Kisa wasn’t fazed by death and danger.

The boy smiled to himself and thought of the tale his mama always told him as he was growing up. That God created them to match, in every possible way, the smudge of blue in his left eye perfectly mirroring the girl’s blue.

Dipping his head, the boy pressed his lips against hers. Kisa moaned into his mouth, her hand lifting to slip around the back of his neck.

The kiss became deeper. He broke away to shift her down on the sand, and he crawled on top of her, feeling her warm body beneath his.

It didn’t take them long to lose control, and the boy broke from Kisa’s mouth on a gasp. Her lips were swollen. Her hands gripped his neck and she tried to pull him back down.

“Kisa-Anna,” he said and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “We have to stop. I can’t… We can’t… I need to stop… We need to stop.”

Kisa’s blue eyes dipped. She turned her head to the side, staring at the moon. The boy dropped his head to her shoulder, trying to get himself under control, breathing through the tingling in his stomach.

She placed her hands on his cheeks, pushed until he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “Please,” she whispered, “I want to do this with you.”

The boy’s eyes widened and his heart beat faster in his chest. “Kisa, are… are you sure?”

Kisa nodded shyly. “Can I have you?” she asked.

Feeling like his heart exploded in his chest, the boy said, “Yes,” and he pressed his lips back to her hers.

Later that night, Kisa lay in the boy’s warm arms, and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her face. “I love you, Kisa,” he confessed. She turned to him and dipped her eyes, overcome by shyness.

“I love you too. I’m glad you were my first.”

“And last,” the boy promised. He wrapped her tightly in his arms. Both were naked under the modest cover of his sweatshirt.

“I can’t imagine ever sharing this with anyone else… ever,” Kisa said, and she sighed.

He couldn’t have agreed more.

They were young and in love…

But the boy knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was the one and only girl meant for him.

They were meant for each other.

*****

Fighting to catch my breath, my eyes shot open and I stared at the steel rafters above. I was drenched in sweat. My mind scrambled and fogged from this dream, a dream that felt all so real.

A girl.

A boy.

A beach.

Kissing…

Wait!

Kisa was in it, just a teenager, fucking some boy on a beach. I waited for a surge of jealousy, a wave of anger to sweep through my body at the thought of anyone else touching her, but it didn’t come…

The boy in it reminded me of someone. But I couldn’t think… it was someone I couldn’t place. Didn’t recognize.

He was happy.

He loved Kisa.

And Kisa, as always, looked beautiful. Smiling at the boy and telling him she loved him too.

I breathed heavily through my nostrils, my heart pounding as if she were saying those words to me. My chest began to ache and my hands began to shake.

But she didn’t tell me. She told some boy on a beach that she loved him… not me, not Raze, the monster, the killer…

It made me think about what my life had been like before the Gulag. What I was like at that age?

I didn’t know anything about where I came from. I didn’t know anything about my family. So many events since I’d arrived in Brooklyn had confused me. Flashes of dreams. Glimpses of images. Were they real memories fighting their way into my conscious mind?

My dreams were so real that I woke up with a clear recollection of every detail. I couldn’t remember ever having such dreams before meeting Kisa, and she was in every single one.

She felt so real to me, important.

Or maybe I was so desperate for her that I needed to imagine some connection. So desperate to actually have someone give a shit about me that I wanted to mean something to her too.

Then anger and rage burned in my chest as I pictured her with Durov. Kisa was mine. I felt she was mine. I knew she belonged to me. I wanted her. I wanted her to be mine, not shared with that psychopathic cunt.

Durov was an unfeeling, murdering bastard. I’d seen that look in his eyes, in so many fighters’ eyes. And the way he looked at Kisa, I knew it wouldn’t be long until he killed her too. He’d snap or she’d step out of line, and rather than lose her, he’d kill her to make sure she would never leave him.

Something told me it wasn’t the first time I had protected her from him. Then a gaping hole opened in my gut when I thought of him marrying her, that it was because of me that he made her his possession… that somehow I’d failed her.

I had to kill him. It was the only way I could save her from him. I wanted to puncture his black heart in the cage.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to remember something, anything, from my past. But that same old pain sliced through my head and, in frustration, I slowly opened them again. I rubbed my hand over my nose, remembering the dream. I could smell the sea and feel the sand the boy and Kisa had lain on. I’d been there, but I couldn’t connect the memory to anything real.

And in the dream, Kisa had a brother… a brother who loved her, and the boy was his best friend. I’d never heard Kisa mention a brother before. He wasn’t a fighter. I’d never seen him around the gym.

Shit! Maybe it was just a fucking messed-up dream after all.