Chapter 253: What do you think my dear?

Viktor had felt it coming before it happened. He had felt her breath catch and her muscles lock. He knew that if the Don turned around and saw her face, white with fear, screaming for the man who had just died, it would not end well.

A father who kills a man for his daughter does not want to see her cry for that man’s corpse. He would ask questions. He would think.

So Viktor held her, and she stayed silent behind his hand.

The Don did not look back. He stood facing the cell, smoke curling from the barrel, his shoulders relaxed. He looked like a man who had just finished a small chore. "There," he said gently. "It is done. He will never touch you again."

He said it to the dead man’s body, and to the empty air, but mostly he said it to her. He had killed Don Capri to avenge her. He believed it was a gift.

Sienna trembled against Viktor. Behind his palm, tears ran down her face and wet his fingers. She could not tell if she was crying for Capri or for herself or for what she had just seen. She only knew that the man beside her had shot a chained man in the head and called it love.

The Don slid the gun back inside his white jacket. He straightened his cuffs, one and then the other. "Now," he said. "The next person I need to punish, to pacify my princess."

He turned at last. His eyes swept across them and found Sienna, safe and still in her husband’s arms, her face hidden in his shoulder. He smiled at the sight. It looked to him like a girl overwhelmed by love.

"Come," he said. "Follow me." He walked down the hallway, and his shoes echoed on the concrete.

Viktor slowly lowered his hands. He turned Sienna toward him and held her face for one second, and his eyes said everything. Breathe. Stay with me. Not now. Sienna nodded. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

Then Viktor put his arm around her, tightly, the way you hold something that is one crack away from breaking, and they followed the Don. Helena and Carina followed quietly behind them.

The lift was small and slow, and it hummed as it went down.

Nobody spoke. Sienna stared at the numbers above the door. Viktor stood behind her with one hand at her back. Helena stood close on her other side, with her fingers pressed hard against her own wrist.

The Don whistled a few soft notes, like a man on his way to dinner. The doors opened. Sienna stepped out and stopped.

It was nothing like the floor above. It was clean. The air smelled of perfume and polish. The lights were low and red, like the glow of a candle behind a curtain. The floor shone. Soft music might have played here once, and it would have made a good club, the kind people paid to enter.

A showroom, Sienna thought. Now I see why they call it that.

In the center of the room stood a bed, a big one, on a raised stage. Around it, everywhere she looked, stood tall boxes made of glass. They were empty. They were clean, and they were waiting.

Her stomach dropped.

She did not know exactly what this place was for. She did not want to know. But her body knew before her mind did, and it went cold from her neck to her feet.

Then she heard something. A slow, dragging sound. Metal on tile. She turned her head.

Near a pillar at the side of the room, a woman was moving on her hands and knees. A thick chain ran from her ankle to a ring in the pillar. She held a cloth in one hand and slowly wiped the floor, one tile at a time. Her hair hung in her face. Her clothes were plain and thin.

She did not look up. Sienna’s breath left her. She knew that back. She knew the shape of those shoulders, the way the woman held her head even now.

Elena Kessler. Marcel’s mother. Viktor’s stepmother.

She had once worn silk and pearls. She had once looked down at Sienna across a dinner table and smiled like a knife. She had joined Capri and Aliya, and she had helped them hurt Sienna. She had lied and helped keep the truth from him.

Behind her, Viktor made a low sound in his throat. It was not quite a word.

"Elena," the Don called. His voice rang cheerfully off the glass. "Look who I have brought to see you."

The woman on the floor stopped.

Her hand froze in the middle of a wipe. Slowly, she lifted her head. Her face was thin and gray, and her eyes had sunk deep into her skull. They moved to the Don first, and she flinched. Then they moved to the others.

They found Viktor. Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. "Your stepson," the Don said, as if introducing guests at a party. He still held his gun loosely at his side. "And my real daughter. You know her, don’t you?"

Elena’s eyes moved to Sienna.

Something changed in that ruined face. She was not defiant anymore, and she was not proud. There was only shame, raw and awful, and a flicker of something worse. She lowered her eyes at once.

"You know what she does here, Katalia?" the Don said, walking a slow circle around the room. "Let me tell you. She cleans the girls up. She helps them get ready." His voice was mild, almost bored. "Then, in the daytime, she cleans the floor. She makes sure it shines for the night."

He did not say what happened at night.

He did not have to. Sienna looked at the bed and at the glass boxes and the red light, and she understood enough. Her hand found Viktor’s and gripped it.

"I thought it was a good punishment," the Don went on. He tilted his head and studied the woman on the floor. "But I am not sure it is enough. What do you think, my dear?"

Sienna could not look at her.

She tried. She turned her head and forced her eyes to the woman on the tiles. But all she could see was the past. Gutter rat. That was what Elena had called her, over and over, with that smooth, cold smile. It played in her head now, word for word, in that same voice.

She had wanted this woman to suffer. In her worst nights, she had wanted it very much.

But now that it was real, it felt wrong in her hands.

She also remembered Marcel. She remembered how hard he is doing everything to get his mother back. He had not been a good man in every way. But he had loved her. That was real too. Killing her would not fix anything. Sienna lifted her chin.

"Killing them will not change what they did to me," she said. Her voice came out steady. She did not know how.

"And this," she said, and she looked at the chain, the cloth, the shining floor, "this is pathetic. I don’t need to see any more of it. I’m leaving."

She turned around and walked toward the lift. She did not run. She did not look back. Her back was straight, and her steps were even, and not one part of her showed weakness.

Inside, she was coming apart.