Page 152 of The Devil's Thorn

He tilted his head, studying me like he was dissecting something alive. “I saw a girl who used to dream about flowers and ended up burying bodies. A girl with a blade hidden under her smile.”

A cold silence settled between us. “I’m not a soldier,” I said.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re a survivor. Those are much more dangerous.”

I didn’t want to be flattered by it, but something in me—something hollow and angry—liked the way he said it. Like he wasn’t trying to fix me. Like he didn’t think I was broken at all. Just… sharpened.

“You think you know what I am,” I said.

Yuri stepped closer, not too close, but enough for me to hear the shift in his voice. “No,” he murmured. “But I’m very good at guessing.”

We stood there for a moment, the tension between us taut but not sexual. Something colder. Something older. Like he was giving me something sacred. Not desire. Not pity. Respect.

“I never told anyone about Katya,” he added softly, his gaze drifting to the cabinet of weapons. “Not even Rafael.”

That pulled something in me tight. “Why me?”

He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because I want to see what you become.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I didn’t say anything.

Yuri took another sip of the rum and leaned forward, lowering his voice like he was telling a secret. “The first time I ever killed someone, I cried after. Not during. After. I think that’s when I lost her. Katya.”

I didn’t move.

“I stopped crying a long time ago,” he said.

I looked at the red thread again. “And this? What happens if I cut it out?”

He smirked. “Then you were never one of us.”

I let that sit. Let the silence stretch between us. And finally, I whispered, “I never wanted to be one of you.”

Yuri’s smile was sad this time. “No one ever does, Belladonna. That’s the irony.”

The room felt smaller now. Too much history. Too many ghosts. But I didn’t leave. I sat down instead, my legs crossing slowly as I rested my arms on my knees. “Tell me more,” I said quietly. “About Russia. About her.”

And Yuri, with something raw in his eyes, sat across from me on the concrete floor, the bottle between us.

And talked.

We stayed like that for a while—two people who didn’t trust anyone, talking like they trusted each other. Enemies of the world. And maybe, just for now, allies in the dark.

The room was quiet again, lit only by the golden glow of the low sconces and the dull reflection of steel gleaming from every corner. I could still feel the weight of Yuri’s words, the red thread woven into my hair brushing against my shoulder as I turned slightly to glance at him.

He sat back on one of the wooden crates, sipping from the bottle of rum he’d brought with us, elbow propped on his knee. His expression was calm—too calm for someone with that much history stitched into his bones.

My gaze flicked to his arms, finally taking a proper look at the ink carved into his skin. Black, jagged, purposeful. Not flashy, not decorative. Every tattoo looked like it meant something, each one whispering a story too brutal to be spoken aloud.

“You have a lot of them,” I murmured, nodding toward his arms.

He glanced down at them like he’d forgotten they were there. “Yeah. Comes with the territory.”

My eyes lingered on one by his wrist, a bleeding rose tangled in barbed wire. “What’s that one mean?”

He shrugged, smiling faintly. “That I once thought love could hurt more than bullets. I was right. But at least bullets don’t lie.”

I huffed out a breath. “That’s poetic. In a serial killer kind of way.”