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He lands a split second before me, turning to take my tackle and fling me right off the roof.

Falling through open air, I have a few seconds to watch as he jumps off after me.

Trash breaks my fall.

Right before he lands on top of me. Disoriented and winded, we grapple, the whole bin tipping over and spilling us like so much refuse all over the street.

At the feet of about a dozen Mocro soldiers.

The masked man rises, cracking his neck as if to mock me. Because they’ve already got Vanya, lying unconscious near the wheel of a black van. And of course, he led us right into a trap.

18

VANYA

Freezing water hits me in the face.

I would spit it in their face if I was not so thirsty. So I take what I can get.

These Mocro are not kind.

It’s nothing that I haven’t endured before, but in the hours since I awoke in this cell, they have made things particularly unpleasant for me. I know it is only the start.

What I do not know is the end game.

Why they kept us alive, when they could have simply eliminated us. Perhaps they want to know if there are more Bratva on the way.

Knowing there is no one coming for me is a concept I accept. What I am having a harder time with, is not knowing what happened to Shakal. Thinking of him that way, as the laughing psycho from the Gulag, helps me keep things in perspective.

It also keeps his identity safer.

They will wear me down, and I do not want to slip up.

After another visit from my guards, I lay still, assessing the state of my body. My head hurts, no surprise.

They clubbed me as I rode past on the motorbike. Which explains the road rash on my leg. My back. Otherwise, I am mostly hale. Aside from a few fractured fingers, a broken toe, lacerations on my arms and sides from our knife fight, and the splits on my lips and cheek.

“Shakal…” I whisper the name periodically in the pitch black, between bouts of unconsciousness. It’s sleep, of a sort. The kind where you do not remember passing out or waking. Time passes, though I cannot keep track. Other than the growing pain in my stomach, the gnawing hunger.

My only sense of day and night finally comes when my captors hose me down again, longer and more viciously than the other times. When they go, they leave a cup on the ground. Presumably so I can scoop up what I can from the grimy floor to drink.

If they think this is torture, they do not have a clue.

Survival, pain. This is the Bratva way. The Volk in particular have always prided ourselves on our knowledge of the hunt. Staying alive in impossible situations.

Pyotr taught me well.

So I drink the tepid, dirty water.

I bleed a few of the deeper cuts to flush out as much dirt as possible, then I pinch the wounds tight. With nothing else to do, I know this is a crucial time.

Hours pass, and eventually I fall asleep, curled in a ball in the corner.

When I wake, I am not alone. My mouth is parched.

“Good morning,” I croak, assuming from the long break that night passed.

“Hm. That’s a clever tactic,” the shadow mutters, his voice smooth, devoid of caring.