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Right now, I have to hate her.

32

MILENA

The wrenching,creaking sound of the lock on the basement door twisting open gets me up from the cot.

I wasn’t sleeping, even though I’m utterly exhausted. I don’t knowhowI managed to fall asleep the first time in this hellish hole. But it’s not happening again.

I have no idea how long I’ve been down here. A day? Three? Idoknow my body is wrecked and sore. I know I’m starving. I know I desperately need to use the bathroom, but there is no way in hell I’m using that fucking bucket.

But I don’t know what to feel anymore.

I hate him.

I love him.

He disgusts me.

I crave him.

I’m somewhere in the middle of it all, in the center of a four-circle Venn diagram.

Last night—or whenever it was—after he fucked my mouth, and my ass, and gave me what I hate to admit might be the biggest orgasm of my life… He justleft.

I guess it would be dumb to hope for pillow talk when he apparently hates me.

…Even though what he hates meforis utter bullshit.

I never said those things to my father. Iknowit’s a doctored video. I’d never say those things or agree to set Nero up for an ambush.

That’s just not who I am. And what makes it even more impossible to believe is that back then, when I was going to meet him, not even knowing who he was, I was already in love with him.

My pen pal.

I swore to myself we were just meeting because he was into the same fucked-up kinks I was. That he could help me explore them. That it was just two friends with similar tastes who were meeting to indulge them, nothing more.

But the truth is, I’d already fallen in love with him, without ever having met him, touched him, or kissed him.

For that reason alone, Iknowthere’s no way I would have ever agreed to lead my father’s men to him, despite what that bullshit video says.

Of course, Papa. This is what we Kalishniks do. Besides, he means nothing to me. It’s all a means to an end.

I literally wouldneverhave said that. Ever. And that’s all ignoring the fact that my father couldn’t evenspeakduring thatperiod. He was barely conscious, lying in bed, being pumped full of poison.

But there’s another facet to this that I keep shying away from, because it’s a truth that hurts.

Ididknow.

Even though I didn't set him up, Ididgo home that night and hear directly from my uncle thatmy familyhad sent men after Nero’s.

I knew that, and four years later, when our paths crossed again, I kept fucking him, and I didn’t say a thing about what happened in the past. I can try and sugarcoat it, say that I wasn’t sure if the man I’d met four years ago was Nero or Laz…

But I think I’ve always known it was Nero. The questions and doubts were just the last little part of me that wasn’t sure Iwanted itto be him.

And even when that last question was snuffed out, when I knew for sure—when he told me the story of that night, and his parents being murdered—I knew and I said nothing.

For that, Iamguilty.