Chapter 46 Marlena
Katya's knife moved in one quick, clean slice across Viktor's throat.
I felt the spray of blood hit my face, warm and wet, and Viktor's grip on me loosened immediately. His gun clattered to the marble floor and his hands went to his throat, trying desperately to hold back the flood of red pouring between his fingers. He made a horrible gurgling sound, his eyes wide with shock and terror, and then he fell to his knees.
I didn't wait to watch him die. I didn't look back to see if he suffered or went quickly. I just ran.
My feet hit the marble floors hard as I sprinted toward the hallway that led to the basement stairs, my heart pounding so loud in my ears that it drowned out everything else. The gunshots still echoing through the villa, the shouts of guards, Nikolai calling my name behind me. None of it mattered. Only one thing mattered now.
My mother.
The basement door was at the end of a long corridor, heavy wood reinforced with steel. I'd expected it to be locked, barricaded, impossible to open. But in the chaos of the firefight, someone had left it standing wide open. Maybe a guard fleeing the violence, maybe Katya and Nikolai on their first extraction attempt. It didn't matter. The path was clear.
I pushed through the door and took the stairs two at a time, my boots slipping on stone that was damp and cold. The temperature dropped with each step down, the air getting thicker and harder to breathe. The basement smelled like mildew and something else that made my stomach turn.
The lighting was dim, just a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, casting long shadows across the stone walls. I could hear water dripping somewhere in the distance and the muffled sounds of fighting above me were getting quieter, more distant.
At the bottom of the stairs was another hallway, narrower this time, with doors on either side. They were prison doors.The kind designed to keep people in, not out. I tried the first one and found it empty, just a bare room with a cot and a bucket. The second was the same. The third.
Then I found her.
The door was partially open and I pushed through it, my breath catching in my throat at what I saw.
Elena Rousseau sat on the floor in the far corner of the cell, her back against the cold stone wall. Heavy chains ran from metal cuffs on her wrists to a bolt in the wall, keeping her tethered like an animal. She wore a thin hospital gown that hung off her skeletal frame, her feet bare and filthy.
She looked so thin. So impossibly thin that I could see every bone in her body, every rib through the fabric, every knuckle standing out sharp on her hands. Her once-beautiful face was pale and hollow, her cheekbones jutting out at harsh angles. Her dark hair, the same color as mine, hung limp and greasy around her shoulders, streaked with grey I didn't remember.
But it was her eyes that destroyed me. They were half-closed, unfocused, the pupils dilated so wide they looked black instead of green. Years of drugs had left her somewhere between consciousness and sleep, trapped in a fog she couldn't escape.
"Mama?" The word came out as a broken whisper.
Elena's eyes didn't focus on me, didn't show any recognition. She just sat there, staring at nothing, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
I fell to my knees beside her and hot tears streamed down my face before I could stop them. My hands reached for the chains with trembling fingers, fumbling with the locks that kept her bound. They were old-fashioned padlocks, not electronic, and I didn't have a key.
"Mama, it's me," I said, my voice cracking. "It's Marlena. I'm here. I'm going to get you out."
I got no response, not even a flicker of awareness.
I pulled at the chains uselessly, yanking on them until my palms were raw and bleeding.
The metal cut into my skin but I didn't care, didn't feel the pain past the desperation burning through me.
Three years I'd thought she was dead. Three years of mourning and grief and moving on. And all that time she'd been here, locked in this basement, drugged and broken and alone.
The tears came harder now, blurring my vision as I searched frantically for some way to break the locks. There had to be something, some tool, some weakness in the metal I could exploit.
"Marlena."
Nikolai's voice came from the doorway and I looked up to see him standing there, his clothes soaked in blood that was clearly not all his own. His face was splattered with it, dark streaks across his cheeks and jaw. His hands were stained red up to his elbows. He looked like he'd walked through hell and dragged pieces of it back with him.
But when his eyes found Elena chained to the wall, all the color drained from his face. He went white as a sheet, his expression shifting from shock to horror to something that looked like grief so profound it threatened to swallow him whole.
He took a step into the cell, then another, moving slowly like he was afraid she might disappear if he moved too fast. His grey eyes were fixed on Elena's hollow face, taking in every detail of what Viktor had done to her.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered, his voice cracked and raw. "For everything."
The words were barely audible but they hung in the air between us, heavy with meaning I didn't fully understand. What was he apologizing for? For not finding her sooner? For marrying me to use as bait? For the connection between our families that had led to this?
Elena's head moved slightly, her unfocused eyes drifting toward Nikolai's face. For a moment I thought she wouldn't respond, that the drugs had taken too much of her mind to process what was happening.
Then she spoke, her voice weak and raspy from years of disuse. "You look just like your father Dmitri."
