~FOUR YEARS LATER~

I'd been called many things in my twenty-five years on this godforsaken fucking planet.

Ubiytsa. The killer.

The devil. A bastard without a soul.

But what I was known as now, the name I answered to, the only identity I connected with anymore was...

Razoreniye. Ruin. I'm not kostya anymore And it was who I'd been for a long time, even before my father had taken me away to be fully shaped into the creature I was today.

They might have taken everything from me, my very humanity, but what they couldn't take from me was the one girl who was in that apartment building and thought I'd abandoned her.

She was all I had. All I held on to anymore.

I grab the news paper My free hand curled around the paper, the sound of crinkling echoing in my ears. My other hand was in a tight fist at my side, my blunt nails digging into the fleshy part of my palm so hard I knew I was breaking the skin.

Instant jealousy reared its head, a possessiveness that I'd only ever felt with her taking a stranglehold on me.

There, staring right back at me, was an engagement announcement. On the right-hand side was an image of her, and on the other was her prospective fiancé.

I saw red as I looked at his picture. I slowly glanced up and across the room, my heart beating quick and hard, everything in my blood rushing through my veins as pure rage filled me.

Before I knew what I was doing, I gripped the edge of the table and used my strength to flip it over. Then I picked up a chair and tossed it across the room, shards of wood breaking, splintering before they crashed to the flooг.

I raised my arm and slammed my fist into the plaster, my knuckle splitting open even more. I destroyed the fucking kitchen and living room, the kind of anger I felt not something I'd ever experienced before, not even when I was in the cage killing.

She was mine, and I'd fucking kill anyone who tried to change that.

Starting with Ivan.