Page 151 of Lethal Torture

“Good.” I take one of my hands from hers and tilt her face up to mine. “Would you like to talk about this now or take some time to think?”

She shakes her head slowly. “I want to talk about it now.”

“Okay.” Holding her eyes, I wait.

“I wondered.” Sophie sniffs, then takes a tissue from a nearby box and blows her nose. When she turns back to me, her face is oddly determined. “I wondered if I might be able to help,” she says tentatively. “I know you can’t trust me. I get that. But—”

“I do trust you, Sophie.” I gently cut her off. “And if you’re willing, I’d love you to help us. Sooner, in fact, rather than later. But I do need you to understand that it’s your choice.”

“Really?” The way her whole face brightens is answer enough. “I thought—what about Luke? And Sally and Ana?”

“Let me handle that.” I take her hand again. “They don’t knowus,Sophie.” My eyes find hers, and for a moment we are two young girls again, standing hand in hand in Tetya Ana’s salon while two men we barely know decide our fate. “They don’t know how it was for us.” Years of questions and loneliness roughen my voice. “How we slept in the same bed and held each other when we cried. They don’t know who we were back then.”

Sophie’s hand tenses around mine. “Zinny,” she says brokenly. “I missed you. So much.”

Then suddenly we are hugging, both of us shaking with the kind of convulsive, uncontrollable sobs I haven’t allowed myself since before the day Oleg put me in a cage and sent Sophie away.

We stay like that for a long time, until finally Sophie pulls away.

“So,” she says shakily, handing me a tissue, “what is it that I can do to help?”

“Bogdan and Simon.” I wipe my own face. “Are they aware that we know you were working for them?”

“No.” She shakes her head decisively. “The last meeting we had, Bogdan was furious with me because I haven’t given them anything worthwhile lately.”

“Good.” I give her a dark smile. “How would you feel about setting up a meeting with him? Preferably today?”

Sophie’s eyes gleam with a dangerous light. “Will this meeting cause him to suffer?”

I nod. “Oh, yes. That much I can promise you.”

“And Simon? Will he suffer?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then yes.” She smiles coldly. “I feel good about it, Zin. In fact, I feel better than I’ve felt about anything in a long time.”

“You’ve beenoff the radar for two days, Sophie.” Bogdan Kozlov’s rough voice crackles through my earpiece. “Why is that?”

“Careful,” Luke murmurs into his comms. “He’s going to be highly suspicious.”

I tense beside him in the surveillance van, and he gives me a reassuring smile. Oddly, despite the distance and unresolved emotional questions still lying between us, we work together assmoothly as ever. It took Luke less than ten minutes to not only agree to this meeting, but to put everything in place to make it work. I’m more aware than ever how safe I feel with his solid, capable bulk at my side, directing matters with his characteristic lethal precision.

“I know how you can get to Zinaida.”

There’s a hard, cold edge to Sophie’s voice that makes something inside me flinch in recognition.

I understand that edge.

It’s detachment, the kind I learned during my years in Oleg’s cage. It’s the emotional distance I needed to torture and murder my way to the top of the criminal food chain.

At the time, it felt like strength.

But now, hearing it in Sophie’s voice, I recognize it for what it is: fear.

Fear of being bested by men like Bogdan or Oleg. Fear of being too late to strike back, of losing the advantage to ruthless men who will not hesitate to kill what stands in their way.

All this time, I’ve seen only the victim inside Sophie—or rather, Eva—as I considered her. But I know, better than anyone, that nobody survives what Sophie has endured without possessing that killer instinct. She has lived her entire life enslaved by brutal men. It’s not surprising that she’s learned to play their games.