Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“Andrii, you don’t have to continue if the memories are too painful,” she said softly.
He realized he’d taken too long with his introspection. He bunched her hair in his fist and tugged until she leaned closer to him. “I learned at a very young age not to believe anything a woman told me. My aunt had a business, and she was very sadistic. Her friends were sadistic. She pretended that she would take care of me and even went so far as to tell me how terrible my mother was, but she was far worse.”
Her eyes went liquid. For him. Those tears were real on his behalf. She shook her head. “That’s so wrong. A mother is supposed to protect and care for her children. Your aunt should have too. I don’t blame you for not believing in women.”
“Had it ended there, I may have survived intact.” He doubted it, but who knew what little kids blocked out? Being sold to pedophiles? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t around children other than Czar’s and Steele’s. Every one of Czar’s children had been rescued from a trafficking ring or pedophile. They were traumatized but working their way through it. Steele’s son had been kidnapped and subjected to beatings at a very early age. He had escaped the worst of what could have happened because the club was able to rescue him. He didn’t point out that Azelie’s drunken mother hadn’t taken care of her either. She didn’t need that reminder; he knew she was very aware of it.
“My aunt supplied children to a man named Sorbacov. He was very high up in the government. He worked for the president and wielded a great deal of power. He was married and had children. Few knew of his proclivities, including the fact that like my aunt, he was a sadist. I was too young to recognize what a sadist was. I only knew they hurt me, and I couldn’t trust any of them.”
“Andrii,” she whispered his name, a small sob in her voice. She tightened her fingers on his thigh.
He needed that reassurance from her. Her touch kept him anchored in reality. He didn’t slip back into those childhood memories of pure torture. He stayed disconnected from the past and remained with her—with Azelie. His light in the interminable darkness he had lived in for so long.
“Sorbacov must have felt Anna was too greedy. Whatever the reason, he summoned my mother and Anna to a meeting and offered to purchase me from them. I could hear lies by that time. I was very young, but I already had that gift, mostly from self-preservation, not because I was so talented. I didn’t understand what he wanted from them or from me, but I knew that he wasn’t telling them the truth. I should have tried to warn them, but I knew if I opened my mouth I would have been beaten severely.”
“What terrible people. Seriously, Andrii, all three of them should have been executed on the spot.”
He liked that she didn’t say she thought they deserved to go to prison. She wanted them wiped off the face of the earth—just as he had wanted. He’d been five and already he knew suffering, betrayal, torture and death. He wanted all of them gone.
“My mother was quite willing to sell me again. Anna, not so much. I was worth more being sold daily than for just a onetime fee. My mother argued that I belonged to her, that I was hers to sell, and Anna should have nothing to do with the transaction. We were already at the school, although I had no idea what it was. Sorbacov had insisted the women meet him there.”
“The school where he raised you to be an assassin?”
He nodded. “Not just me. I wasn’t the only child there by a long shot. On the outside, the house appeared to be a huge mansion. The room where Sorbacov took us for the meeting was opulent, the furniture red-and-black velvet with gold braiding. I remember that very distinctly. Sorbacov had several men in the room with him. They were standing along the walls. He often had those men with him. They were quite brutal and thought nothing of raping women or children, both male and female. I didn’t understand why my mother and aunt didn’t realize they were in danger. The men were smirking. I could smell their arousal. By that time, even at that age, I knew all about sex.”
Her long lashes fluttered, catching tears. She shook her head. “Rape, maybe, but not sex,” she clarified.
He tried not to wince when she laid it out for him, showing him she understood what he was conveying to her. Using the term rape, while it was accurate, didn’t sit well with him. Not when it was coming out of his woman’s mouth. No man wanted his woman to associate him with pedophiles and rape in his past. He wanted to appear tough and capable, masculine and strong, to her.