Chapter 21: The Prince's Ultimatum
The victory banquet was a cage of crystal and noise. Chandeliers, each a frozen explosion of teardrop glass, hung from the dark wood beams of the dacha’s grand hall, their light glinting off endless rows of vodka glasses and the gold braid on dress uniforms. A fire roared in the monumental hearth, but it did nothing to cut the chill that had settled in Mila’s bones the moment they’d entered. The air was thick with the smells of roasted meat, expensive cigar smoke, and the cloying sweetness of perfume worn by the few women present—wives and consorts who watched the room with the blank eyes of taxidermied birds.
Alexsi stood beside her, a solid, silent pillar in his formal dress uniform, the red-and-gold epaulettes weighing on his shoulders like manacles. His arm was around her waist, a gesture that had started as performative but had tightened throughout the evening into something more defensive. Possessive. He’d barely spoken to her, his eyes constantly scanning the room, tracing the movements of the men who orbited his father, the Minister.
They were best friends stuck in a bad situation. That was the private truth, a fragile lifeline in this sea of predators. Every brush of his hand against her back, every low word muttered for her ears only—“Don’t drink that,” “Stay close,” “That one is General Krov’s nephew, avoid him.”—was a line in their shared, silent script of survival.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured into her hair, his lips barely moving as he nodded at some passing colonel.
“I’m cold.”
“Liar.” His grip tightened. “Ten more minutes. Then we plead exhaustion.”
She believed him. She had to. His presence was the only solid thing in the glittering, shifting kaleidoscope of threats.
The Minister’s voice boomed from the head of the long table, summoning Alexsi. “Volkov! Come. His Excellency Sheikh al-Tahir has questions about the mountain patrol routes. Your frontline experience is required.”
It was an order, not a request. Alexsi’s jaw tightened. The Sheikh, a man in immaculate white robes, sat beside the Minister, his expression one of polite, detached interest. This was business. Critical business. To refuse would be an insult to the foreign prince and a direct challenge to his father.
He looked down at Mila, conflict raging behind his eyes. “Stay here,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Do not move. I will be fifteen paces away, at that table. You will be in my line of sight the entire time. Yes?”
“Yes,” she whispered, forcing her chin up.
He hesitated, a fracture in his impeccable stoicism. He leaned in, as if to adjust the shawl around her shoulders, and his breath was warm against her ear. “If anyone approaches, you cough. Loudly. Do you understand?”
She gave a tiny, sharp nod. He released her slowly, his fingers trailing from her waist as if parting from a mooring. He walked toward the high table, his back straight, every step measured. He took a position standing behind his father’s chair, his eyes immediately finding hers across the crowded room. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Fifteen paces.
Mila wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the ghost of his touch. She focused on his face, a fixed point in the chaos. A waiter offered her a flute of champagne; she shook her head. A lieutenant with a slick smile said something she didn’t hear; she stared blankly past him until he scoffed and moved on.
Then, a wall of bodies shifted. A group of junior ministers, laughing uproariously, surged between her and the high table, blocking her view. She took a half-step to the side, craning her neck. She could just see the edge of Alexsi’s shoulder. She was fine. She was in sight.
A hand, large and damp, closed around her upper arm from behind.
“There you are, little rabbit,” a voice slurred into her ear. The smell of vodka and cheap cologne was suffocating. It was Captain Zhenya, a hulking man with a flushed, boyish face and cruel eyes. He was one of the minister’s proteges, known for his “interrogation” techniques on the border. “The Minister has a gift for you. A special toast. Come.”
“No, thank you,” Mila said, trying to pull her arm back. Her voice was a thin reed against the room’s din. “My husband—”
“—is busy with affairs of state,” Zhenya finished, his grip tightening to the point of pain. His other hand clamped onto her other arm. “This will only take a moment. Don’t be rude.”
