“NOW, WHAT are you going to do for me, Pavel? Tell me, yes?”

Pav kept a tight hold on the comic book in his twelve-year-old hands as he glanced up from the glossy cover featuring a man in a red cape to see his father staring at him from the driver’s seat. He’d been too distracted by the fact he had a comic book to even realize his father was speaking to him.

He didn’t get comics often.

Rarely, actually.

It wasn’t that his father, Dimitri, didn’t want to give him things, Pav knew. Dimitri gave Pav as much as he possibly could, but only when they were having a good month. Or, that’s how his father always put it whenever he came home with a little toy or a bag of sugary sweetness for Pav.

A good month, son. It’s been a good month for the boss.

Pav never thought his father meant he was the boss, though. Dimitri was always careful to make that clear. Kotovs aren’t anything but scum to use or wipe off around here, yeah? Remember that, Pav.

And he did.

Remember it, that was.

“Well?” his father demanded.

Dimitri’s dark eyes darted from where Pav was sitting in the passenger seat to the big building in front of them. Well, one building. It looked like one of many that was connected to other buildings. A few dark-colored cars were parked haphazardly throughout what might have been a parking lot, but there weren’t exactly lines to designate spots for the vehicles.

Pav had never been here before. Anytime his father worked, Pav stayed with one of Dimitri’s friends.

Looking at the dark, looming building, he wished he could have gone to his father’s friend’s home instead. One was a man they lived with; another was a nice lady with crinkly skin and white hair who always smelled like bread and reminded him of what he thought a grandmother would be like … you know, if he had one.

He didn’t, though.

He didn’t have a grandmother, or even a mother, for that matter. He didn’t even know his mother’s name. Dimitri said the dead should stay dead, especially when the dead was that kind of dead. Pav wasn’t sure what that meant.

But he had a bed that was clean, with sheets that had his favorite superhero printed on them. And he had a few toys that he took special care not to break because he knew to take care of his shit, as his father liked to say. And, of course, he had his dad, too.

His dad who kept him warm, fed, and clothed. His dad who never raised a hand to him and kept him out of trouble.

Pav didn’t want much more.

“Pavel,” his father said. “What did I tell you?”

Pav held tight to the comic and glanced down at the glossy cover again. “Stay here, don’t get out of the car, and be quiet.”

Dimitri’s shoulders relaxed a bit, and his stare softened. Without a word, his father reached over, cupped his head in his large palm, and drew Pav close enough to hug him and press a kiss to the top of his forehead.

“That’s it, my boy. That’s it. I’ll be out in a few.”

He thought he heard the shake in his father’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. That was the thing about Dimitri Kotov. Even when he was afraid of something, he didn’t show it. He taught Pavel to be brave in that way.

“Don’t you get out of this fucking car; I will be right back.”

His father said it like Dimitri was the one who needed to hear it, and not Pav. He didn’t get the chance to ask his father about it, though, because in the next second, Dimitri was out of the car and slamming the door to their shitty Corolla shut before Pav could even open his mouth.

He watched his father walk toward the building and waited for Dimitri to glance over his shoulder even once. He didn’t.

That was the last time Pav ever saw his father. Walking into the Boykov Compound. Dimitri never came back out.

Not alive, anyway.

• • •

Pav was still clutching to that comic book hours later when he was dragged across the cement floor of the Boykov Compound and tossed at the feet of a man who, from the ground looking up, seemed bigger than a bull.

And the man looked about as irritated as a bull, too.

Sneering a bit at him, the man nudged at the comic book in Pav’s hands with the tip of his shoe. “What is your name, child?”

Pav heard the shudder of papers, caused by the comic book’s pages fluttering as his hands shook. He bet his eyes were peeled as wide as they could go as he struggled to find words to say to this large, domineering man waiting for an answer.

Around him, shoes shuffled on the floor, and a cough echoed. Other than that, it was all silence and fucking dampness.

He would remember that the most about this place, later in life when he relived these memories. The dampness and silence.

“Your name.”

“Pa-Pavel,” he whispered.

The man above him grunted, and Pavel tried to ignore the stinging in his arms and legs from the many scratches and scuffs he’d received as he’d fought against the men who had dragged him out of his father’s car.

Dimitri had told him to stay, after all.

They didn’t listen, though.

“Could just … get rid of it,” a man behind Pavel suggested. “I know the kid’s father—there ain’t a person to take him, boss. He’s got no family. A mother who died from shooting poison in her veins, and everybody else is gone, too, or they want to stay gone because of what his father was involved with.”

Again, the man above him grunted as cold, gray ices looked Pav’s way once more. “Seems a shame, no? A child as a sacrifice because his father’s a thief. But what else could be done with him? Look at him—small, and frightened. Like a puppy.”

“Puppies can be trained and kept,” someone else muttered.

The man’s eyes lit up for a minute as he regarded Pav with a hint of a smile forming. “Yes, trained and kept. Just like a puppy.”

Pav blinked.

