MILENA
At first, all I know is cold.
Darkness. Damp concrete. The smell of mildew and dank earth. Musty, unmoving air.
And the voices.
“Yes, Papa.”
“I’m proud of you, malyshka. Doing what the family needs you to do.”
“Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do.”
I squeeze my eyes tighter shut, groan when I feel the dull, sluggish throb of my pulse, like it’s just waking up.
I open my eyes, and vague, flickering light swims into my consciousness. Blueish.
A television.
Where am I.
Why am I so cold.
The questions come like sparks in the darkness, startling me and making me wince before I force my eyes a little wider open.
“It’s all a means to an end.”
The voices fade out. The hazy TV screen goes dark.
My throat works, desperately trying to swallow, but it’s as if all the water has been wrung from my body. I feel papery and dry; flimsy and weak. I try again, but it’s like trying to push ice cream across sand.
“Are you ready for tonight?”
What the fuck.
This time, my eyes snap open at the sound of my father’s voice.
“Papa?” I croak.
But he’s not here. Not really.
“Yes Papa, I’m ready.”
A cold chill—colder even than the icy damp wrapped around me—tumbles down my back.
That was my voice.
Slowly, my eyes lift to the screen on the wall.
“You’ll make sure Nero is at the spot you agreed on?”
It’s a video—from a security camera, judging by the graininess. Papa and I are sitting on a bench, in the back garden of our house, facing away from the camera. I watch, my brows furrowed in confusion as on-screen Papa puts his arm around my shoulders and nods.
“Of course, Papa.”
“Excellent,” Papa growls. He turns, the camera picking up half his face as he smiles at the me on screen. “If that changes, let me know immediately.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I’m proud of you, malyshka. Doing what the family needs you to do.”
“Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do. Besides, he means nothing to me. It’s all a means to an end.”
An uncanny horror twists in my chest. I know that’s me, just like I know that’s Papa. I know those are our voices.
But I don’t remember this conversation.
At all.
I’m not even sure what the “we” on screen are talking about.
A violent chill wrenches my body, pulling my attention from the TV. I’m lying on a cold, grungy cement floor. I’m still in the white dress that I chose for my date with Nero, and the chilly air assaults my exposed skin like so many claws. It’s not freezing, but it’s cold enough that the discomfort is beginning to pull me further out of the darkness.
When my eyes properly focus, pure terror slices into me.
What the fuck.
…I’m in a cage.
I’m in the middle of a heavy metal ring, maybe ten or twelve feet across. Thick metal bars rise up from the ring, curving toward a center point above me where they meet. They look welded together, like a big birdcage. A single light bulb hangs above the cage, casting bizarre shadows over me and the floor, like more bars.
My pulse thuds. My blood turns to ice as fear hollows me out from the inside.
What the fuck is happ—
It hits me like a slap in the face.
The restaurant.
The present.
The hand around my throat.
And I know it was YOU.
I flinch as I relive the feel of the needle jabbing into my neck, my hand jerking up to the spot. I recall the darkness closing in, the cold, venomous green of his eyes slicing into me as I sank into nothingness.
My pulse skips.
Oh God—It’s Nero who imprisoned me.
“Are you ready for tonight?”
“Yes Papa, I’m ready.”
The world has morphed into some horrible, fucked-up version of reality on repeat, and I’m a captive viewer who can’t stop it.
“You’ll make sure Nero is at the spot you agreed on?”
“Of course, Papa.”
The voices on the TV are ours, and yet, they’re not. Like it’s a deepfake, created from reality.
“Excellent. If that changes, let me know immediately.”
“Yes, Papa.”
The TV is mounted to a stone wall, a few feet outside the perimeter of the cage. But just the same, I groan, pushing myself onto unsteady bare feet, my lips curled into a snarl as I rush at the TV, as if I might smash through the bars to get to it.
What the fuck.
Before I even reach the side of the cage, I’m jerked back by the ankle. The ground slips out from under me as counter-momentum rips me off my feet and sends me slamming to the cold, hard cement.
“I’m proud of you, malyshka. Doing what the family needs you to do.”
“Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do. Besides, he means nothing to me. It’s all a means to an end.”
A wrecked sob chokes from my throat as I grab my knee, wincing. I groan, turning to glare over my shoulder, and my heart drops.