He was already pulling her, not toward the Minister, but toward a side door concealed by a heavy velvet curtain. Panic, sharp and metallic, flooded her mouth. She dug her heels in, but she was in delicate slippers on polished oak. She slid helplessly.
She opened her mouth to cough, the signal, but Zhenya’s meaty hand clamped over it before a sound could escape, his fingers digging into her cheeks. “None of that, sweetheart. You’ll spoil the surprise.”
Her eyes sought Alexsi’s. The crowd had shifted again. A servant was pouring wine, blocking him. She saw the back of his head, tilted in conversation with the Sheikh.
Then the velvet curtain swallowed her, and the noise of the banquet became muffled, distant.
The hallway beyond was dark, cold, and lined with hunting trophies—stag heads with glassy eyes, their antlers throwing long, jagged shadows in the light of a single sconce. Zhenya propelled her down it, his hand still over her mouth. Two other men materialized from a doorway ahead: Colonel Vassily, an older man with a tidy grey moustache and dead eyes, and the young, sleek Major Dimitri, who always looked like he was smelling something foul.
“Got her,” Zhenya grunted.
“Good.” Vassily’s voice was calm, administrative. “The west sitting room. It’s soundproofed. For the Minister’s… private meetings.”
Mila fought. She writhed, kicked back, connected with Zhenya’s shin. He grunted and swore, his hand slapping her hard across the face. The blow snapped her head to the side, stars bursting in her vision.
“Spirited,” Dimitri observed with a thin smile. “The General said she might be.”
They dragged her the last few yards. Vassily unlocked a heavy oak door with an old-fashioned key. Inside was a room that might have once been cozy. A threadbare Persian rug, a sagging leather sofa, a cold fireplace. The windows were shuttered tight. The air smelled of dust, mildew, and old cigar smoke.
Zhenya threw her inside. She stumbled, falling to her knees on the rough wool of the rug. The door clicked shut behind them. The lock turned with a final, deafening thunk.
“Now,” Vassily said, removing his dress jacket and folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “The Minister feels you have been… inadequately integrated into our brotherhood. That your husband’s coddling has left you ignorant of the realities of your position. We are here to provide a corrective.”
Mila scrambled backwards until her back hit the cold stone of the fireplace. “Alexsi will kill you.”
Dimitri laughed, a sound like dry leaves crumbling. “Alexsi is a good soldier. He understands chain of command. He knows the price of disobedience.” He stepped forward, pulling a silver flask from his pocket. “This will help. It always helps.”
Zhenya grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back. Dimitri knelt, pinching her nose shut with one hand. When she gasped for air, he shoved the mouth of the flask between her lips and upended it.
Vodka, cheap and burning, flooded her mouth and throat. She choked, gagged, but he held it there, his thumb pressing the glass hard against her teeth. “Swallow, you tribal bitch. It’s a gift.”
She had to swallow or drown. The liquid fire poured down her throat, into her stomach, an immediate, scorching blanket. Half the flask was gone before he pulled it away, leaving her coughing, tears streaming from her eyes. The room already began to swim, the edges softening.
“See? Better,” Dimitri crooned, stroking her cheek with a faux tenderness that made her skin crawl. It was worse than the violence. This performative, sickening kindness. “We don’t want you to be scared. We want you to understand. This is just… camaraderie.”
Vassily, meanwhile, had lit a cigar. He puffed it calmly, watching as Zhenya hauled her to her feet. “The dress is rather fine, isn’t it? A shame.”
Zhenya’s hands found the top of the delicate silk gown, the one the Minister’s wife had provided. With a sharp, rending sound, he tore it open from neck to waist. The fragile material gave way like tissue paper. Mila screamed, a raw, ragged sound that echoed in the small room.
Vassily was on her in an instant, his hand over her mouth again, his cigar held close to her face. The glowing red tip hovered an inch from her cheek. “Screaming is inefficient. It wastes energy. You will need your energy.”
