The morning following the motel felt abnormally quiet. As if the world were pausing in anticipation of what sort of being had emerged in that blood-covered hotel room.
She stood before the window at the mansion, observing as the sky gradually lightened into pale gray. Her reflection regarded her, but it wasn't for her face that she was familiar; it was for her eyes. Hollow eyes. Hunger eyes and Untouchable eyes.
Back in bed, Viktor remained half-asleep, his stained knuckles still warm from pulling Dmitry's lifeless body into the fires.
Neither of them mentioned it. What could they say? Both of them had stepped across the line together, and there was no turning back.
But beyond the gates, the world was speaking.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The initial call arrived at dawn
One of Viktor's men responded, then halted, faded away. A name no one had spoken in months came crackling across the line.
Sergei Zakharov.
"You really are the only monster in this town, Viktor?" Sergei's tone was as smooth as silk covering deadly poison. "You should have tidied up better. Motel infernos create such lovely traces."
Viktor's jaw hardened. "What do you want?"
Her laughter. Slow-moving. Nearly in admiration. "
Her breath caught in her throat as she turned away from the window.
"She's not yours," Viktor growled and shouted.
"Indeed, she is now," Sergei purred and was pure silk wrapped around poison. "You made her into something irresistible, my friend. A broken doll who learned how to bite in response? Guys will offer top dollars for that kind of rarity. I can't resist it either."
Viktor's grip on the phone became tighter. "Touch her, and I'll slice your heart out through your spine."
Sergei's tone moved in on me, turned eerie. "I don't need to touch her, Viktor. She will come on her own. Because eventually, she will understand that you're just the one who gave it to her. But I. I'm the one that will instruct her on how it works."
That line became dead and silent.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Viktor slammed down the phone with such force that the glass table creaked under the impact. Lila stood quietly behind him, bare feet planted on cold ground, wet hair dripping with the water that hadn't seen fit to wash out the evening.
"He wants you," Viktor spoke, his voice strained with anger.
Her smile was tiny, but deadly. "Let him want."
He grasped her wrist, drawing her into his lap. "This is no game."
Her fingers ran down his throat. "Is it?"
For an instant, there was nothing but silence between them, the silence of knowing they had unleashed something that neither could stuff back into its enclosure.
"You think you're my master," she breathed in his ear. "But you forget-- I've had masters before."
Viktor's hold on his throat became tighter.
She smiled. "No. You're worse."
He kissed her hard enough to bruise, but she did not shatter this time. She kissed him in return, scraping his lower lip with her teeth, sampling the coppery bite of blood — his, hers, no difference mattered.
________________________________________________________________________________
A package had arrived at the gate downstairs.
A deep black velvet box, no note, no name.
As Viktor opened it, he found that it contained one pearl, covered in some dry, dark substance.
I'm
And underneath it, a photograph creased so often it wouldn't even hold together
It was Lila — so long ago now — huddled naked in one corner of Dmitry's bedroom. Her eyes puffed up with crying, her lip split, her knees tucked up tight to her chest.
And written in red across the picture were the words:
DOLLS DO NOT STAY BROKEN FOREVER!
His hands were shaking. Not out of fear — but with anger and rage.
"Who handed this over to you?" he snapped at the guard.
He swallowed hard. "A woman, sir. She said she was Mara."
Viktor froze.
Mara, mistress of the underworld. Dmitry's previous mistress, the woman everybody had presumed had vanished years before. Nobody had any idea where she went once Dmitry had tossed her aside — but now it appeared, she had clawed out of the tomb for vengeance.
She is now working for Sergei, Viktor growled. "That son of a bitch is constructing his empire — at the expense of using Lila's history as bait."
She stood in the doorway, observing Viktor unraveling.
"They believe they can shatter me once more," she whispered.
Viktor spun, his face a mask of rage and something else, too __ fear.
"They don't get it," she went on, entering the room. "That girl in the picture is no longer here."
She reached into the case, taking out the pearl between her fingers. "They expect me to be their victim once again."
She gripped the pearl in her fist until her palm became bruised.
"Let us reveal what I am really like."
__________________________________________________________________
That evening, Lila stood at the balcony, the gown on her as diaphanous as mist, her skin pale in the light of the moon. Viktor approached behind her, his arms encircled about her waist, his breath warm on the nape of her neck.
"Are you afraid?" he whispered slowly.
She shifted in his arms, running a finger across his jaw. "No."
He kissed her then, not gentle or tender, but with the ravenous hunger of a man who understood that whatever they were forging between them would end in fire.
And Lila, she reciprocated the kiss and kissed back, already fantasizing and imagining about the blaze and fire that's within her.