Page 21 of Chased & Bred by the BRATVA
I open the door.
The scent hits first. Damp concrete, sweat, the metallic edge of fear. The two men are still chained where I left them. Pathetic. Slumped. One lifts his head as we step inside and goes pale.
“It’s her,” he says. His voice edged with breathless fear.
Rachel doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t scream. She steps forward, just once, and stares them down.
“Do you recognize them?” I ask.
Her jaw tightens. “The one with the scar. He was in the passenger seat.”
The man with the tattoo tries to speak, but I cut him off with a single look.
Rachel’s voice is low. Controlled. “They were laughing when I begged them to stop the car.”
I watch her. Not them. Because this is about her now. Not punishment or justice.
Restoration.
Her shoulders rise and square. Then she turns to me.
“What happens to them?”
“Whatever you want.”
She doesn’t speak right away. She just walks toward me and places her hand flat against my chest, right over my heart.
Rachel
The basement is colder than I expect.
Not freezing, but it carries the kind of chill that lives in the bones. The kind that knows secrets. The kind that’s used to screams.
Nikolai walks ahead, his hand gripping mine, and I let him. I don’t speak. I’m not sure I could if I tried. Each step down the long, dim hallway feels like shedding a layer of myself. The girl I was at the club, the girl who drank too much on her birthday, the girl who jumped out of a car alone and terrified…
That girl doesn’t belong in this place.
But maybe the woman I am now does.
He pushes open the door at the end of the corridor. The walls inside are thick concrete. The floor stained and cracked. Chains hang from heavy bolts. A worktable rests against the far wall, cluttered with tools I don’t want to look at too closely.
And them.
The two men who tried to take me.
They’re chained to opposite sides of the room, half-naked, their heads slumped low. One of them lifts his face when he hears the door. Recognition flickers across his expression. Then confusion. Then dread.
He remembers me.
The smug one from the car. The one who laughed when I realized I wasn’t safe. The one who said,We just want a little fun. You’re a party girl, right?
I feel sick with a rage that comes from somewhere inside of myself that I didn’t know existed until now.
Their silence is its own kind of confession.
Behind me, Nikolai doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.
I look at them again. I mean really look. They’re pathetic. Pale. Empty.