The terror was a live wire in her chest. She stared, wide-eyed, at the burning ember.
“Hold her,” Vassily said to no one in particular.
Zhenya twisted her arms behind her back, his grip vise-like. Dimitri, his face a mask of detached interest, began to finish undressing her, his touches clinical. The torn dress fell away. The fine underthings were sliced through with a pocket knife.
She was naked, shivering violently in the cold air, exposed under the gazes of the three men.
Vassily took a long drag of his cigar. He didn’t move it to her face. Instead, he slowly, deliberately, brought the glowing tip down to the pale, unmarked skin of her inner arm, just above the wrist.
The sizzle was soft, almost polite. The smell was of burning pork and singed hair. Mila’s body arched against Zhenya’s hold, a silent, seismic convulsion of agony. A high, choked whine escaped Vassily’s fingers. He removed his hand from her mouth.
“You may scream now,” he said softly.
She did. The sound was ripped from a place deeper than pain. It was the sound of her dignity being incinerated cell by cell.
Vassily studied the burn, a perfect, blistering red circle. “A mark of belonging,” he mused. He then moved the cigar to her other arm, and applied it again, slowly, watching her flesh react, his breath steady. Then her collarbone. The outer curve of her breast. Each time, the same slow, deliberate pressure. Each time, a new jolt of impossible, focusing pain. He was creating a map of cruelty on her skin.
She was sobbing now, begging between gasps. “Please. Stop. Alexsi!”
“He can’t hear you,” Dimitri whispered, his lips against her ear. He had unzipped his trousers. “And he wouldn’t come if he could. He knows his place.” His hands groped her bruised flesh, squeezing hard. “This is your place now. Ours.”
Zhenya shoved her forward, bending her over the back of the leather sofa. The cold, cracked leather hit her stomach. He didn’t bother with preliminaries, didn’t pretend at any kind of arousal beyond the sheer exercise of power. He spat onto his hand, wiped it between her legs where she was dry and tight with terror, and then he drove into her in one brutal, splitting thrust.
Mila cried out, the sound punched out of her by the violation. It was a raw, tearing pain, a sensation of being ruptured. He fucked her with the grim, rhythmic efficiency of a machine, his hips slamming against her bruised backside, his hands digging into her hips. He grunted with each thrust, his breath hot and foul on her neck.
“Tighter than I thought,” he panted. “Good.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to disappear, to float away. But the vodka and the relentless, specific pain—the sharp thrusts, the throbbing burn of the cigar wounds—kept her anchored, horrifically present. She was here. Every second of it.
When Zhenya finished with a final, brutal shudder and a crude groan, he pulled out, leaving her feeling empty and ravaged. He didn’t move away. He simply swapped places with Dimitri.
Dimitri was different. He turned her over onto her back on the sofa, her legs hanging off. He looked into her eyes, his own cold and demanding. “Look at me,” he said, his voice quiet. “Don’t you dare look away.”
He entered her more slowly, but it was no less violent. It was a claim. He held her gaze as he moved, his thrusts deep and measured, a cruel parody of intimacy. “You see?” he whispered, his face inches from hers. “You see who owns you now? It’s not the quiet commander. It’s us. This is the truth he hides you from.”
She tried to turn her head, to block him out. He grabbed her jaw, forcing her face back to his. “Look. At. Me.” Each word was punctuated by a thrust. Tears streamed from her eyes, blurring his monstrous face, but she couldn’t look away. He was making her witness her own defilement.
Vassily watched from the armchair, puffing his cigar, sipping from the flask. When Dimitri was done, Vassily gestured to Zhenya. “Again. She’s loose now. Make it count.”
Zhenya, already hard again, took his turn. Then Dimitri again. It became a blur of heavy bodies, sweat, pain, and the relentless, pounding invasion. They poured more vodka down her throat between rounds, until she was choking and delirious, the room spinning, the pain flaring in nauseating waves. Her skin was a constellation of agony—dozens of perfect, circular burns on her arms, her stomach, the tops of her thighs. One on the soft swell of her breast was still smoking, the flesh puckered and blackened at the edges.
