61. Viviana

The world around me is darkness.

No light, no shadows. There's no variation in the absolute blackness around me.

I try to lift my hand in front of my face, but my arms are heavy. My limbs are sluggish and cold. I look down, but I can't see my own body.

"Help!" My voice is a dry rasp, paper-thin and weak.

Pain sparks in my joints with every movement. It radiates behind my eyeballs and I groan.

A sound echoes and builds. Builds. Builds.

Soon, the floor is vibrating. My teeth rattle as the hard floor at my back splinters and cracks open. A faint light creeps from inside the crack, just enough that I can see a hand reaching for me.

I twist away from the fingers inching towards me, but I can't move. My legs are lifeless and my arms flop across my chest like bags of wet sand.

"Mikhail!" I don't mean to cry for him, but I can't help it. It's instinctual. "Mikhail, help me!"

More hands protrude through the ground and claw at me. Shattered nails leave long gouges in my skin that weep blood.

This is it, I think. This is how I die.

One more hand, cold as the grave, erupts next to my head and clamps down over my mouth and nose.

I sit up, gasping.

The room around me spins and I have to work to blink it back into focus. Not that there's much to focus on. It's a bland room—concrete floors, white walls, a metal door.

I stare down at my body, relieved to see I'm not covered in claw marks. That nightmare, at least, isn't true. Though I'm pretty sure I've woken up from one nightmare just to find myself in an even worse one.

I drop my face into my ice-cold fingers and try to remember what happened.

It's a blur of blood and fear. Especially since I'm ninety-eight percent positive I was drugged. It would explain the small red pinprick on my right bicep. Someone injected me with something.

I have to forage through my scrambled head for every thought, but all at once, my head is clear. All of my energy funnels into the only thing that matters.

"Dante!"

I know he isn't here with me, but that doesn't stop me from spinning around and checking the floor around me. It's the same way I used to wake up in the middle of the night when he was only a baby, patting the blankets around me like maybe I lost him between the sheets. He was always in his bedroom safe and sound in his crib.

But this time, that thought isn't a comfort. We aren't in our little apartment in the city. Dante isn't safe and sound in his crib.

We're in a waking nightmare and I have no clue where my baby is.

I crawl to my feet and lunge for the metal door. I don't even make it a foot before my body is jerked painfully back.

My tailbone cracks against the cement, the wind whooshing out of me.

That's when I hear the rattling of chains. That's when I feel the frigid metal wrapped around my wrists and ankles. My skin is already so cold I didn't notice it before.

"Hello!" I scream, not even stopping to think if it's a good idea.

I have no idea who is on the other side of this room. But if there's even a tiny sliver of a chance that it's my son, I'm going to scream with everything I have.

"Hello!" My dry throat aches, but I yell as loud as I can. "Who's there? Help me!"

A key slides into the door. Metal tumblers click and turn painfully slowly, giving me too much time to imagine who might be on the other side.

Maybe Mikhail is here to save me. He's going to get me and Dante out of here and avenge Anatoly's murder.

Then the door opens and a man I've never seen before is lurking in the threshold. His face is half in shadow, but the yellow glint of his smile is hard to miss.

"‘Help'!" he mocks, his voice shrill and cruel. "‘Who's there'?"

"What do you want with me?" I spit.

There's a single yellow light above the door. It casts ghoulish shadows across his face as he steps further into the room.

"I want to find out what's so fucking special about you," he says in his normal voice. "The woman who started a war."

Is this guy one of the enemies Mikhail was trying to save me from? Is Iakov Novikov working for the other side?

"I didn't start anything. I have nothing to do with any of this."

"That's not what I've heard. First, you were engaged to Trofim. Now, you're married to Mikhail. The Novikov men are fascinated with you." He clicks his tongue, eyeing me appraisingly. "What I want is to figure out why."

Slowly, the man pushes the door closed behind him.

The room is small, but with him towering over the only exit—which I suspect is now locked—I feel like I'm being buried alive. With every inhale, there's another shovelful of graveyard dirt weighing on my chest. Less oxygen to take in. Less room to move.

Less hope of getting out alive.

"Please," I rasp, clinging desperately to reality. If I let myself fall apart in front of this man, I don't know what will happen. "My father—he has money. If that's what you want, I can get it to you."

I haven't spoken to my father in six years, so using him as a lifeline is a stretch, to say the least. Even if I called him right now and told him what was going on, he'd probably let this man do whatever is swirling around in his sick head as punishment for disobeying him.

No one is coming to save me.

His mouth curves into a smirk. "I don't want your money, darling."

A shiver moves down my spine. With every step he takes towards me, I feel myself slipping out of my body. With every passing second, I'm further and further away from this room.

When I close my eyes, I see the beach house in Costa Rica. I see Dante and Mikhail building sandcastles on the beach, the turquoise blue water stretching out forever behind them. I can feel the soft sheets of our bed and feel Mikhail's warm bulk against my side.

When we were there, I imagined a different future for all of us. I could see us becoming a family, growing together and carving out something like a normal life amidst the chaos.

So I go there now as the man wraps a clammy hand around my arm.

"I won't hurt you." His words grate against my eardrum, ripping me out of my fantasy world. "Just stay quiet."

A whimper forces its way up my throat as he forces me down to the floor and presses a knee between my legs. Just as he tries to pry my locked thighs apart, I hear another key in the door.

Lovely. That must be more of them. An audience to watch my torture.

Except the man on top of me freezes. He looks back at the door, confused. He clearly isn't expecting anyone else.

Then the door flies open so hard it bounces off the wall and the man springs away from me like I'm on fire.

The fear disappears in an instant, replaced by a stupid, stubborn, blinding hope.

I'm saved, I think. Someone's here to save me after all.