The initial message came at dawn — a small, unstamped package placed at the mansion gates, so innocent in its looks. Viktor's men brought it in, discovered it, but as soon as Viktor laid eyes on the seal — a wolf's head melted into silver wax — his blood chilled.
She stood next to him, hair a wild tangle from a night of disturbed sleep, draped in one of his shirts. "What is it?" she whispered.
"Trouble." That's what he uttered as he tore the package open.
Inside was a lone picture — grainy, black and white, taken through a lens. It captured Lila on the balcony last night, Viktor's hand at her neck, their bodies entwined in a moment that was never intended to be seen.
Underneath the photo, scribbled in Russian:
A ruler who doesn't know how to rule must be instructed by her enemies.
Viktor's teeth clenched so tightly that Lila could hear them cracking. "Sergei," he growled in a voice like thunder on the brink of a storm.
Lila asked in a whisper, her fingers trembling as she laid them on the photo.
"It means," Viktor stated, "that he's not coming for me first. He's coming for you."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
They sealed, locked the mansion tight. No entry, no exit.
No in or out.
Men at each door, each window. But the thing about such predators as Sergei Morozov — they didn't come to the front door. They crept through the shadows, used the very air itself as their ally.
That evening, Viktor set out for a meeting -- a setup for Sergei, as far as he believed. Lila was left behind, locked in the master bedroom with two guard posts outside her door.
But she didn't even notice they were killed by someone.
She didn't even realize they had died.
One moment, she was looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, trying to see the woman looking back at her, a girl with a bruise on her throat and darkened eyes, already becoming a memory. The next moment, icy fingers were covering her mouth, pulling her backward into the shadows.
She struggled— God, she struggled. Kicking, biting, nails scratching through flesh. But far too many hands, far too much silence. No single voice. Only breathing. Sharp, hot, hunting breathing in her ear.
They did not even have the decency to knock her out.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
She awoke on a concrete floor, wrists tied behind her back, a tattered piece of her top used as a makeshift gag over her mouth. The air was thick with sweat, blood, and vodka, the holy trinity of Russian sinkholes.
She wasn't alone.
Sergei sat across the room, a cigarette perched on his lips, his pale, shark eyes fixed on her. He was far removed from Viktor. Where Viktor was refined cruelty, Sergei was brute violence - coarse, menacing, without needing the trappings of beauty.
"Behold you," he whispered. "The new queen of the great Viktor." "You don't quite seem royal anymore, do you?"
Lila tensed, trying to sit up, but her body ached too much, her muscles shaking from whatever they had done to her after they took her away.
He saw. He grinned. "Don't worry," Sergei told him. "We haven't even begun yet."
And then, the door opened, and they entered — four of them. Men who were hired by Sergei, but who didn't wear masks, didn't bother covering their faces because they didn't think that she'd be around long enough to recall them.
She shouted into her gag, a voice muffled, swallowed by the concrete walls.
________________________________________________________________________
They fought for hours.
Hands so rough, their laughs so loud, pain so excruciating that it turned to numbness. They took turns, then left her on the floor after, curled up in a heap, bleeding, broken, a jagged doll.
Sergei knelt alongside her as it ended, his fingers gently pushing back her hair from her face. "Do you know what Viktor's worst mistake was?" he breathed. "Thinking that you were untouchable."
Lila's body trembled, but her eyes — her eyes seared.
Sergei smirked. "Don't worry, little queen. "We'll return you to him in one piece." He gripped her jaw, eyes locked on hers. "But you'll never be clean again."
Viktor discovered her a dozen hours later, thrown at the mansion gates like trash.
He took her inside him – no doctors, no guards. Only him. The blood on her thighs, the bruising on her throat, her wrists raw from the ropes. It was her eyes that devastated him, though – empty, drained of everything that had been the girl he'd rescued from that brothel.
He placed her on their bed, surrounded her with the softest blankets, and sat alongside her for hours, his weapon cradled in his lap.
No one dared speak.
Nobody ventured to inhale.
Because Viktor Volkov kept silent. And the world had learned a long time ago – Viktor's silence heralded war.
That evening, Lila finally spoke — a whisper so faint that he nearly didn't catch it.
"Teach me," she asked.
Viktor moved closer. "What?
Her small, trembling, but yet outstretched, hand closed on his weapon. "Teach me how to kill."
His fingers enveloped hers, his lips brushing her forehead, and in the kiss was a promise — one of revenge, not love.
"You'll be my queen," Viktor whispered. "But not the kind who sits on a throne."
Lila's sore lips curled into a faint, cracked smile. "What kind, then?" "The kind that they worship," Viktor replied. "Before they die."