Sweet Collateral

“Mexico may never be safe, Anna. So, I suggest you find some kind of purpose outside of this." She makes it sound so easy, but the truth is, I’m so lost that I feel as though I’m walking numbly in the dark: deaf, blind and unfeeling. I don’t know who or what I am. “Find your purpose, and once you have that, you’ll find yourself.”

“A purpose…”

“What do you want?” It’s a loaded question, and one I struggle to answer. “If Rafael didn’t exist, what would you, Anna Vasiliev, want?” I try to push all thoughts of Rafael aside and think hard about her question. The truth is I don’t know. When I try and search myself, all I feel is rage.

Rafael once told me that I’m one of the angriest people he’d ever met, and it’s never been so true. I’m consumed by anger until it’s all I feel, all I see. I’m angry with him for abandoning me when he promised he never would. I’m mad at myself for needing him so much because I have nothing else. I’m angry at fate for stripping me of my life before it had ever really begun. I hate the world and my place in it.

Closing my eyes, I push everything from my mind, and dig deep, searching out the source of all my rage. Layers peel away until I’m left with an answer so simple, and yet so obvious. Rafael is not the cause of my misery. He was just the band-aid that has now been ripped off, exposing a festering mess beneath. My pain is complex, various threads wound together so tightly, they’ll never truly be picked apart. The wound itself was inflicted a long time ago by many different men.

“I want revenge on the men who enslaved me,” I say, and the corner of her lip pulls into a slow smile. She looks like some kind of dark angel. The face of perfection with death on her lips, whispering sweet promises of retribution.

“Good. I had a feeling you’d get here eventually.”

“How?”

“Because though we may be different, we’re very much the same. I would want them dead, the same way I wanted Nicholai dead.”

I nod, and for the first time in a long time, the storm within me calms a little.

59

Anna

Two months later

Darkness surrounds me, and I inhale a deep breath of the fresh night air. Ahead of me, the perfectly-manicured lawns are illuminated by the light spilling from the enormous windows of the mansion. Inside, smatterings of light glitter over the walls, reflected by the crystal chandeliers.

It looks so grand and perfect. Shiny. But I know the truth because inside that house are horrors that play a starring role in my nightmares every night, even after all these years.

A guard walks the perimeter literally meters away but hidden by the darkness, it’s as though we don’t exist. I have to glance to my left to check Una is still there, she’s so utterly silent. She can melt into the darkness like a shadow—so still, you’d never know she was there until it was too late.

She breaks cover, and I follow her, sprinting across the length of the lawn. We drop to a crouch in the shadow of the enormous house. The number of times Una has made me recite this plan, I feel as though I could walk through it in my sleep. It’s second nature to her, an everyday occurrence, but truthfully, I’m nervous. My pulse pounds erratically against my ears as adrenaline surges through my veins. I spent years trying to escape this place, and now I’m breaking back in. If we fail…if we get caught… I don’t even want to think about what will happen to me, or my sister.

As if sensing my thoughts, Una reaches behind her, wrapping her fingers around my wrist and tugging me tight to her back. She glances down at her watch, counting down the seconds for a gap in the security. There’s the click of the lock turning over as she picks it, and then the old-fashioned window gently creaks open. Una slips silently through. I take a deep breath, digging deep within myself for courage before I follow her, and there’s no going back. The weight of the moment presses in on me because I know this a crossroads between the girl I am and the woman I could be if I do this.

Una pulls the window closed and moves away down the corridor without looking back. I mimic her footsteps exactly. The security isn’t that tight. It wasn’t designed to keep people out. It’s to keep people in.

I follow her through the house, ducking into doorways and hiding from the occasional guard in the corridors. Finally, we reach the top floor, and as I get to the top of the stairs, my breath seizes in my chest. At the end of the hallway is a set of double doors, and the sight of them is branded into my mind, gripping me with fear. Behind those doors is my own personal hell.