Shadows Don’t Die

The bodies are now stinging flies flying over the dead bodies, The bodies hadn't even cooled when Viktor's phone buzzed.

A single text. No number. No name. Just an image.

A snapshot taken across the street—a snapshot of Viktor's mansion, set off by iron gates, windows still lighting up the night. But what froze the blood in his veins wasn't the house itself.

It was Lila in the snapshot! Lila was standing by the window, gazing out, oblivious that someone was observing her again.

The caption was:

"She wears blood like perfume. But I recall, remember her scent before all that."

Viktor's fingers clenched tightly around the telephone, screen cracking under his pressure. His thoughts galloped, his mind sprinted through the potential—Sergei's men? An old-time rat? A leftover of the past?

But in his heart, he understood that this was something else. Something else was fishy, something was not right!

This was not solely an enemy

This was someone who knew Lila before Viktor ever touched her.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lila was showering, steam obscuring, clouding the mirror, her flesh still raw and red where she had scrubbed away the blood. She did not see him until he was standing directly behind her, his image slicing, reflection cutting through the mist like a knife.

"We're under surveillance. We're still being watched", he whispered.

Her fingers stopped and froze on the glass. "Who?"

I don't know yet.

Lila took a deep inhalation, her head falling forward. "Isn't that every single time? Someone's always there." Someone is always watching, one after one.

"Not like this," Viktor slid the telephone across the counter. When Lila glimpsed the picture, she brought her hand to her mouth. Not in fear--but in recognition.

She knew precisely who had snapped that photo.

Dmitry!

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Dmitry! He was the first man her parents ever sold her to.

She was thirteen, still flat-chested, still too young to comprehend that her mother painted her lips and instructed her to show her smile wide to the man with the gold tooth.

He had come to their bordello, brothel, regularly. But unlike the majority of men, he wished for possession, not instant sex. He would purchase her for days in advance, locking her in rented rooms, hand-feeding her, compelling her to address him as Master, forcing her to call him master. He likes to have foreplay sex with the girls.

It was not only rape. It was conditioning.

By the age of sixteen, Dmitry did not even need to touch her to make her scream. Silence, a look, the soft sound of his belt coming free of his waist were enough to command her.

Then—he was gone.

She believed that he was dead. She wished and hoped that he were dead.

But now it was evident—Dmitry had never really departed, never left.

He had simply waited.

He'd just been waiting.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Tell me everything," Viktor demanded, his voice low, straining to contain his anger, barely holding back fury.

He was angry when Lila told her about the things that Dmitry had done to her.

Lila's fingers shook as she clung, gripped to the counter. "He's not any ordinary client. He's—the first one who ever broke me."

Viktor's expression turned vacant, his face went blank—the sort of vacant that preceded and comes before a massacre. "Then I'll kill him." 

I'll tell Lila what he had done to you. I can't control myself now.

"No," she shook her head, eyes blazing and burning from inside. "Not this time."

Viktor frowned. "Lila—"

"No," she said tightly and sharply, the words slicing through him like wire through meat. "This time, I'm not his broken little girl. I want him to look and see what he made of me. I want him to see precisely what I've turned into."

Viktor's chest rose and contracted, his own darker impulses and instinct fighting the protective covetousness that had always governed him where she was concerned. But there was something new in Lila's eyes—a hunger he himself did not recognize.

This was no longer survival. This was revenge turned to seduction. 

This was the revenge sharpened into the seduction of death.

And Dmitry had no clue what was in store for him.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

A further message arrived that night.

This time, a video.

It began grainy, a handheld camera quivering slightly as it zoomed in through their bedroom window. Sleeping in Viktor's bed, Lila.

And then—a voice.

Soft, very tender.

"Do you miss me, my little doll?"

Viktor took the telephone and smashed it onto the wall, breaking it into pieces.

But the news had already arrived.

He wasn't simply observing.

He was present.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

At the centre of the underworld, Viktor was a king to be feared. But even kings, of course, had ghosts. And Dmitry was a monster, and not a ghost—he had a talent for shattering queens. A monster who knew how to break queens.

The hunt had begun once again. But this time, Lila was not the hunted.

She was bait.

And in the shadows, Dmitry smiled, for in his perverse mind, Lila never ceased to be his doll.

And somewhere in the dark, Dmitry smiled, because in his twisted mind, Lila never stopped being his doll.