This version of the man had knowing eyes. His movements were not so strained, definitely more fluid. And his eyes? His eyes today were bright and filled with the most amazing blue color. And he knew exactly what he was doing. The way he watched me. The way he smelled me. He teased and tested my endurance. It was all him. This version of the monster was very much in charge of his own actions.

This version of the man terrified me like I’d never been terrified before—he knowingly made me scream. Yet despite this, I could see a flare of humanity in his stare.

Last night, there had been none.

The monster turned off the heater, my head dropping with exhaustion. He stepped closer and leaned down, his musky scent of dark spices blanketing my face. As before, his nose tucked into the crook of my neck, the tip of his nose dusting below my ear. It ran down and back up my tender skin, until his warm breath stopped at my ear and he whispered, “How do you know Zaal Kostava?” His voice was soft, almost convincing me into thinking he felt a morsel of regret. Then I remembered his balled fists and tight eyes and wondered if he did.

He repeated the question again and made all the blood drain from my face. My eyes slammed shut. Whether I wanted to or not, a tear escaped the corner of my eye. I knew he had felt the droplet. When my eyes reopened, I saw he had captured the droplet on the pad of his finger.

I kept my mouth closed, holding back the answer to his question. He lifted the finger holding the drop. Making sure I tracked his movements, he brought the droplet to his mouth, and flicking out his tongue, he then wrapped his lips around the digit.

Slowly, he pulled his finger from his mouth and lowered it, until it landed on my chest. Even the featherlight touch of his finger felt like the stab of a dagger to my sensitive skin. But he kept it moving, until it ran over my breast and circled the wet tip around my nipple.

My breathing hitched at the fear of not being able to move, at the fear of what he would do next. I knew he was pushing me for an answer, testing my resolve. Avto had told me what torturers could do. However, learning of such acts and enduring them were not even comparable.

Fluttering my eyes closed, I tried to take myself away from the here and now. I instead pictured the meadow when I was a child. I remembered Zaal and Anri walking side by side as I hid behind a tree, watching my two brothers smiling as they talked. I remembered my grandmama rocking me in her arms as she sang me her favorite song. I remembered my papa buying me whatever it was that I asked for. I remembered lying with my mama, her stroking my hair as my baby brother and sister slept in their cribs. And I pictured Zaal, my sykhaara now. I held the image of his photograph, smiling and in love.

Inhaling through my nose, I finally pictured Zaal’s fiancée in the window of the house in Brighton Beach. I saw his hands wrapped around her waist. And she was happy. The house seemed full of such happiness. My sykhaara, after a life of pain, had finally found happiness. He had found another family. That was all that mattered.

Steely resolve settled over my soul; I vowed to never betray him. I would not heel to this monster. No matter what he tried.

Then when I opened my eyes, I took in the size of my captor, the scars, the tattoos, the collar around his neck … the collar resembling that of a slave, and my face blanched. I replayed what Avto had told me about Zaal and Anri, that they had been captured and drugged. Experimented upon until they were like beasts, monsters, ghosts of who they once were. Forced to kill and fight for Jakhua. Then I pictured Zaal’s tattoos on his arms, tattoos not too dissimilar from this man’s, and I wondered if he was the same. He wanted my brother. My brother who had recently killed the man who had experimented on him as a child.

A man whose people could still want revenge. A man who might have had more than just my brothers under his control.

What if…?

As I lifted my eyes to meet his, my captor was waiting for my answer. Swallowing, I shook my head, ignoring the headache pounding in my skull. The man froze, his jaw clenching in frustration.

He stepped back to stand by my side. I braced my body for what I knew would come next. His free hand took hold of my face, lightly gripping my cheeks. He pulled my face to the side until it was facing his, mere inches from his, and he said, “You may believe you are strong, little Georgian, but I have barely begun. You will not be able to take what I can deliver if you force my hand. In the end you will break.” Flexing his arm, the inked names littering his skin protruding with the movement, he added, “You all do. I’m the fucking Smert’ Kosoy. Designed to do only one thing—kill.”

My heart missed a beat as his words drifted into my ears, and I whispered, “The bringer of death.”

My blood ran cold when this man, this scarred Russian bringer of death, smiled. Two rows of straight white teeth gleamed under his full lips, the top marred by a red scar, and his smile brought fear to my core. Because I knew he spoke the truth. Nothing on this man screamed, Safe! In fact, it was the opposite: his appearance, his very presence, screamed, Danger!

Yet, even as he reached over to switch on the cold fan, all I could think of was how he had said designed to do only one thing. Designed. Not born, not chose to, designed.

Like Zaal and Anri had been designed to kill too, by Jakhua.

Zaal who had been turned into a killer, now a man at peace and free.

Perhaps like this man could be. My stomach clenched as I stared at his scarred body and face, those tortured blue eyes. Suddenly all I saw was my twin brothers standing before me. My brothers forced into brutal slavery. My brothers, who had once been pure and good men.

And like Zaal, my captor too could have once been a good man.

It was the last thought I had as I lost consciousness … that maybe this man could be saved like Zaal, too.

* * *

I wasn’t sure how long the punishment had lasted. When I first passed out, I woke alone. But then he did return, because he always returned. He would come back, and every time he would douse me in water and both heat and cool me until I lost consciousness again. When I awoke, his questions were endless. He would demand to know my name. He would demand to know who I was to Zaal. He would demand to know who protected my brother—their names—and how he could get to Zaal.

But pride filled my chest that even in my time of weakness, even in my disorientated state, I stayed true to my blood.

I was Elene Melua from Kazreti, Georgia, and I knew nothing of a Zaal Kostava.

I stayed shackled to the slab, fighting to keep my eyes open, when the man appeared once again. This time, his presence didn’t cause a reaction within me. I wouldn’t allow it. I had to be strong to endure his torture.

My eyes drunkenly traced his every step. Suddenly he stopped, and the collar around his neck seemed to tighten. I watched in rapt attention as he threw back his head. The corded muscles in his chest, torso, and arms tensed and protruded with thick veins. But his neck, the collar was doing something to his neck. I watched as his teeth gritted together and his body shook with rage. He released a deafening roar and promptly dropped to the floor.

My racing heart pumped the blood around my body so quickly that I could hear the rush of liquid flowing through my ears. But as tired as my eyes were, they never once strayed from the man on the floor, seemingly now broken. Minutes and minutes passed, yet he didn’t move. His head dropped forward and his torso was slumped over.

The collar. The collar was doing something to him.

Drugs? I thought, my heart breaking. Because if this man had been captured and hurt like my brothers … what was his life? What had he endured?

As I watched him lying still on the floor, I couldn’t help but see my brothers before me. In my exhausted, pained mind, all I could see was my childhood heroes. Like this man, only filled with the need to kill.

That thought brought a new kind of fear to my heart. Because if he was being drugged, if the man last night was drugged, I knew the monster he would be when he awoke.

I frantically pulled on the cuffs, trying to break free, but as I heard a low growl I whipped my eyes to the floor. Staring at me was the captor from last night. His eyes were dilated to black and he stared at me like he wanted to rip me apart.

I froze. Sweat broke out on the man’s body, his scarred skin glistening with damp. Then he pushed off the floor, the veins in his bulging muscles so pronounced that they appeared unnatural.