up before I arrived in prison.

I control Moscow and everything within its reach. My name echoes in the shadows, whispered like a curse—Diable. But that’s not my real name. Few know the truth of who I am, where I come from, or what I truly look like. I owe nothing to anyone,and the few I might have once called family are long gone. I’m Russian, but I’ve mastered many tongues and worn many faces. I rule the Russian mafia—The Bratva—passed down through blood. My father ran it before me, and his father before him. He was murdered when I was just a boy, but even in death, he shaped me into the man I’ve become. I didn’t shed a tear when I found him drowning in his own blood.

My father had a peculiar way of building strength. He had his men torture me, testing how long I could endure agony before I’d beg for mercy. The first time, I lasted less than thirty minutes. By the second, I endured two hours. By the tenth, they had to stop, or I would’ve died. But I never begged. I don’t plead for mercy—not for my life, not for anything. The scars etched into my skin are a testament to that. They made me what I am. They are what I am.

My mother meant a lot to me, just like my little sister. They kept me steady in the beginning when I became the new head of the organization. But it didn’t take long before darkness consumed me when one morning my phone went off. My mother and sister were abducted. I spend weeks searching for them, weeks of agony, weeks of no sleep. We searched everywhere, but I was too late. They were murdered and thrown into the river off a cliff. I never found them, I never had anything to fucking bury. My little sister was only at the age of ten when it happened. I was just 18, and an orphan. Now, 13 years later I still carry this heavy feeling with me every day. I became bitter and emotionless. I eventually found out who did it. But even after the revenge I took I felt no pride, I felt no better. I could shove a meat hook in their bellies and hoist them up and rip their teeth out one by one with pliers and then cut off their balls and make them chew them with their toothless bloody mouths, and that wouldn’t even begin to fade my anger.

From that moment on I had no one and nothing to live foranymore, making me a dangerous man. I was born to die, I was born into this life, and nothing could have saved me. We pay dearly for immortality; you must die several times while you’re still alive. After that, you fear no death anymore. You only fear life itself. I have never feltlove,women throw themselves at me. I have honestly not bothered to fuck a woman in a couple of months now. And if I do it’s a simple transaction. I don’t kiss them on the lips, ever. Everything went smoothly, until the prison scene andher.

After a decent three hours, I get back into my car, and her smell even lingers in it.I drive back to the mansion, one of my houses. No one is allowed in here, it was one of my family’s houses. Now it is mine, the only one left of the family. When I die one of my consiglieres will take over, it has already been set up that way. It ends with me, no future heir will take over.

I enter the house and silence fills it, as it has for years now. Once I take my phone out of my pocket the screen flips back to life. There she is, she’s fallen asleep. In the corner, curled up on the floor. When the time comes, she will beg me, on her knees. She will, with every fiber of her being. Because that is just how life works. Life is a game that everyone is trying to win, but where there are winners, there must be losers too.

Isabella

I don’t exactly know how much time has passed but I am awake again. I think I fell asleep, even though it was hard to tell the difference with my eyes closed or open. I woke up so many times that I wondered if I even did sleep.

When I open my eyes, the lights are back on. I sigh in relief. The loneliness has already stretched, and the boredom makes me wonder if I am going crazy. I don’t know how many days or hours I have been in here, but it feels like forever. My thoughts make my breathing heavy and my stomach rumble. I’m hungry.Whatever he wants, whatever he is trying to do. He is going to win, I can feel it. Because you can’t win against someone who has nothing to lose. But does he have nothing to lose?

My eyes lift from the ground to the door as it creaks open. I don’t lift my head, and I stay on the cold concrete ground, stiff and unmoving. I can feel his green eyes on me, but I don’t return the favor. Instead, he tosses a black thick blanket on the floor. Next to it, he places a tray with food. And inwardly, I am grateful.

“How’s your hand, solnyshko?” I stare at my hands, they’re blue. Blue from banging on the door.

“Fine,” I state. My short answer echoes through the room.

“You’re tired.” He concludes as he is observing the bags under my eyes.

“It’s difficult to sleep on the fucking floor.” I hiss back. But I feel the heavy bags under my eyes, and I have not even been here for that long. Whereverhereeven is.

He approaches me with a chair. He places the chair in front of me, sitting on it with his knees wide, leaning forward. His presence alone speaks of the power that steals the air from me. I’m nothing beneath him as he towers over me. My eyes close slowly as he reaches out to brush a strand of hair from my face. His touch is warm, I’m cold. It’s tender but deliberate. This man is everything I have been taught to fear, but the sensation is fixed with something else. Something I will never admit. His hand returns to the chair, his inked finger tapping the armrest.

I won’t break.

“Let’s play a game. The blanket and food are yours if you play along.”

My eyes drop to the floor at the reminder of all the horrific ideas that have flitted through my head since I have been here. He wears the same black suit, who knew the devil could look so dangerously handsome? A painful laugh escapes my lips ashe proposes his statement. But I’m cold and lonely. He leaves me with no choice, it is a psychological game. An answer for an answer, and I want answers. I eventually nod.

“Good girl.”His Russian accent fills the room again. “Why were you working in a high-security prison?” of course, he asks the first question.

Staring down at my hands in my lap I answer him, with honesty.

“I needed money.” Silence fills the room before I add: “For my rent.”

A moment passes before he shifts into the chair. An approving sound escaped from his lips.

“Your turn.”

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