Ducking her eyes, she peered up at me through long black lashes to say, “We are both damaged.” My nostrils flared and my pulse raced when she added, “I think we are not so dissimilar, you and I.”

My lips parted as she uttered those words and a rush of air escaped my mouth. Her finger moved again, tracing back up the scar, when it suddenly took a detour, to move across my identity tattoo.

Her black eyebrows pulled together as she traced every number. When she reached the end of number “4,” she looked up at me, sadness in her expression. Then she asked, “What is your name?” Only this time, she hadn’t spoken in Georgian. Instead she had spoken in perfect Russian.

Questions circled my head as she spoke to me in my native Russian. Mistress and the Gvardii never spoke to me anymore in my mother tongue. Without my sister, I had no other to speak to in my language.

Kotyonok was Georgian, yet she spoke to me in my language and as if she saw me as a human.

I had no idea what to do next. Her red lips rolled together and I saw the pulse beating fast in her neck. She was nervous. As I remained silent and unmoving, she asked, still in Russian, “Where you are from, do they call you by this number?”

I could hear the sound of my teeth grinding together echoing in my ears, but I found myself nodding my head. The female’s eyes filled with sadness, and she whispered, “One, nine, four.”

As my number was read aloud in Russian, something inside of me snapped. Lurching forward, I gripped at the female’s arms and flipped her until her back hit the mattress and my body hovered over hers. Shifting my grip until I held her wrists, I pulled her arms above her head and straddled her waist.

My face lowered until it was merely an inch above hers. “Pozhaluysta,” she whispered, begging “please” in Russian.

My heart missed a beat at the fear in my throat, and I hissed, “Don’t ever call me by that number again, Georgian bitch.”

Her eyes widened, then filled with water, and she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I—” I increased the grip I had on her wrists, but she asked, “What is your name? Please, tell me your name?”

Inching closer, until my forehead pressed against hers, I replied, “What is yours, little kotyonok? And don’t lie. I’m getting tired of your lies.”

Swallowing, she opened her mouth, then with sagging shoulders whispered, “Zoya. My name is Zoya.”

The pads of my thumbs pressed on the pulse of her wrist to detect the lie. But her pulse never changed—she was telling me the truth. Loosening my hands around her wrists, I pulled back and questioned, “You tell the truth?”

Face paling, she whispered, “Yes.”

“Why?” I snapped. My muscles bunched at why this little kotyonok, this little warrior who had resisted that question for days, gave it up so freely.

Inhaling, she slipped her hand through my loose grip and laid the shaking hand on my right cheek. Her thumb gently ran over the bump of my scars. She said, “When you took me, when you brought me to this hell, I believed you to be a monster.” Her eyes lowered, but she blinked away her fear and stared once again at her thumb on my scars. “When you hurt me, when you asked me questions, I did not want to give you the victory of breaking me. But now…,” she trailed off.

“But now what?” I pushed, my voice rough and low.

Skin flushing once more, the female dropped her thumb to run along my lips and added, “But now I see you are just like me.” She ran her fingers under my eyes, only to drop them and run them over the collar around my neck, and said, “You are in pain. Your life has not been your own, is still not your own.” She sighed sadly. “Just like mine.”

Ice-cold chills ran through my body as I stared at this little solider beneath me, slight but with a heart of steel. Lifting her head, she pressed her forehead to mine and said, “We are different. Me weak and you strong. Me a Georgian and you Russian, but our broken hearts are tired and old. Our spirits are low, though not broken. But our souls, though thoroughly tested and hardened through pain, are resilient.” Her lips twitched, and she added, “They are the same.”

Her head fell back to the mattress. “That is why I give you my truth. It is why I give you my real name.”

The female wrapped herself around my heart like a warm blanket. It beat with the hope, with the surreal feeling, that she knew what it felt like to be me. She knew loss and grief.

She too harbored a scarred soul.

My hand lifted, and I lowered myself farther against her body. I groaned as my naked flesh met hers. I ran the back of my hand down her cheek and murmured, “Zoya.”

Zoya’s cheek flushed and she smiled. Catching my hand in hers, she asked, “Can I know your name? Do you … do you know your name?”

I frowned. I hadn’t been asked my name since I was twelve. But I remembered it. I remembered everything; my mind never forgot even when the drugs made everything hazy. I had seen many men brought in and out of Mistress’s prisons throughout the years. But where they had fallen prey to the drug Mistress forced us to take, I had fought it with every ounce of my being. I had pretended. I’d played my part, but I kept hold of my memories. My name was locked in my heart.

“Valentin,” I found myself admitting in a quiet, raspy voice. “I am Valentin.” I rolled my tongue in my mouth, the name so unfamiliar on my lips.

“Valentin,” Zoya whispered, her voice like a balm to my inner rage, and whether I wanted to or not, I failed to control myself.

In two seconds flat, I’d crushed my lips against hers.

It was my very first kiss.

11

ZOYA

It was working. I was getting through to him. What I wanted was going according to plan. Or it had been, until hearing how broken he was turned all my planning turn to dust.

I had let him touch me. I had given in to his every whim. As I hung from the shackles, I decided to let him have me in any way he had wanted. To weaken his resolve.

I had not expected my resolve to weaken to this extent, too.

I’d found myself a slave to his touch, moaning and surrendering to the pleasure he was wringing from my flesh.

When he returned from the chamber, something in him was different. He appeared defeated. His proud hulking shoulders were low and slumped.

When he’d come back for me, uncuffing me from the shackles, bringing me to a real bed he’d pulled from the wall, then holding me in his arms, his eyes had found a new state—compassionate.