Valon: What Once Was (Volkov Bratva Novella)(21)

She carefully took a bite of the sandwich, smiling shyly at him when he looked at her. Since she seemed to be more receptive—or maybe because he wasn’t glaring at her—he decided to try to appease his curiosity.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She chewed some more, swallowing before nodding. “Sure.”

“Where are you from? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.” He thought he would have remembered someone like her.

Clearing her throat, she stared down at the sandwich thoughtfully. “I don’t know…or at least I don’t know where I was born. When I was nine, my parents died in a car accident, and I was sent to an orphanage. When I was sixteen, I left, thinking I could make it on my own.” She sipped the water, looking uncomfortable as she discussed a past she probably didn’t want to reveal to him. “I met a man who promised to take care of me, pay for anything I wanted, if I did a little work for him.”

“What did you need to do?” Valon asked, then immediately regretted it when he realized what she meant a moment later. “You don’t—”

“No, it’s okay. He wanted me to sleep with some of his friends first. That was my test, to see how I performed. When I…passed…he made me one of his girls. It wasn’t so bad,” she said as she read the look on his face. “He was never terribly cruel to me. It was only when I was short on money that he ever hurt me.”

“And Bastian? How did he find you?”

“Trenton, that was his name, he owed Bastian a debt. I fulfilled it.”

Valon nodded, leaning his head back against the wall as he digested everything she had told him. It made him think of his mother and what her life must have been like before she was bought by Ahmeti and brought here. Was it better there? Had she been happy?

Elena, misunderstanding his silence, looked down at the plate she had now set on the floor. “Do you think less of me now?”

He wondered whether she thought if he did think less of her, would he treat her differently. Would he become cruel like the others and start calling her a whore because that was what she was…

Truthfully, he didn’t care about any of that. Even if she had been an innocent, he would still never hurt her. If anything, this would only make him treat her better.

“No,” he answered honestly.

“Thanks.”

But she shouldn’t have to express her gratitude for that. He was only being a decent human being.

“And you?”

Shaking his head, he laughed without humor before telling her a condensed and clean version of how he had come to be in this place. She listened intently, never taking her eyes off him until he had finished.

If anything, that seemed to make her pity him.

“I’m sorry about your mother. It sounds like she meant the world to you.”

And she had. That was why, shortly after he had come here and gained enough freedom that he could walk the property without being followed, he’d taken her combs and wrapped them in a spare strip of cloth he’d found in the barn.

In the dead of night, he had ventured from his bed into the woods behind the house, letting the light of the moon guide him until he was deep enough that he felt they would be left unfound. Though no one had tended to bother his things at that time, he still didn’t trust how long that would last. He was spending too much time running errands for Bastian to watch over them.

When he had found a rather secluded area, he had crouched beside the thick trunk of the tree, digging into the hardened earth with desperate fingers until he had made a significant hole. He had had some time before anyone would be looking for him, so he had taken advantage of that.

On his knees, he took a second to unwrap the folds, taking a moment to peer at the jewel-colored combs with their incredible designs. He had almost been too afraid to let them go, knowing what these had once meant to his mother and now to him. Despite having given up everything else from his former life, he hadn’t wanted to give those up, too.

Not yet.

Down they went into the hole, and then he covered them in dirt until there was nothing left to see.

At the time, and even now, he didn’t know whether he would ever return for them, but he hoped…One day, he hoped.

“Yes,” Valon answered after some time. “She was.”

“Thank you.”

He looked at her, confused. “Why do you say this?”

“You trusted me with something that I doubt you’ve told anyone else. So, thank you.”

Though the action felt foreign and out of place, Valon smiled.

____

From that day on, things had shifted between them.

She was less of a pet and more of an…ally?

Valon wasn’t quite sure what to call her, but he knew one thing. He was glad to have her in his life. Now that she was there, he didn’t feel that same grueling pressure at the end of the night when he left the Pit. He actually looked forward to returning to his room. Even if it was just for a few short hours every night, she helped him forget the Pit and the demands Bastian put on him. And in return, she gave him her undivided attention.

No one bothered her now that it seemed he had taken more of an interest in her, and the one time that Strom thought to harass her while Valon was busy in the Pit, Valon made sure to teach him yet another lesson on why that was not a good idea.