This is a story of a beautiful young Russian girl, who was such a beauty, a beauty so rare that no one can't ignore him after seeing her. But the only issue is that she was born in a world that existed in dull gray, the air thick with the stench of sweat, cheap fragrance, and despair. The bright colors of her dreams — gentle meadows, skies filled with rose-hued dawns, sunshine on still water — existed only in the mind, elusive glimpses grasped by her as a childhood would hold a worn-out doll. Only good things were in her mind, not in the real world. In the real world, people are unkind.
She was born inside a house in which innocence was a commodity, bought and spent with abandon. She lived at a prostitution center run by her parents, and their greed sealed her future with the black mark of a pen the moment she learned to walk.
Her beauty was a double bummer prize for her parents — a gift in the gaze of leering strangers, a curse in the hands of the people who had raised her. From that age, she could grasp words. They indoctrinated her with the lone truth they held__she had worth in the curve of the waist, the silk of the skin, and the swing of the hips. Never had they referred to her as a daughter—only as an asset, a breathing, living investment yet to mature. Their words cut at the heart of her spirit, each insult and demand carving more deeply into the fragile sense of self so that she became more shadow than girl, more hollow from inside the good things in her mind kept going away.
Each day blended seamlessly into the one after. The big door creaked open with the morning light, and a parade of men poured in — some with hungry gazes, some hidden beneath false kindness, but all holding the same intentions in their hands. Lila would observe as they walked past, their faces blurred like smoke down the corridors. She soon realized the power her beauty had, the way it caused men to hesitate, gawk, get lost for a moment too long. And yet, rather than feeling strong, she felt a butterfly caught beneath glass — admired but not free. Only use as a bait by her parents to get rich.
The center itself had been a haunted place. Its walls were smeared with the fingerprints of so many shaky hands, the floor worn smooth by the speed of frantic footsteps, the air humming with the overlap of laughter and sobs. Every corner carried secrets — whispers shared in blackness, prayers whispered into shattered mirrors. There was a corner, though, which Lila had taken for herself, a dimly lit alcove. It had been her sanctuary, a place in which the world fogged over and her mind could play free. In the narrow nest, she created castles out of mist and oceans of starshine. She conjured into existence hands that cradled gently, voices speaking her name in hallow instead of command.
Reality would not be denied. Her parents' mocking laughter snapped her back into the real world, biting and unrelenting. Their contempt dripped from their lips like poison, telling her that in their eyes she would forever be a price with a heart.
And it was on one such night — the sun bleeding across the horizon, casting a molten light through the broken windows — that the air changed. A stillness rolled through the center, heavy and thick, the type of stillness that comes before the storm. Lila sensed it first, a shiver down the spine. Then she saw him.
It's his name itself that bore weight, spoken in fear as in awe. Viktor, the Russian mafia's chief — a man whose reputation preceded him as a storm cloud's black shadow. But it wasn't his power alone that filled the air; it was how he carried himself, the unspoken command in his eyes, the way people gave way without being asked. His dominance hung over the room, heavy and magnetic at the same time. The air suddenly went heavier, and the environment got tensed and fearful.
For an instant, their gazes met across the room. Lila caught her breath. In his eyes, she did not perceive lechery, crude desire. She saw only a glimmer of recognition, as if he could penetrate the facade she sported, past the artfully crafted smiles and lipstick. He saw her. Really her. The quivering girl beneath the glitzy surface.
He took a step forward, each one almost agonizingly slow, his polished boots making a leaden noise on the floor. Her heart beat in her head so loudly that she could hear it with her ears.
"Your name?" His low murmur, laced with an accent as thick as silk and steel, wrapped itself around hers.
"Lila," she whispered, the tone as fragile as glass, giving Lila goose bombs.
His smile uncurled gradually, dark and ominous, yet tempered by some other thing: a promise, possibly, or a warning. "I believe that we can assist one another, Lila."
In that instant, her breath caught. The glimmer of hope was so fragile she nearly didn't dare believe it, but it existed. Might this man — the world's boogeyman — be the key to escaping the hell into which she had been born? Or would it become her next cage?
He saw Lila differently. For the first time in her life, Victor saw her, but not as an asset, but as a desire to take her.