Lila couldn't sleep—not on the bed where Viktor placed her, not with the metallic taste in her mouth, and with the specter of hands on her flesh and the ghost of hands still clawing at her skin.
She could see their faces each time she closed her eyes.
She remembered how they laughed, how they took turns as if her body were just a hole to be filled, a trophy to be broken. She remembered the breath of Sergei in her ear, the whisper of "Now you're just like the rest of us." "Now you belong to the same world as we have."
Sergei made a mistake. Sergei was wrong.
Because the girl who had pleaded and begged with Viktor to escape was gone.
The child who wept and cried herself to sleep in her parents' brothel? Gone.
What emerged from that bed was not a girl. It was a weapon.
A lethal weapon.
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Viktor awoke to the familiar click of his weapon being cocked.
She stood by the bed, draped in one of her black t-shirts, the bottom skimming her upper thighs, her hair a tangled mess, unbrushed and wild, her eyes empty and smoldering, dead and burning all at once. His gun rested heavily in her palms, quivering slightly—not out of fear, but out of anger, battle, and rage caged too long inside fragile bones.
"You ought to've finished them by now," she uttered, her voice as smooth as satin drawn or silk pulled tight over a garrote wire.
"I will," Viktor answered. "But I wanted you to sleep first."
She laughed then, too harsh a tone that could break anything. "Sleep? I've not slept since they took me away from here."
Viktor sat upright, his bare chest reflective and glinting with faint scars beneath the low light. "You don't have to do this."
"I do," Lila breathed. "Because if you kill them, I'll still be a victim. "But if I kill them," she grinned, and her smile cut like a knife. "I'll be their goddamn nightmare."
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He taught her everything.
How to keep the weapon firm, how to hold a gun, even as her hands shook. How to cut a throat with no reluctance, so the blood shot out in a spray, not back along the flesh. How to press a knife so hard against flesh, the mere terror and the fear alone could make a man confess his sins.
And she learned fast—too fast.
Viktor anticipated hesitation. Tears. Some glimmer of the innocent girl who had hung on him just a few short weeks ago. But there was nothing of her left.
Lila drank in cruelty as naturally as air, wrapping it around herself like a cloak. She didn't want to be rescued. She wanted to become the monster that terrified them.
When Viktor presented her with a knife to practice with, she didn't practice on dummies or wood. She rushed it to one of the captured men of Sergei, cutting each of his fingers away from him one at a time, whispering each of their names into his ear as his blood collected under his chair.
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Their night of retaliation was swift and relentless.
Viktor's agents stormed into Sergei's compound, but Lila entered it first.
She did not don a suit of armor or tactical equipment. She walked in a dress of white, the same color that had previously been stated by Sergei, made her "too innocent to touch." Now it was a canvas awaiting and begging for blood.
Sergei stood by the door, drink in his hand, smugness twisting his lips. He was not prepared for Lila to be at his door, gun raised, barrel pointed directly at his eyes.
"Little queen," he purred, already moving towards his weapon.
She fired at his knee before he could reach it.
Screaming, he fell to the ground, writhing on his stomach like the rat that he was. "You think you can murder me?" He spat, foamy bubbles forming in his throat. "You're simply Viktor's pretty little whore."
Lila grinned, kneeling by his side, the edge of her knife running along the curve of his neck. "Not anymore."
She slit open his cheek at first, just to see him scream.
So his tongue, so that he may never speak her name again.
When Viktor finally located them, Lila was straddling Sergei on the ground, knife stuck deep into his chest, her dress dripping with his crimson blood.
Viktor stood at the doorway, staring at her, his face impassive. Lust, pride, horror—they all swirled into one unreadable expression.
"Now what?" He spoke softly.
Lila rose, wiping the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. "Now we hunt for the rest."
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The men who contacted her did not perish instantly. She did not give him a quick death.
She found every single person.
She bound him to a chair, forced alcohol down his throat till it choked him, before setting him alight.
He woke up with her on his chest, a knife to his groin, whispering, "Should I cut here first, or your eyes?"
She accepted both.
The third pleaded mercy, calling for his mother. Lila whispered back into his ear the very words he had spoken to her on that night. What did you call me last night? Tell me? When do you think you're in control? What do you say to me?
Then shot him in the stomach and let him bleed out.
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When it was done, Viktor and Lila stood amidst the ruins, smoke drifting in the air, bodies piled, stacked like offerings.
"You can go now," Viktor spoke softly. "You've had your revenge."
Lila whirled towards him, eyes smoldering with something too dark to be love, too keen to be needed. "Revenge?"
"Wasn't it?" Lila said.
She moved in, running her bloody fingers along his jaw. "No, Viktor. This was my resurrection."
And for the very first time, he feared her.
Not because she was fragile.
But since she was at last his equal.