Through the haze, she heard the door rattle. A fist pounding. A voice, muffled but familiar, roaring her name.
Alexsi.
Her spirit, which had been compressed into a tiny, burning coal, flared.
She screamed. Not a whimper, not a sob, but a full-throated, raw, piercing shriek that tore from her violated lungs. “ALEXSI! IN HERE! HELP ME!”
Zhenya, who was inside her for a third time, his movements sluggish with drink and repetition, slapped her hard. “Shut your fucking mouth!”
But it was too late. The pounding on the door became an earthquake.
Vassily stood up, his administrative calm finally cracking. “He can’t get in. The door is—”
The oak door exploded inward. The lock tore through the frame with a scream of shearing metal and splintering wood. Alexsi stood in the doorway, backlit by the hall sconce. For a fraction of a second, he was just a silhouette. Then Mila saw his face.
The stoic commander was gone. What remained was something primal, unleashed. His eyes were black holes of pure fury, his face a contorted mask of rage and horror. He took in the scene: Mila pinned beneath Zhenya, naked, covered in burns and sweat and filth, the other two men standing by.
He moved.
There was no hesitation, no shouted challenge. He crossed the room in two strides. Dimitri, the closest, raised a hand. “Now, Alexsi, comrade, let’s be ration—”
Alexsi’s fist connected with Dimitri’s throat. It wasn’t a punch; it was a piston strike aimed to destroy. The crunch of cartilage was audible. Dimitri collapsed, gagging soundlessly, clawing at his neck.
Zhenya scrambled off Mila, fumbling for his dress trousers pooled around his ankles. Alexsi turned on him. There was no finesse. It was sheer, destructive force. A blow to the solar plexus doubled Zhenya over. A knee came up, smashing his nose into a bloody pulp. As Zhenya fell, Alexsi grabbed his head and slammed it, once, twice, three times, into the stone corner of the fireplace. The wet, crunching impacts filled the room. Zhenya went limp, his skull misshapen, blood pooling on the rug.
Vassily had drawn a small, elegant pistol from his discarded jacket. His hands were steady. “Stand down, Commander. This was ministerial sanction. You are committing mutiny.”
Alexsi turned to him. He didn’t speak. He just looked at the man over the barrel of the gun, his chest heaving, his knuckles bleeding.
“She is property,” Vassily said, his voice regaining its bureaucratic calm. “Damaged goods, but useful for morale. You are emotional. Stand down, and your i
discipline can be reviewed.” He kept the pistol leveled, a bureaucrat negotiating an inconvenient outburst.
Alexsi’s eyes flicked past him, to Mila on the sofa. She was curled inward, one arm across her breasts, the other hand pressed between her legs as if she could physically hold herself together. Her eyes were huge, glazed with vodka and shock, fixed on him. Her skin was a horrific mosaic of angry red burns, already blistering. The smell of burnt flesh and sex and blood hung in the dust motes.
“Ministerial sanction,” Alexsi repeated, the words flat, dead things. His gaze snapped back to Vassily. “For this.”
“For integration.” Vassily adjusted his grip on the pistol. “You of all people should understand the necessity of breaking a wild thing to the bridle. Now, step back. We will call a medic for her. This unpleasantness can be filed away.”
A sound came from Alexsi then, not a growl, but a low, visceral tremor from deep in his chest, the sound of a dam fracturing. He didn’t step back. He took one step forward.
“The next bullet in that chamber is for you, you sentimental fool,” Vassily said, his finger tightening on the trigger.
The door, hanging shattered on its hinges, framed new figures. The Minister stood there, his face flushed with rage and interrupted discourse. Beside him, the Sheikh Prince al-Tahir, his expression of polite interest shattered into pieces, his dark eyes taking in the room—the two broken men on the floor, the naked, burned girl, the standing officer with a gun. The prince’s entourage of two guards hovered behind, hands moving instinctively toward concealed weapons.