What?

The large man kneeled down, but was careful to never let his dark, fitted suit touch the dirty cement floor as he came eye level with Pav. He pointed between Pav’s wide-eyed gaze with two fingers, and then at his own narrowed eyes in the same way.

“I see you, Pavel Kotov,” the man murmured, “and soon, you’ll learn to see me, too. My name is Vadim Boykov, but like everyone else, you may call me boss. Learn it quickly, follow the rules, and unlike your father, you may someday see the outside of these walls again.”

Vadim.

Pavel was never going to forget that name.

Then, Vadim used those two fingers of his to tap at the bottom of his throat. An action Pavel didn’t understand, but the coldness that radiated from Vadim as he did it was enough to make him shiver on the ground.

“You belong to me now. To the Boykovs.” Vadim tipped his head to the side and nodded to himself, adding, “Beware of those who show you mercy, young Pavel, for those are the people who know the essence of your fear.”

• • •

Ten years later …

The screams down the hall were only muffled when a morbid crack echoed down the corridor. Pavel continued his work three chambers down, as though he hadn’t heard anything at all and nothing was wrong. That was best. A decade working in the Boykov’s Compound taught him there was nothing worse than sticking one’s nose where it did not belong. Unless something directly involved him, Pavel was better off staying far away.

Filling the bucket with ice-cold water from the tap sticking out of the wall again, he headed to the man shackled in the corner. Other than the food Pavel brought him once a day—which wasn’t much—water and bread, just enough to keep him alive in between daily beatings and whatever punishment he was delivered from Vadim—this was the man’s hell.

Cold water splashed on him regularly. A beating whenever someone came in to deliver it, unless it was Pavel ordered to do it. Food when the time struck twelve in the afternoon. A hard, cracked cement floor that was always cold and wet. Shackles around his wrists and ankles, and occasionally one around his throat when he needed to be reminded that he was now a Boykov dog, and nothing else—an animal made to sit in his own waste, and be fed or taken care of when someone else deemed it appropriate.

He was no longer in control of his life.

Pavel didn’t even know the man’s name. He also didn’t know why this man—or why any of the other people locked in the chambers of the Boykov Compound—had been brought to this place. All he was told was that quite simply, these people deserved to be here because perhaps they had broken the rules, or maybe they had stepped out of line and needed a reminder about who exactly was the boss.

It didn’t matter.

He’d never asked for more details. His curiosity was not important enough to risk his own safety. He could be the next person shackled to a cement floor getting cold water poured over his head regularly with daily beatings in between.

Wasn’t it bad enough he was here?

That he’d been here for ten fucking years?

It was easier this way.

Hauling the water across the floor, Pavel tipped the bucket over the sleeping man’s head. How he was able to fall asleep while a man was killed just two chambers down—making sure he screamed the entire time, right up until his last few seconds on earth—was anyone’s guess.

Maybe because they became numb.

This was life now.

It took the cold water splashing down over the man’s shaking body—even in his sleep, he trembled, his bruises darker than normal and his one arm twisted at an awkward angle—for him to wake up. The man gasped and his eyes flew wide. Bloodshot and terrified. Like for the moment, he was somewhere else in his dreams. Now, he was awake again.

“Welcome back to hell,” Pavel murmured.

Bending down to be at a similar height to the man, he used the rag he’d tucked into the pocket of his black jeans to wipe at the mess of the man’s face. No one had ever told him not to be kind to these prisoners. No one had ever told him that while he often was made to deliver harsh punishments, and keep them alive until their next ride through hell, that he could not give them some sort of reprieve.

If anything, it helped him.

The man’s trembling didn’t let up, but he was far more relaxed to see Pavel standing in front of him and not someone else. Pavel knew that who woke this man up would determine how the remainder of his day would go.

Either pain, or … well, less pain.

Sometimes.

“Death,” the man croaked.

Pavel’s hand slowed from wiping the rest of the dried vomit from the man’s mouth. “What did you say?”

They were the first words he could ever remember saying to the man. He rarely spoke—if he didn’t indulge conversation, it was highly unlikely that he would learn anything about them. Learning things about them might cause him to get attached. He could not afford to be attached to people who were only destined to die.

Possibly by his own hand.

“When I see you,” the man whispered, “I see death.”

Pavel stilled in place. “Why?”

“Doesn’t death always offer a kind hand before he pulls you to the other side?” Swallowing hard, the man said, his voice tired and raspy, “Your kindness only hides what you’re here to do. You will use that same kind hand that you use to feed me and help me, to kill me someday, won’t you?”

“I—”

“You are the Zhatka—the Reaper.”

Pavel hadn’t realized it, then, but conversations always traveled in the chambers. This man hadn’t been the only one to hear that nickname. He wouldn’t be the last one to use it, either.

It was not a name Pavel wanted.

Not one he needed.

And yet, as the days melted into months, and then into years … he found being Zhatka in the chambers was easier than being Pavel. He even started to forget who Pavel was.