I’m not just caged.
I’m fucking chained.
There’s a manacle around my ankle, linked to a chain running across the floor to the far side of the cage, where it’s padlocked to two of the bars. Next to that, inside the cage, is a cot, a jug of water, and…oh God…a bucket with a roll of toilet paper beside it.
My entire soul deflates and my body goes limp as my haggard eyes take in the horror scene around me.
“Are you ready for tonight?”
A sob wrenches from my chest as I whirl, my eyes going blurry as I watch the scene unfold yet again on the TV.
“Yes Papa, I’m ready.”
“You’ll make sure Nero is at the spot you agreed on?”
“Of course, Papa.”
“Are you enjoying the show?”
I shriek, whirling fast and wincing when my cut knee scrapes against the ground.
Then the floor drops out from underneath me.
Nero is standing in the shadows just outside the ring of light from the overhead bulb. I can only make out his vague silhouette.
And his violent green eyes.
Slowly he steps into the light, and my blood chills.
He’s still in the suit he wore to the restaurant. Still looking unreasonably gorgeous.
But he’s changed. Not physically, but when I look at him, I know without a doubt that I’m not looking at the same Nero who I knew before I walked into that restaurant.
“What’s happening?” I choke, my chest heaving with my panicky breath.
“I asked you a question, Milena.”
There’s no emotion in his voice. No joy. No anger. Nothing. And he looks at me the same way.
Just…blank.
“What is this?” I whisper, wrapping my arms around myself, rubbing my bare, freezing arms.
“It’s a cage,” he growls quietly.
“But why am I in it?!” I scream.
Nero says nothing. He just watches me, his head tipped slightly to the side.
“Maybe you should keep watching the movie. It’s a classic tonight.”
He nods past me to the TV, where the hellish loop has already started again.
“Are you ready for tonight?”
“Yes Papa, I’m ready.”
“That’s not me,” I snap, shaking my head. I jab an accusing finger at the screen. “That is not me!”
“Well then she’s the spitting fucking image of you,” he grunts.
I stammer, my brow furrowing, fear surging inside me.
“N-no, I mean…I mean it’s me, I just…” I shiver. “I didn’t say those things.”
“Really. Sure sounds like you.”
Icy shards sink into my heart as his impassive, uncaring gaze lands on me.
“Nero,” I choke. “Get me out of here. Please—”
“Have you ever even actually read Goethe?”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “What?”
“The Sorrows of Young Werther,” he growls. “Have you even fucking read it.”
“Of course I have!” I plead. “Like thirty fucking times!”
“M-hmm.”
“Nero!”
I shuffle to the bars nearest to him, grab hold of them and press my face between them. “What the fuck is going—”
“Four years ago…”
He steps a little more into the light, stalking slowly toward me, his eyes ripping me in two.
“My parents were taken from me. They ambushed them. Raped my mother, made my father watch. Then executed them.” His eyes pull to cold, green slits. “Gabriella was supposed to go with them. She would have been there too.” His jaw clenches so hard that the veins in his neck and up his temple pop. “Bet they’d have made my father watch that, too.”
“Nero—“
“Shut. The fuck. Up.”
The words erupt like gunfire from his lips. And his eyes…
They hold nothing but fury.
Pure hatred.
“I was going to go as well, you know. But instead, I made other plans. There was this girl I’d started talking to—”
“Nero—“
I scream, stumbling back from the bars as he surges right into them, his face a mask of terror, his teeth bared as he grabs hold of the metal.
“Interrupt me again, and I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you right now.”
Sudden twisting pain lances through my chest, hurting so badly that for a second, I think I’ve actually been shot, or stabbed, and that somehow I missed it.
But it’s no weapon or bullet.
Just his words, eviscerating me and carving my heart from my chest.
Seeing the man I’ve fallen in love with—twice—looking me right in the eye and telling me in the plainest terms possible that he hates me.
“So… I skipped dinner to meet this girl I’d been talking to.” His lips curl to a cruel sneer. “Well, writing to. Via notes, left in a goddamn book. We met after telling each other our dark, dirty little kinks. We wore masks.”
A tear starts to trickle down my face.
