“Baby?” Zoya asked again, and my heart melted at that term of endearment coming from her lips.

I shook my head and fought back the image in my head.

“What?” Zoya pushed again.

“This,” I said, and held up our joined hands. “We will never do this. We will never walk in the open air. Free. With our hands like this.”

Zoya’s face shone with sadness and her gaze dropped to our joined hands. “I used to watch people on the streets from my window and dream of the day I would do this with the man who would steal my heart.” Zoya’s lip hooked into a loving smile, and she asked, “You have dreamed of that, too?”

Staring at Zoya, memorizing every part of her face, I said, “Not until you.”

Zoya had moved to kiss me on my lips when the Wraith guard reappeared in the doorway, crackling Taser in hand. “Move!”

Resisting the need to kill, I pulled Zoya behind me. We followed the shadow down the hallway and up some stairs. The Wraith opened a door and took us toward a room at the back of the mansion. When we walked through the door, my stomach fell. The room was dark but large. Sitting in the center of the room were two small beds with straps attached to the frames. And on the back wall was a stack of large screens.

Zoya’s hand tightened in mine when the lowest screen showed Inessa. I stepped forward just as Mistress entered from a side door. Seeing her walk in, dressed all in black as always, her hair scraped back off her face, I whipped round to face her. “You bitch!” I snarled.

I glanced at the screen to see Inessa curled in the corner of a cell. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, and sweat was dripping from her skin. She was rocking back and forth, crying out like she was in pain. And she was, but it was the need to be taken. It was the drug they had her on that made her need to be taken to calm the yearning. Only a male’s seed could chemically soothe the ache.

Mistress moved to stand in front of the screens. Looking me straight in the eye, she said, “This has been 152’s punishment since you decided to disobey orders.” My jaw clenched so hard I feared it would snap. Mistress remained unmoved and added, “You knew the consequences, 194. You knew if you did not complete your hit you would cause 152 pain.”

“Bitch!” I snapped again, feeling Zoya squeeze my hand in support.

Mistress smirked. “It’s true: I am a bitch. Unapologetically.”

I shook. I shook as I stared at Inessa writhing in pain. “Help her!” I commanded.

Mistress approached us. I saw the Wraith guards in the room closing in, just in case I attacked. Mistress never even flinched. As she stood right before me, I pushed Zoya behind my back. Mistress reached out and ran her finger down my chest. “Are you asking me to send in one of my men to fuck 152? Is that what you are asking, 194? For your sister to be fucked?”

Red-hot pain flooded my body at the thought of my sister being taken like that, but I found myself saying, “Yes. Just put her out of her misery and take away her pain.”

Mistress stared at me without expression, until she smiled and walked backward. “I don’t think so, 194. In fact, I think I’ll leave her downstairs screaming in pain for a while longer.” She glanced over her shoulder at me and said, “In about an hour, if you listen hard enough, you should hear her agonized screams.”

“Do it,” I demanded. “Help her.”

Mistress stopped at the screens, and taking out the remote from her pocket she turned on another screen. My heart fell, and I heard Zoya’s quick inhale of breath when I saw it was Zoya and me in the chamber. It was Zoya in the cage, taking off her clothes as I stood before her holding the picana. My legs weakened as I watched myself under the influence of the serum collar. Zoya looked so afraid as she shivered in the cold room.

“You started off well, 194. When I watched you bring the Kostava back, I immediately recognized her face.” Mistress flicked through scene after scene of me torturing Zoya, until she stopped at Zoya shackled against the wall. The kiss that I’d pressed on her lips.

Mistress turned and pointed at the screen. “And then you failed.” She shook her head and laughed without humor. “All those years of training. All the years of my telling you the rules: Never feel sympathy for your victim. And never fall for one. Love has no place in a torturer’s life. No place in a killer’s heart.”

I could see the fury in Mistress’s eyes. Then the blood drained from my face when Zoya said quietly, “He’s not a torturer. He’s not a killer. He’s Valentin Belrov. And he’s a good man, despite your best efforts to take that goodness away.”

My eyes closed at the sweet sound of those words from Zoya’s lips. But they soon snapped open when I realized what she’d just done.

Mistress stood, frozen to the spot, glaring at Zoya. Everything else happened too quickly. Mistress nodded her head to her guard. The Wraith moved from beside us toward Zoya. Releasing Zoya’s hand, I ran at the Wraith, only to feel a Taser’s shock bolt through me from my neck. I boomed out a roar as the shock ran through me. But I kept running, until fire shot through my body from the back. I fell to the floor, hearing Zoya scream out.

I watched from the floor as the Wraith tied Zoya down to one of the beds.

I watched, unable to move, as they cuffed her to the frame, Mistress moving beside Zoya, ready to begin her torture.

My eyes closed as I fought for them to stay open, but as the darkness closed in I thought of the day Mistress had brought the torture to me.…

The lights in the dark room switched on, and I flinched at the brightness.

Blinking in my surroundings, I stared out of the metal bars of the cage to see if Mistress was coming back. I stared at the door to the back room, the room I feared most, but no one came through.

I pushed myself to sit up, glancing beside me to see 362 already with his back to wall, staring at the door, too. “They’ll come,” he said in Russian. “They always come.”

I looked past 362 to 221. He was sitting in the center of the cage, his head down, long hair covering his face. He was like the living dead, obedient only to that prick of a man who was always with Mistress. He made 221 call him Master. They tried to make 362 do the same, but whatever drug they pumped into his body only made him obedient for a short period of time.

As I heard the sound of a lock turning, my attention was drawn to the door. My stomach sank when Mistress stepped through, her eyes immediately landing on me. Mistress nodded her head at the Wraith guard. The Wraith from the corner of the room came to my cage and opened the door.