The Darkness Within

Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Seven

Kira

I come awake in stages, awareness returning to me slowly. For what seems like hours, consciousness evades me, and I float in a half-awake half-asleep purgatory where I can perceive minor things—voices speaking in hushed murmurs, cold, damp air raising goosebumps on my skin, an uncomfortable surface beneath me, a pounding headache assaulting my head.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, I crack my eyes open. They feel like lead weights obstructing my vision, forcing me to blink multiple times before I can somewhat make out my surroundings.

A throbbing pain in my ankle sends a surge of memories rushing through my mind, making the headache worse.

After running from Sergei's crumbling home, I was abducted by people I don't know for a reason I don't know. Time to put the relentless training I went through to use.

First thing to do when waking up as a captive; take inventory of myself and my surroundings. Gauge my strength, catalogue weaknesses or injuries, determine my physical state and how it will aid or impair me. Study where I am, determine possible escape routes, try to get a sense of where I am geographically.

I push myself up from a ratty mattress lying on a stone floor. I'm in a damp cell of sorts—dark stone walls leaking droplets of water, dim overhead lights illuminating the space, a worse-for-wear blanket covering my body.

I toss the blanket off, studying my legs. They're covered in scrapes and bruises accumulated from running through a crumbling tunnel, as are my arms. My ankle, which emits a painful throb, is wrapped neatly in a white bandage.

So, whoever took me saw to my medical needs.

I'd bet money that either Damien or Mikhail are behind my kidnapping—possibly both. What confuses me is that I don't see what they could possibly want with me. Sergei and I are together, yes, and he's ensured the bratva world is aware of my importance, but it seemed their intentions were to kill both of us.

Somehow, they knew about the escape tunnel, and assumed that Sergei and I would use it. Although I didn't see, it's possible men were lying in wait to kill Sergei while taking me.

The thought of Sergei sends a pang through my chest. Last I saw him, he was unharmed, but I don't know how much time has passed, and I don't know whether or not he survived the whole ordeal.

The though of him not surviving... I put a hand to my chest, startled at the palpable pain that shoots through it, and the heaviness that seems to sit in my heart. Is this what sadness or heartache feels like?

In it's place comes a rush of fury. If Sergei is injured or dead, my captors are behind it, which makes me want to unleash hell on them. Torture them to death in the delightfully painful ways I've learned from Sergei. Keep them in agony for weeks—no, months—on end in revenge. If they took Sergei from me, I'll take everything from them.

That thought, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline, gives me some much-needed fortitude. Because, once again, I find myself experiencing fear—and I'm not pleased with it.

Emotions are vulnerabilities; something I decided when I realized how truly lacking I was in the emotional department. I knew something was different about me by watching my peers and observing people around me by the time I was eight. It was the night my adoptive mother killed my adoptive father before herself that truly drove home just how different—empty—I was.

That night, I realized the volatility and danger of emotions, when I saw what it drove my mother to. Slipping on the blood of the only family I ever knew while processing exactly what happened, I understood that my emptiness was a blessing rather than a curse. It allowed me to be purely objective, to move forward without the constant inhibitors of emotions.