Chapter 2
Yelena Belova knew they couldn’t take her heart.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t take everything else.
She woke up strapped to a table, the place so similar to her graduation ceremony that she felt sick.
“Привет, Yelena.”
She didn’t deign to say hello back, though her nose wrinkled into a sneer.
“Don’t give me that look, маленький паук. You’re lucky. You’ve been chosen for a special project of ours.” The woman, an agent of the red room, smiled. ‘Little spider’, she had called Yelena. The nickname should have been kind, motherly. But Yelena had heard false, sweet words all her life, and they were far from that.
“F*ck you.”
“Now, now, is that any way to speak to your superiors? We’ve set up all this just for you.” The voice was cold and mocking.
Yelena laughed bitterly, glancing around.
Head gear, syringes full of serums, and a mélange of other medical supplies surrounded her.
That cannot be good.
Yelena let that reckless, carefree rage in her heart burn in her glare.
“The other widow is dead, you should feel lucky, Yelena.”
Those words- they were the things that sent shock and fear riding through her system.
Yelena knew immediately that she had failed at hiding it, considering the slap that sent her head cracking against the table and her cheek stinging. The same slap she had received since she was six and that heart of hers showed through.
“Sloppy,” the woman before her admonished. “Your emotions must never show. Even more than that, attachments are shortcomings. Didn’t we teach you that? Were you simply too weak to learn?”
“Attachments are far from shortcomings.” Yelena’s voice was full of quiet rage.
Even in her own mind, her words rang differently. She didn’t know if it was the truth. She’d failed, hadn’t she? Her pain made her stronger, but that didn’t make the grief feel any less crippling.
Bianca was gone.
Her chance at escape was gone.
Her chance at being their most valuable assets was gone.
Yelena had no idea how to move forward.
“Oh, you’re mistaken. But soon it won’t matter. There will be no doubt left in your mind. No more mistakes. You will be perfect and you will be ours.”
“What?” The bewildered word spilled out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
“Mind control can do wonders, dear.”
“No-” There is no way- “You can’t do that.”
“Oh, маленький паук, you know nothing of what we can do.”
Yelena, for once, had no words.
Her family was gone. Now Bianca was too. And soon, her mind wouldn’t even be her own.
That rage in her had died, and that heart in her bled.
And the experimenting began.
They began with the serums.
The syringes were stabbed into her flesh and her world went white with coursing, mind-numbing, unforgiving pain.
Then, immediately after, electrocutions.
Yelena screamed until it hurt to breathe.
There were no thoughts left in her head, nothing. All she knew was pain and numbness and orders.
They poked and prodded, questioned and ordered. They made her snap her own fingers.
She did it all.
They couldn’t take the heart of Yelena Belova.
But they d*mn well took her mind.