Reluctantly, I forced my gaze up and fixed my attention on her face, she was so fucking beautiful. Taking her hand, she reached down to my wedding ring, and lifted it to my face. “You see this? We’re married. We vowed under God and in front of our families to be there for each other, for better or for worse.” She then took my hand and, holding my index finger, ran it over my left eye. “We were made for each other. That means sharing your pain, telling me when and why you’re unhappy.”
The sadness on Kisa’s face was too much. Squeezing our joined hands, I brought them to my lips and kissed the back of her hand. “I’m happy with you. I…” I took a deep breath and added, “I never knew I could be happy before you.”
Kisa’s tears splashed onto her bare chest. “Solnyshko, don’t cry,” I rasped out.
“But you’re not happy. I hold you when you sleep. I see you when you pace, dark thoughts plaguing your mind.” Kisa kissed my cheek and gazed into my eyes. “You’re getting worse, lyubov moya. Something’s on your mind.” A quiet sob slipped from her throat and I instinctively pulled her into my chest.
“Don’t cry,” I begged in a cracked voice. “I can’t see you cry.”
“Then tell me what you see in your mind. Tell me what is haunting you from being happy in our new life?”
“362,” I pushed out. “I promised vengeance on those who wronged him. On those who put him in the gulag.” My fists clenched behind Kisa’s back. My hands were beginning to shake. The frustration, the anger was coming back as I pictured 362’s bloodied dead face.
Kisa stiffened in my arms. “Our papas are searching for the men responsible.”
“It’s been too long,” I said, harsher than I intended to.
“I know,” Kisa said quietly.
“I have to do this. I have to make it right.” I tensed, knowing what I was about to say. “I have to kill them. I have to, to move on.”
Kisa froze in my arms. I knew she hated the idea of me killing again, but she would never understand what 362 had done for me.
“I don’t even know his name. He died as a number. A fucking slave. His grave has no name.” I inhaled through my nostrils thinking of the unmarked headstone. “The man that kept me alive as a gulag child, the man that taught me how to survive and freed me as a man. He was my brother and he has no name in death.” My fists shook with the fire igniting in my stomach. “He has no honor. He lost it when he died under my ’duster’s spiked blades. I am the one he asked to restore that for him. Me. No one else.”
Kisa pulled back without saying a word, but I could see the understanding in her eyes. Her gaze traced down to my chest and over to my right arm. Her fingers lifted and ran over my skin. “Your arm needs cleaning.”
I glanced down and saw my skin was ripped from Viktor’s fingernails, drying blood covering most of my scarred skin. My eyebrows pulled down and I asked, “Was he hurt bad?”
Kisa’s roaming finger stopped. “He’ll be okay.”
My head lowered and Kisa wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, her body flush against mine. Unclenching my fists and exhaling a long sigh, I wrapped my arms around her bare back, kissing along her slim neck.
“We’ll find out who 362’s captors are, Luka. I promise. We’ll figure out a way for you to live, out here on the outside. How to make you into the best knayz you can be.”
Chapter Two
Talia
I usually avoided this place like the plague. It smelled of death. That was the only way I could explain it. The scents of blood, sweat and dead animals permeated every inch of this underground hell making it almost impossible to breath in the thick stagnant air.