title: Empires and Kings
author: Bextor, A.C.
description: I was known as the traitor’s daughter.   When I was five years old, my father was tortured, branded with the letter ‘Z’, then beaten and left for dead. The grueling punishment for his crime was a reminder to all others who dared threaten the Russian’s reign.   I was the young girl left behind. A living piece of the traitorous puzzle the Russian leader tried so diligently to ignore.   Until I grew up. No longer could he deny how much my existence had always been intertwined with his. And in order to survive the life I was thrown into, I was forced to learn my place inside of it. Vlad Zalesky was a tyrant to the lost.   I hated him.   He was a terror of mass destruction.   I was afraid of him.   He was a tormentor of the weak.   But not far beneath the venomous man’s outward indifference was something else.   Vlad Zalesky carried secrets of unrestrained burden. I wanted to know those secrets.   And because of my decisions, someone in our family had to pay.