Bone Deep(31)

“I walked away from you, met the dealer behind the mausoleum and stroked my knife across his carotid, leaving him to bleed out. Then I stood some distance away and watched you find him.”

“I remember finding him, but I do not remember seeing you. Were you in disguise?” he asked carefully.

She nodded.

“Because there is no way I wouldn’t have seen you, no way I could have dismissed you,” Dmitry responded in a hard voice. Dmitry had found the dealer dead behind Lenin’s mausoleum and cursed that he’d not had time to question him.

The man had ties to Vadim, and to a shadowy group called The Collective. Dmitry’s superiors never allowed him to pursue any leads about The Collective telling him it was a sham, a front for small-time mafia. Dmitry had wanted answers about why they continuously showed up in his research, and he’d wanted desperately to know who had killed his father. But the dead didn’t talk—at least not to Dmitry.

“A year later I stood behind you in London. Your heat drew me closer and I couldn’t understand it—why you? What was it about you that drew me?”

She wasn’t asking him. She was remembering, so he stayed silent once again.

“You smelled of juniper and pine, Dmitry. Your heat was undeniable and instead of killing you as my contract called for, I inhaled your scent, whispered in your ear and left. Do you know how close to death you came that night?”

He had known and had been unprepared.

“You smelled of apricots and your breath was sweet. You were not the only one affected that night in London, Etzem. You wormed into my mind and when I met your eyes as you backed away, you dug into my soul,” Dmitry admitted. “I was your pass?”

Her gaze widened. “My sister has told you much.” She sighed and the sound made him hard—it was the sound of surrender. “Yes, you were my single pass. I was given another in your place. Until then I had taken care of each contract and kept moving to the next. When I felt your body against mine I knew it would destroy me to take you. Then I rooted through your past and realized Joseph gave you to me for a reason.”

She walked to him and he crossed his arms lest he reach for her. She smelled of musk and sugared apricots. There was a bruise forming on her cheek and he damned himself for letting her fight. “How were you punished?”

And so there they were, feet apart now, him in a towel, her in yoga pants and a T-shirt. Her nipples were furled beneath the spandex material of her bra and his mouth watered. This woman, more than any other, called to him.

“He had already punished me. He knew who you were, Dmitry. He knew Ninka was your sister and he knew Ninka was mine. To hurt the only one who had searched for her would hurt me and that’s what it was about for Joseph. He has always thought his control of us was based off pain or the prospect of it. But as he was training us and writing all of his observations in his little black book he missed the one thing that truly created First Team,” she mused, her gaze locked on his but oh-so-far away.

“Ninka,” Dmitry answered softly.

She nodded and Dmitry was reminded of when she’d taken Azrael. She wore a cape of sorrow now and it was heavy for them both. “Ninka.”

She reached out and up, halting before her fingertips met the skin of his cheek. She struggled with herself and Dmitry lifted up a silent plea that she touch him. He needed her to touch him. And finally, she did.

A stroke over his cheek and then up along his eyebrow. She traced the shape of his eyes, the contour of his brow, and then his lips. “She was a wondrously formed little girl. I can see her in your features. She was the smallest of us all, the weakest. My sisters and I realized she was not like us. She had not been made to be broken; she had been made to love.”

Dmitry’s heart shattered. For all of the women of First Team and for Ninka. He did not want to know what happened, but he had to, there was no other way.

“We hoarded our food rations and when Joseph starved her because she did not perform, we fed her. She would crawl into bed with Bullet in the dark of night and Bullet would hold her hands and keep her warm. Arrow sang to her when she cried. Blade washed her body when she soiled herself.”

Dmitry swallowed hard. Ninka had been tiny. She had been born premature and during a blizzard. He could still remember his mother’s screams.

“What did you do for Ninka?” he asked.

Her fingers stilled on his face, their path halted by her memories. Her hand fell and she closed her eyes.

“As the strongest of us all, I took her punishments,” Bone whispered.

He hurt so much in that moment, Dmitry wondered how he’d survive. Ninka was gone and it would hurt him forever. But that this petite woman who’d probably been no bigger than Ninka had taken her punishments? “Tell me,” he demanded in a voice filled with his pain.

“She could not perform her tasks—she was not a killer. When she failed, we were each given the option of suffering for our sister. She could not have handled her punishment—not after being starved with meager rations. Her mind was fragile, easily bent. Her body was equally so. So each time she failed, I took her punishments.”

“What were my sister’s punishments, Etzem?

She tensed, every muscle in her body drawing tight. “I cannot speak of this.”

“I need to know,” he voiced firmly, fear holding his hand.