The words hit Nikolai like a physical blow. He flinched, as if she'd slapped him across the face. His jaw clenched and he turned his head away, unable to look at her anymore. I saw something raw and wounded flash through his grey eyes, some pain that went deeper than anything I'd seen before.
"The locks," I said desperately, breaking the moment. "Nikolai, I need something to break the locks."
He pulled himself together with visible effort, reaching into his pocket and producing a small tool kit. His hands were steady as he knelt beside the chains and began working on the padlocks with practiced efficiency, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw stayed clenched tight.
Above us, the sounds of fighting had mostly stopped. Just occasional gunshots now, distant and sporadic. Shouts in Russian and French. Sirens wailing in the distance, getting closer. The authorities were coming, drawn by the noise and violence.
The first lock clicked open and Elena's right hand fell free from its restraint. Her arm dropped limply to her side, too weak to hold itself up. I caught it gently, cradling her wrist in my hands, feeling how fragile she was. The skin where the cuff had been was rubbed raw, infected, scarred from years of being chained.
Nikolai moved to the second lock, his movements quick and efficient despite the blood covering his hands. This one took longer, the mechanism more stubborn, but finally it gave way with a click.
Elena slumped forward and I caught her, pulling her into my arms. She weighed almost nothing, just skin and bones wrapped in that thin hospital gown. I held her close, one hand cradling her head against my shoulder, the other wrapped around her back. My tears fell into her hair as I rocked her gently, the way she used to rock me when I was small and afraid.
"I've got you," I whispered. "You're safe now. I've got you."
Smoke began filtering down the stairs, thick and acrid. Something was burning upstairs, filling the villa with black clouds that would suffocate us if we didn't move soon. The sirens were louder now, practically on top of us. Police. Fire department. Ambulances.
Nikolai stood and moved toward the door. "We need to go. Now. Before the whole building comes down."
I tried to lift Elena but my arms shook with the effort. She was too heavy, too limp, and I was too exhausted from everything that had happened tonight. My muscles screamed in protest and my legs wouldn't hold steady.
"I'll carry her," Nikolai said, moving back to us. "You lead the way out."
He bent down and scooped Elena into his arms with surprising gentleness, cradling her against his chest like she was something precious and breakable. Her head lolled against his shoulder and her eyes drifted closed again, sinking back into whatever drug-induced haze Viktor had kept her in.
I stood on shaky legs and turned toward the door, ready to guide us back through the basement and up the stairs to safety.
That's when I felt it.
Pain exploded across my side, hot and sharp and so intense it stole the breath from my lungs. I gasped and looked down to see blood spreading warm and fast across my shirt, soaking through the fabric in a growing circle of red.
A bullet. Someone had shot me.
I turned my head and saw him. A guard I'd thought was dead, lying on the floor near the door with blood pooling beneath him. His hand was raised and shaking, his weapon pointed at me with smoke still rising from the barrel. His eyes were glazed with pain and dying rage, his last act of defiance before death took him.
The gun fell from his fingers and his head dropped to the floor. Dead now, truly dead, but the damage was already done.
My knees buckled and I fell forward over my mother, my hands trying uselessly to stem the blood pouring from my side. The pain was overwhelming, stealing my ability to think or breathe or do anything except feel the hot agony spreading through my entire body.
"Marlena!" Nikolai's voice was raw with panic. He laid Elena down carefully and rushed to me, his hands immediately going to my wound. "No, no, no. Stay with me. Look at me!"
I tried to focus on his face but my vision was blurring, darkening at the edges. Everything felt distant and muffled, like I was underwater. I could see his mouth moving, see the terror in his grey eyes, but I couldn't hear the words anymore.
My hand found his, gripping it with what little strength I had left. I needed to tell him. I needed him to know before everything went dark.
"I'm pregnant," I whispered, the words barely audible. "Was pregnant."
The tense was important. Was. Past tense. Because I could feel it already, the cramping low in my abdomen, the warmth that wasn't just blood from the bullet wound. I was losing it. Losing the baby I hadn't even known about until Katya mentioned it in the car. The baby that might have been a new beginning, a reason to build something real instead of living in the ashes of our broken families.
Nikolai's face went white with shock and grief. His hands pressed harder against my wound but the blood kept coming, kept pouring through his fingers no matter how hard he tried to stop it.
"Stay with me," he said, and I heard him this time through the fog. "Marlena, please. Don't leave me. Not now. Not after everything."
I wanted to tell him it would be okay. That I forgave him for the lies and the manipulation and using me as bait. That somewhere along the way I'd stopped being his prisoner and started being something else, something that might have been love if we'd had more time.
But my voice wouldn't work anymore. The words died in my throat as the darkness pulled at me, dragging me down into a void that felt cold and endless.
The last thing I saw was Nikolai's face above me, tears stre
aming down his bloody cheeks, his mouth forming my name over and over like a prayer.
Then darkness pulled me under fast.