Page 142 of Savage Roses

This is it. What’ll probably be our only chance at freedom.

I can’t fuck this up. I’ve got to make it happen. One way or another. Even if it means I’ll die in the end. So long as I’m able to take out Lucius and set Delphine free, I can accept death.

As if the dipshits guarding my cell know what’s on my mind, they break out in casual talk. They know I’ll hear. They’re aware it’ll fuck with me.

“Did you hear what happened during the last showcase at the Mill?” one asks.

“You mean all the buyers or what happened after?”

“What happened after’s none of my business. I’m talking about all those buyers. Record-breaking profit was made.” He whistles and the other one laughs and says something indistinct.

The deep, sick feeling that’s plagued me whenever my mind wanders to Delphine starts to take over. I clench my jaw and close my eyes, forcing myself to tune out from what they’re saying. The second I let myself go down that dark road is the second I lose focus and fuck up on this breakout.

I can’t think about what’s happening at the Mill. Whatever horrors she’s been subjected to. Not right now.

It’s a matter I’ll be forced to deal with when I see her again, when I set her free.

These dipshits just want to fuck with me—they want me agonizing over whatever went down at the showcase. I won’t let them get to me.

The time arrives where their shift ends and a new one’s about to start up. I tap on the cement wall in the same careful, practiced fashion Volchok and I have agreed upon. A second goes by before he taps back. His confirmation this is happening.

Volchok sets things in motion. I sit and wait as he begins groaning out in pain. His feet collide against the cement floor in his rush toward the iron bars. He grips them and yells out between his suffocating sputters for air.

The lone guard remaining behind while the others swap out must notice him. I stay where I am, biding my time, so I don’tseehim do so—only based off Volchok calling out do I know this is the case. The guy must glance down the corridor at him.

“Please!” Volchok groans. “I can’t… breathe… my chest… the pain…”

A loud thud resounds from the cell next to mine. Volchok’s collapsed. The guard takes another uncertain moment before approaching.

I sit and listen as it happens. He passes by my cell, clutching his gun, and stops in front of Volchok’s.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Please… my heart…” Volchok chokes out. “A doctor…”

He must be convincing enough. The amateur unclips his handheld radio and calls in the emergency.

“We’ve got a situation, guys!” His voice rises in volume as his panic sets in. “I think the guy’s about to be done! Something about his heart. Maybe a heart attack or something? Hurry the hell up!”

“Please!” Volchok cries. “My heart cannot… take it!”

“Whatever you do, don’t let him croak! The Boss will have your head on a pike if he does! He wants him alive for now,” comes the radioed transmission.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

The soldier fumbles with his jangling ring of keys and wrenches the heavy steel door open. He’s expecting to find Volchok weak and feeble on the ground. Instead, he’s surprised by the crack of an elbow to the face and a knee to the gut.

More groans of pain echo, yet the sound’s no longer from Volchok. It’s the dipshit amateur hitting the ground as he realizes too late the script’s been flipped.

Volchok steals his keys, weapon, and radio. The cell door he leaves hanging open—an invitation to lure other soldiers inside. A further distraction for when they do make it down the hall and rush toward his cell.

Mine slides open, the steel door scraping along its hinges. Volchok appears, a skeleton only an inch or two taller than me. Cheeks and eyes hollow, hair thin and scraggly, he looks like death.

But there’s something else about him that gives me half a second of pause—his features. The taut shape of his jaw, the swirl of colors in his eyes, and the dark hair he once had which has now mostly grayed. Even the build I can tell he once had, his frame that even malnourishment can’t take away.

He must sense why. The faintest glint of amusement flickers in his gaze.

“Coming,moy syn?” he asks.

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