THE DEATH TRADE

1

Eyes wide open, Gabriela opened her mouth once more: "what are you talking about?" 

Just as her sentence ended,  the man who had rushed to help her had had a gentle grasp on her arm, the worried look never leaving his face. "You. You're alive," his tone expressed relief, with each syllable sounding gruffer than the previous. 

Then, a housekeeper stepped forward. "Call the doctor!"

"It's a miracle." 

"Good souls never die too early," another person spoke. 

At this point, Gabriela's head was spinning in circles. There were too many people circling her, all unfamiliar faces. Though, none of them seemed to show an ounce of hostility. She decided to speak again, directing her words to the man by her side, "who are you?" 

He seemed shocked, but fixed his demeanor nonetheless, offering her his other hand to balance on and stand up. When she reluctantly accepted, he responded, "I'm Viktor Petrov, I've been your butler for 22 years." 

She said nothing, only stared at him blankly. He looked old - in his fifties, she would have guessed. Yet, she was certain she had never seen this man in her life. Besides, she was only 21. "You have the wrong-" 

Before she was able to complete her sentence, the path around her was cleared by a bald man in a buttoned-down shirt. He had looked equally as shocked as the others, but not nearly as excited to see her alive and well. 

"Lilia Reznikov," he spoke, voice low. It seemed he was a man with unspoken authority because as soon as he approached, the crowd began to take steps back. 

Lilia? 

"Doctor, should we give you some space?" Viktor asked, and with the man's small nod, he began to usher everyone out of the room. 

When they were alone, her guard suddenly spiked back up, as if by instinct. "Where am I?" She stared him down, her feet digging into the glacial floor. 

"Post-traumatic amnesia?" He mumbled to himself, taking several steps towards her, "but that's not possible, you've been dead for hours." 

"Get back," she took a step away from him, "and answer my question." 

"Calm down please, I can see that you're on edge, but I am the last person in this vicinity to hurt you." His words seemed to have no effect on her, so he decided to raise both of his hands, taking a step away from her too. "I'm Dr. Ray, Mr. Reznikov hired me to take special care of you. We're currently in your suite after your heart stopped for several hours. But apparently, that was not enough to take the soul out of you Miss Reznikov."

Everything he said made absolutely no sense to her. But that was not what was on her mind. Questions began circulating as she began to make connections with everything she had heard ever since her awakening. 

Why did everyone keep referring to her as Miss Reznikov? 

Had they mistaken her for someone else? 

What happened after she closed her eyes that night?

Was this the afterlife?

She took this moment to analyze him: he was skinny and short. He did not have much flesh on him and was a soft-spoken man. Gabriela knew better than to judge a man's ability to fight by his physique, but she knew she could take him on if she wanted. Knowing this, she took a confident step forward, fixating her eyes on his. "I don't.." She started speaking, but her head began to turn right as she met his eyes, making her stop in her tracks. 

Her hand swiftly traveled to her head, covering the pounding that had begun pressuring her right eye. 

"Are you alright? Miss Reznikov?"

Her vision began to darken, with one eye shutting before the other, until she stood with a line of vision that extended nowhere beyond a pitch-black room, and the only thing she could feel was the familiar sensation of a knife across her neck.