Page 10 of Collapsed

“Damn, you don’t fuck around, man!” King comments in Conrad’s direction.

We all laugh, basking in a light-hearted feel of the night, considering the situation we are in and that our girl is missing. I calm myself and tell the room, “Go get packed. We are going to New York City.”

Nat

I’mreallyfuckingtiredof being unconscious. The paralytic was annoying enough, but at least I didn’t wake up feeling like the side of my head was shattered into pieces. Every time I try to open my eyes, the light in the room makes it feel as though my eyeballs are burning out of their sockets. I keep them closed, even when I hear the door open and the echo of footsteps on the floor getting louder as they move closer in my direction. My body shifts as the mattress dips, but I continue to pretend like I’m still unconscious.

Ice cold is the only way to describe the sensation of what happens next. I let out a hissing sound at the feeling of something frozen against my head. “I thought you were awake,” a gentle voice says.

Wait! A gentle voice?My eyes shoot open, ignoring the burn to my eyes, and I see Ivan sitting on the bed next to me. He’s holding an ice pack on the side of my head. The same spot where his fist made contact, causing me to black out. He’s looking down at me, and it's alarming. His eyes seem soft around the edges, and there is none of his usual creepy stare.

“You had me worried for a while, but then I simply had to remind myself who you are,” he tells me while keeping his voice smooth. I’m not sure which version of Ivan worries me more.That’s a lie! It’s definitely this one.

“Drop the act, Ivan! You can stop pretending to care because, frankly, it’s freaking me the fuck out,” I spit back at him. There is no lie in my words because I am genuinely freaked out by his behavior. I’ve seen one side to this man, and that’s a psychotic killer lacking any feeling of remorse or a caring emotion. If he thinks this whole routine of taking care of me, after he is the one that fucking knocked me out, is going to work, then he has another thing coming.

“I know everything there is to know about you, Natalia,” he states.

“That’s not even my name anymore, so clearly you don’t know shit!” I bark back.

“Your name is Natalia, and it always will be. These foolish games you’ve been playing are going to stop. Those pitiful boys could have never given you what you want, what you need.” My heart seems to break all over again at the mention of them. “I got rid of them for you. Don’t you see that?”

Rage. Yes, rage is definitely what I’m feeling. It’s boiling in the very pit of my soul. I’ve felt anger, but this is something completely different. It’s almost as if nothing in this world matters besides making the man before me suffer the most horrible of death. If nothing else, I will fight until my last breath to make sure that happens. No matter what happens in this basement of debauchery I will not break. I will free myself of this place and avenge not only myself but everyone that Ivan has hurt or killed.

“Shut your fucking mouth! You could never measure up to a quarter of what those men are!” I shout.

“Don’t you meanwere?” he asks smugly. His face looks sinister. He enjoys reminding me that he killed them.

I can still feel the ropes bound around my raw wrists as I try to swing them forward to grab Ivan. They have chafed to the point where I barely register the pain anymore. I do feel something as I try to swing my arms as violently as possible. There’s the smallest amount of slack on the rope tied to my left wrist. Instantly, I stop moving. Keeping my face tense, I try to act as though it hurts too much and is exhausting me. He can’t know that the rope has become even the slightest bit loose. It will be saved for another time when I can try to get free because now, he would only make them tighter.

“I apologize,moy ogon. That was a bit harsh.” There he goes again with his sweet and gentle act. Complete bullshit, that’s what it is. His back and forth between sweet and disturbed is giving me whiplash and quite frankly the sweet side he thinks he is showing me is creeping me the fuck out. “I do not doubt you had feelings for them, but they were not the feelings you think they were. They had you trapped and desperate. Brainwashed as those dumb Americans call it.”

How the actual fuck is this situation any different?

“You were looking for the other… Volkov.” He struggles to even say the name, but I know he’s talking about Alexie. “Your feelings for him were misplaced because he took advantage of you at such a young age.”

These are all lies, and I want to tell him that he doesn’t know the first thing about loving someone. Alexie never took advantage of me. We were always together training from a young age and those feelings grew into something more. We both fell for each other and our love has always been pure, not this dirty thing Ivans made it out to be. However, my ultimate goal is to get the hell out of here, and what happened with the rope may have done just that for me. For now, I need to keep calm and play along with his twisted games. Vomit creeps up my throat at the thought, but I need to try something different.

I need to steer the conversation away from the guys because I’ll never keep up this facade if he keeps going down that path. The guys and Katia are absolutely a weakness for me, and he knows it. If I show an ounce of a soft spot he will dig his knife in and dig it out like the maniac he is. Taking a deep breath I try to switch the conversation to be about him.

“So what about you, Ivan?” I ask, and his head tilts slightly. “You claim to know everything about me, but what don’t I know about you?” If ever there was a sure sign of someone’s eyes lighting up, I just saw it. He seems more than enthused about sharing with me.

“I will start from the beginning,” he leads with.Fucking shoot me now!!“I was born in Russia, the greatest place on Earth. My parents wanted me to be a doctor like my father.” Maybe he’s right. I know nothing about him because I’ve never thought of what Ivan’s parents would be like or that he had parents.

“While my father was at work my mother stayed home with me. They were pathetic. My mother always wanted to wrap her arms around me and give me kisses on the head. It was disgusting. I held no affection for my mother.” A look of pure disgust comes over his face as he stands from the bed. He takes a few steps away before turning back towards me. “She did not want to send me to school because she was afraid other children would be mean to me. There was only softness in her, and I was not going to be a soft man. I would be a warrior.”

“What is so wrong with a mother being affectionate?” I ask, and I find myself actually wanting to know the answer. What was really so wrong with his parents that he became this way? Was he abused or not loved? Were his parents just as evil as he is and they molded him into this unhinged psychopath?

“Treating your children in such a way only makes them weak. I would never be weak like my mother and father. He let people walk all over him. They wanted to pay later or they couldn’t pay at all, and my father let them get away with it.” He sits back on the bed beside me, and I realize that Ivan really was just born a monster. There is no sob story here.

“I forced my mother to let me attend school. The kids there were simple and easy to rule. It gave me a place to be in control and I desperately needed that. Let's just say it groomed me for my future. When the kids got out of line, they had to pay for it.” He sees me cringe at the thought of harming children, and a smirk grows on his mouth. “People need to be taught lessons. By the time I got to high school, my peers feared me. When a boy didn’t complete an errand, that meant a broken hand or jaw, I gave them a choice.”

My mouth drops open at what he’s saying. “You… they… were just children. How did you think that was okay?”

His eyes narrow on me a little as he seems to get frustrated at my disapproval of his tactics. “They needed to learn who was in charge, and they did. It was that way until I was fifteen. That’s when I knew I could do this on my own. I was going to do great things. The only problem that remained was my parents.”

“No,” I gasp out.

“They tried to hold me back!” he shouts. “Trying to make me talk to shrinks because they were worried about me. My mother even thought it would help to get me a dog.”Please, no!My body freezes because I know where this is going. He notices and smiles again. “Do you know the sounds an animal makes when it’s hurt?” He strokes a finger down my cheek, and I try to move away. “It's not much different from the sounds my stand-ins make when they’re in pain.”

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