“And that night, I chased her, and fucked her, and fell. For. HER!” he roars, making me choke on a terrified whimper as I jump away from him.
“That girl was you, Milena,” he says, more quietly. “Don’t try to tell me it wasn’t. I knew you were her the second I touched you again that first night here at Greymoor. I knew the first time I tasted you…kissed you…fucked you.”
A sneer ripples over his face.
“My little pen pal,” he says dryly. “But…” he rasps. “What I didn’t know, was that.”
He jabs a finger past me, pointing to the screen on the wall.
“And you’ll make sure Nero is at the spot you agreed on?”
“Of course, Papa.”
“Excellent. If that changes, let me know immediately.”
“Yes, Papa.”
I’m white as I turn back to him.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Yes, it was me writing to you. But I didn’t…” I close my eyes, hugging myself as a chill rips through me. “I didn’t know it was you writing back.”
He barks out a joyless laugh.
“I wanted it to be!” I blurt, the tears falling more freely now. “I really, really wanted it to be you. Since we’ve been together—”
“We’re not fucking together.”
A sob strangles in my throat.
“Since…this, then,” I say, weeping. “I’ve wondered about it all the time, if it was you. I wanted it to be you so much. Tonight, I was reading our old notes—I…” I look down. “I saved them.”
He says nothing.
“I came across one where you were talking about Krakatoa. And you always finished them with “be heard”, which you said the other day. And—“
“This is a lovely fucking story, Milena,” Nero snarls. “But you’re conveniently leaving out the part where you SET ME UP!!”
His roar is so brutal that I scream and stumble backward, tripping over the chain around my feet. I hit the ground with a painful smack, sobbing as hot tears stream down my face.
“Save it,” he snarls. “The little crying act isn’t going to work.”
“It’s not an act!” I wail. “And that!”…I turn and jam a finger at the TV…“Is not me! I never had that conversation with my father! It’s overdubbed or something! Maybe it’s voice actors! Or AI!”
Nero barks another thin, cold laugh. “AI? Are you fucking kidding me, Milena? How very au courant. Fuck off.”
“I never set you up!” I scream at him. “I didn’t know until I got home that night that my uncle had sent men—”
My mouth snaps shut.
The room goes still.
And suddenly, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, he looks even angrier.
“You…” His face contorts with rage. “You knew,” he snarls lethally.
I’m trembling as I shake my head side to side. “Nero—”
“Let’s pretend,” he hisses, “that I believe for one fucking second that you didn’t set me up—no,” he snaps. “Do not fucking talk right now.” His jaw grinds. “Let’s say that you just happened to come meet me and fuck me right before assholes with guns barged in and tried to kill me after murdering my parents at my father’s restaurant.”
His hands tighten so hard around the bars that his knuckles go white.
“You still went home that night and found out that the men who killed my parents were sent by your family.”
I swallow, trembling.
“DIDN’T YOU!!” he bellows.
“Yes!” I sob, crying freely as I hug myself, shaking all over. “Nero! I’m sor—”
“I don’t want your fucking sorry!!” he roars. “You knew. You kept meeting up with me, and fucking me, and you listened to me tell you about my goddamn parents, and the whole time you fucking knew that it was your family that killed mine!!”
Darkness throbs around us as I drop to my knees, crying and shaking.
“I’m proud of you, malyshka. Doing what the family needs you to do.”
“Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do. Besides, he means nothing to me. It’s all a means to an end.”
“It’s not me…” I croak, trembling as the tears roll down my face. I look up at him through tear-blurred eyes, pleading with him. “Nero…”
“Well, now it’s you who means nothing to me,” he growls coldly. “So you’re going to stay here until I figure out how I’m going to get my pound of flesh.” His eyes bore into me. “How I’ll break you. How I’ll destroy you, and everything you love.”
The sound of my weeping fills the darkness.
“Because like I said, Milena,” he says, his voice utterly devoid of emotion again, “you mean nothing to me. And this is all just a means to an end. Isn’t that right.”
I’m still sobbing as he turns and walks out of the light, into the shadows, and from the room. A heavy metal door slams behind him, leaving me crying on my knees in the cold darkness, the TV still looping.
“I’m proud of you, malyshka. Doing what the family needs you to do.”
“Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do.”