“What in the name of all hell is this?” the Minister roared, his voice filling the ravaged room. “Volkov! Explain this insanity!”
Alexsi didn’t turn. His entire world had narrowed to Vassily’s trigger finger and the shattered girl on the sofa. “He was burning her,” Alexsi said, the words horribly calm. “They were raping her. They said you ordered it.”
“Discipline and camaraderie are not your concern!” the Minister shot back, striding into the room, his eyes darting to the ruined men. “You’ve killed two valuable officers! Over a woman? You embarrassed me in front of our guest!” He gestured wildly toward the prince, who was staring, utterly still, at Mila.
Alexsi finally moved, but not toward his father. He turned his back on Vassily’s gun, a breathtaking act of defiance, and went to the sofa. He stripped off his dress jacket, the gold braid catching the feeble light, and draped it over Mila. It swallowed her. He went to gather her up, his hands hovering, unsure where to touch her that wouldn’t cause more pain.
She folded into him weakly, her face pressing into the rough wool of his uniform shirt beneath the jacket. A shudder wracked her so violently her teeth chattered. A small, wounded sound escaped her, almost a whimper.
“Quiet,” he murmured into her hair, his own voice shaking. “I have you. Be quiet now.”
The small group in the doorway advanced into the room. The prince’s guards fanned out, their attention on Vassily, who slowly, reluctantly, lowered his pistol. The Minister was vibrating with fury, getting ready to cause more of a scene, to berate Alexsi further in front of this foreigner, to reassert his dominion over this spiraling disaster.
The Prince, Sheikh al-Tahir, looked between the Minister’s apoplectic face and Alexsi’s bent form shielding the broken girl. His gaze settled on Mila’s bare legs protruding from the jacket, the raw, circular burns glaring like fresh brands. He spoke, his accent crisp, his tone cutting through the Minister’s sputtering.
“This is your father?” he asked Alexsi. The question was layered with a profound, disbelieving disgust. He was not asking about lineage; he was asking how the man who sired the soldier could be the same man who sanctioned the creation of this tableau.
Alexsi just nodded into his wife’s hair, his eyes squeezed shut. A single, searing tear tracked through the grime and blood on his cheek. It was answer enough.
The Prince turned to the Minister. All pretence of diplomatic bonhomie was gone. His youthful face, usually serene, was now a mask of cold, aristocratic wrath. He had seen this in his homeland, in the secret police quarters and the remote palaces of his uncles. He hated it. His soul, unlike the others in the room, was still intact enough to recoil.
“The memorandum for the S-400 batteries and the coastal radar shares,” the Prince said, his voice devoid of all inflection. “It is now amended. Addendum one: The personal safety and wellbeing of Mila Volkova is a condition of the contract. Any further harm to her, from any source, voids all agreements and triggers immediate sanctions.”
The Minister blinked, his rage momentarily stunned by this sudden, brutal pivot to finance. “Your Excellency, this is an internal matter of discipline, not a subject for—”
“Addendum two,” the Prince continued, as if the Minister had not spoken. “Quarterly, she will be flown to my clinic in Geneva for a full medical and psychological evaluation. My physicians will file reports directly to me. If her condition deteriorates, the deal is void.” He looked at Alexsi, who was now gently lifting Mila into his arms, the jacket wrapped tightly around her. “And he is promoted. Effective immediately. He is to be given command of the entire western border battalion, with full operational autonomy. He stays with his men. He keeps his resources. This is not a request.”
The Prince’s eyes locked with the Minister’s. The unspoken words hung in the smoke-tinged air: Your brutality is about to cost you nine billion euros. Fix it.
