The man shouted in Russian and Ryker sprang into action, feet sailing through the air and kicking the man in his face, hard. He motioned for me to stay hidden and climbed down the stairs. I listened to the screaming and it was more horrible this time around because I heard them hurting Ryker. And behind all those noises, I heard my mother’s high-pitched scream and my heart froze.
Mamochka. They were hurting Mamochka. Please, don’t let them. On impulse, I ran outside the treehouse. I couldn’t let them keep hurting her, hurting my family. I couldn’t bear the sounds of someone hurting Ryker, the man who’d stolen not just my kisses but my heart as well. So down I went, and I stepped into pure madness.
The air was filled with smoke, a small fire starting on the picnic table. That was the only place that was still. Everywhere else, chaos erupted. People ran, some of them hurt, people I knew, faces I recognized.
I screamed in terror at the sight of it all and tears sprang back into my eyes. There was a family friend on the grass, my papa’s friend from high school. His brains had been blown out all over the other picnic table. I retched at the sight.
I tried to run. I wasn’t proud of it, but I was terrified, and my survival instinct kicked in. But before I could move an inch, a body knocked me to the ground, and I screamed in fright.
“You’re not going anywhere,” an unknown voice whispered in my ear, pulling me up and crossing my arms behind my back.
I resisted, but it didn’t do anything much, and the man twisted me to the side, bringing me to where three others held Ryker and Max.
“Ah!” someone exclaimed with glee, and I stared wildly ahead as a man, no, a boy, came up from behind two guards.
He was tall, dark, and handsome, but he looked young, maybe just a couple of years older than me. He still had that boyish look to him, the one both Ryker and Max had outgrown a couple of summers ago. He wore an expensive suit that didn’t fit him perfectly, which made me think it belonged to somebody else.
“It’s such a pleasure to finally meet Princess Ophelia,” the man mocked as he drew closer.
I stared at him intently, trying to imprint every inch of him into my memory. Once I told Papa what he’d done, he’d be disposed of. And he fucking deserved it.
“Don’t call me that,” I snarled.
“Oh no?” he asked with feigned surprise. “What would you prefer to call me?”
“Nothing,” I grunted, fighting against the man holding my arms back. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t say anything at all.”
“How misfortunate.” He clucked his tongue. “Maybe I’ll call you an orphan.”
My blood chilled in my veins as he looked at his guards, one of whom kicked Ryker in the stomach. I cried out at the sight, and this seemed to spark a sharp interest in the other man’s eyes.
He motioned for his men to step aside and they did, I gasped at the sight that awaited me, the horrible reality before my eyes.
My mother and father were at the bottom of the heap. On top of them, were my siblings. My sister and my two brothers, the baby eternally asleep on top of my little sister. Vladislava….
My eyes watered and I choked back a sob. It couldn’t be true. The blood flooding down the stack of bodies couldn’t be real. The sight of them couldn’t be real. Surely they were all okay; this was just a figment of my imagination. A nightmare.
“No,” I whispered. “Please don’t let it be true.”
“I’m sorry, little orphan,” the handsome young man went on. “Now, I must ask you a very important question.”
He closed the distance between us with several long, meaningful steps, kneeling in front of me and taking my trembling hand in his fingers. He never moved his devilish eyes away from mine as he touched his ice-cold lips to the top of my hand and kissed it.
“My name is Kain,” he said with a wicked smile. “And from today on, you belong to me.”
Chapter Four
Ophelia
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I snarled, but he laughed in my face instead.
Hatred like I’d never known before pounded through my body, reminding me how much anger I could muster for the right occasion. I could’ve killed Kain in cold blood for the devastation and death surrounding me.
But he was so young. So handsome. Surely he couldn’t have been the one to orchestrate all this? Surely someone else’s work was involved. No one this young could be this evil.
He quickly convinced me my naivety was wrong to assume him not to be the mastermind behind this senseless killing. He stepped closer to the pile of bodies and pulled out a long, sleek blade from behind him. He grinned at his own reflection in the steel, and then expertly separated Papa’s head from his shoulders.
I thought I would never stop screaming. My fear was immense, but my anger was stronger. One of the guards had knocked Ryker unconscious when he’d tried to reach for me, and Max watched horror-stricken as Kain returned, holding my father’s head by the blood-slicked hair.
I howled in pain, but he merely smiled at me in response.
“You want to say goodbye to Papa?” he asked innocently, and I cried louder.
The man tossed my father’s head to the side and came to kneel in front of me yet again. The guard had forced me to my knees, and we were now eye-to-eye.
“You’re very pretty,” Kain told me roughly, almost like it was painful for him to give me a compliment. “But I’m going to make you very, very fucking ugly instead.”
My chest tightened in fear.
“Are you scared?” he asked sweetly. “You should be. I’m going to break you in so many ways your appearance won’t matter at all. I’m going to make sure you look a million bucks, but your soul will be crushed into a thousand pieces.”
“Let them go!” I screamed when one of the guards kicked Max’s stomach for no reason at all. “Please, take me, just let them go!”
“Let them go?” Kain repeated mockingly. “I don’t think so. Actually, we’re going to hurt them. But maybe just one, one can stand behind to spread my name. Make sure people know who did this.”
He regarded the twins with a bone-chilling gaze, and I shivered as he cocked his head to the side and looked back at me.
“What do you think, dolly?”
Dolly. What a wicked nickname. It made me feel like a toy he wanted to play with. And I didn’t want him to lay a single finger on me.
“Don’t hurt them,” I begged. “Please, just don’t hurt them.”
“Choose,” Kain taunted. “Choose which one of them you want us to let go.”
“No,” I cried out helplessly. “Please, don’t make me.”
“Do it,” he snarled. “Or they both die.”
With my bottom lip trembling, I looked at the two men on the ground. Ryker having come to, both of them stared at me with broken expressions, neither of them saying a word.
“Ryker,” I whispered. “Save Ryker.”
Max had hung his head a second prior to when I spoke, as if he’d accepted his fate. I screamed when one of the men knocked Max out, and he was dragged off to the side, where a van was waiting. I screamed my head off, but it didn’t seem to matter, because it became obvious Kain wasn’t a man of his word.
He stepped to Ryker’s crumpled figure on the grass, took out his blade and slashed the man’s stomach.
Ryker grunted, and I screamed again, a chilling sound that would haunt me in my nightmares until the end of days.
“You promised!” I begged. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him!”
“I did no such thing.” Kain grinned wickedly. “I just said I’d let one go.”
He kicked Ryker and leaned down to tell him, “Run away, little man. Try and get help. Hurry before I decide I want to put more holes inside you.”
Ryker could barely move, but Kain just laughed in his face.
“Now, the girl,” he said darkly. “Put her in the limo with me. I want to watch her.”
I was crying as they dragged me off and fully witnessed the carnage they’d caused. Dead or barely alive bodies littered the ground. Everyone’s party clothes were soaked with blood, while food lay grotesquely in the blood this man had spilled. The small fire had spread to the house, and I saw a man dumping buckets of gasoline over my home. I stared in horror as the house caught on fire, the flames slowly swallowing up everything I knew.
My life as I knew it was now over.