The Minister’s face cycled through emotions—fury, calculation, bitter resignation. The money, the strategic advantage, the prestige… it outweighed a broken girl and a disobedient son. He wasn’t even bothered by the terms, just annoyed at the whole inconvenient scene. “Of course, Your Excellency. The terms are accepted. The promotion is ratified. The… incidents tonight will be classified as a training accident.”
Alexsi stood, Mila cradled against his chest. She was whispering, her voice a shredded, airless ruin. He had to bend his head, his ear almost to her lips, to hear.
“Don’t be silly,” he whispered back, his own voice thick. He had heard her trying to stifle her whimpers, to be strong for him. It broke what was left of his heart. “I am upset. But I need to take care of you right now. That is all that matters.”
He turned, carrying her past his father, who looked away, past the prince, who gave a slight, solemn nod. He carried her out of the charnel-house room, down the hall of glass-eyed stags, and back into the cacophony of the banquet.
The music seemed to die as they emerged. A path cleared. Hundreds of eyes watched the decorated commander, his uniform torn and bloodied, carrying a small bundle wrapped in a gold-braided jacket from which a few tendrils of dark hair escaped. The burned, chemical smell seemed to follow them.
They did not go back to the sparse quarters. The Prince had already gestured to an aide, and they were directed to the opulent guest suite reserved for him—a sprawling set of rooms on the dacha’s top floor, all silk drapes, parquet floors, and a bathroom of veined marble.
Alexsi carried her inside and kicked the door shut. He stood for a moment in the lavish sitting room, disoriented by the quiet opulence. Then he carried her into the bathroom and set her carefully on a plush velvet stool. He turned on the taps in the vast sunken tub, testing the water until it ran warm, then hot. Steam began to fog the mirrors.
He knelt before her. “Mila.”
She was staring at nothing, trembling incessantly. The jacket had fallen open. In the brutal, clear light of the crystal sconces, the damage was meticulous, obscene. At least two dozen burns, each a perfect circle of destroyed skin, dotted her arms, her torso, the tops of her thighs. One, on the slope of her left breast, was particularly deep, the flesh cratered and black.
Alexsi let the tears come then. They fell silently, dripping onto the marble floor between his knees. He didn’t sob. He just allowed the devastation a physical outlet, even as his hands remained steady. He had to be tough. But he could also be human, here, with her.
“I need to clean the wounds,” he said, his voice roughened by tears. “I need to see… everything. May I?”
She gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod.
He was excruciatingly careful. He helped her out of the remains of his jacket. He peeled the tattered silk of her dress away from where it stuck to weeping burns. Every touch was preceded by a soft word, a warning. “This will sting.” “Lift your arm for me.” “I am so sorry.” He was overwhelmingly gentle, his soldier’s hands performing a priestly rite of cleansing.
When she was fully naked, he didn’t let his eyes linger on her body as a body. He assessed it as a battlefield, a terrain of injuries. The burns were the priority. But there was other damage. Bruises were already blossoming where fingers had gripped too hard. The internal violation was evident in the way she held herself, in the faint smear of blood on her inner thigh.
His jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek, but his hands remained soft. He helped her into the deep tub. She hissed as the warm water touched the burns, her body seizing. “I know,” he murmured, supporting her back. “Just breathe. Let the water soften them.”
He found a washcloth and a bar of mild, unscented soap. He did not wash her. He let her soak, the grime and sweat and violation slowly leaching away into the water, which clouded. He sat on the marble edge, one hand resting lightly on her unharmed shoulder, a point of stable, warm contact.
After a long time, she spoke, her voice still a ghost. “Andrey.”
He bent close. “What?”
“Call Andrey.” She swallowed, her throat working.
He understood. Andrey was not just his second-in-command. They had been in military school together since they were boys, had saved each other’s lives in icy mountain passes and muddy trench lines. They loved each other with the fierce, uncomplicated loyalty of brothers forged in hell. She was thinking of him. She thought Alexsi needed someone, and she couldn’t be it right now.