Day twelve…

I spend the next few days dealing with the shit-show that Feodyr created. I have to fly to New York to meet Carmelo’s boss and smooth things over.

I could just tell them to go screw, but the fact is, I’m in the wrong. Feodyr reached out to Carmelo and his friends, and since Feodyr works for me, technically I invited them to the party. And then killed them all.

Carmelo’s boss, Lorenzo, is a piece of crap on legs, but fortunately, he’s a greedy piece of crap. Carmelo’s life is a bargaining chip. So we negotiate.

He tries to get me to meet him at a restaurant that he owns. I decline. We settle on a neutral restaurant that has no connections to his business or mine, in a busy tourist area, where neither side is likely to pull anything. We both show up with lots of muscle.

I have to sit there and listen to Lorenzo weep about how Carmelo was a beloved family man with a wife and six kids who will now grow up without a daddy.

But I’ve done my homework. I know that Carmelo has no kids, and he killed his wife when he caught her cheating on him with his own brother. He also killed the brother. One shot, two kills.

I mention this fact to Lorenzo. He goes through a minute or two of bluster, of pretending to be mortally offended. Then he throws back his head and laughs and laughs.

“You Russkies,” he chuckles.

Then he slams his fat hands down on the table, and the dishware rattles.

“Ten million,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to laugh.

We are there most of the day, haggling. I get him down to one million dollars and five percent of my territory for the next year. I could easily have afforded the ten million, but giving in would have made me look weak, the way I’ve made Vilyat look weak. And there is no greater sin in our world.

Fucking idiot Feodyr, putting me in this stupid position.

He’s in the hospital now, a John Doe, in a coma he may never emerge from. He’s under police guard. The cops are investigating the human trafficking angle, and suspect he may be one of the culprits.

We left him behind because I got distracted by Willow. The sight of her hurt like that, crying, genuinely terrified, made me lose my mind.

If Feodyr survives, I may take him out. Or for that matter I could whack him in the hospital. Or leave him to the Italians. The Italians know he screwed them over. They’ll get him sooner or later.

I’m not worried about him betraying us to the police. Feodyr shares my hatred of the authorities, a hatred that goes so deep it’s twisted into the DNA of our cells. Back in Russia, the authorities were indistinguishable from the mobsters. They are as responsible for Pyotyr’s death as the Toporov family.

I’m finally able to get on a plane and head home to Willow.

I sent her art supplies to keep her busy, and books of art instruction.

I wanted to leave her a message saying when I’d be back, but I stopped myself. Every kindness I show her is moving me farther down a slippery slope, and someday soon, if I’m not careful, I’ll fall right over the edge and never stop falling.

* * *

Evening of day fourteen…

He’s been gone for days now, and it’s driving me crazy. I sit in the garden and sketch the flowers and the trees and the ocean. Lukas is nowhere in sight.

Only two more weeks of this. I can do this. I can.

I want to see him.

I don’t ever want to see him again.

It’s better that he’s gone.

When night falls, Jasha opens my door without knocking.

“Be at the dinner table in ten minutes,” he says.

A wave of relief washes over me. No humiliating outfit tonight. I let myself feel more hope than I should under the circumstances. This means that Sergei doesn’t want anyone else to look at me…doesn’t it? He admitted he was jealous when other men touched me.

And I knew that the reason he paraded me around like that was because he wanted word to get back to my uncle. When I thought back on it, he was far more brutal in front of my uncle’s men then he was when we were alone.

It doesn’t excuse his horrible treatment of me. But if he’s coming to care for me…I might just get out of this alive. I might get home to Helenka and Yuri.

When I get to the dining room, there’s nobody else there – and no food.

“I want a change of scenery. We’ll eat outside tonight. Don’t read too much into it,” he growls at me.

“I would never.”

He glances up at me, a glint of something dangerous sparking in his ice-blue eyes.

He might punish me. A rush of arousal sizzles through me at the thought.

“If I didn’t know better, my little Willow, I’d think you were being sarcastic. To me.” He turns and walks away, and I quickly follow him.

He leads me out through a set of glass doors and into the garden. Thousands of twinkling lights drape the palm trees; it’s like a tropical fairyland. The sky overhead is clear, and the fat white pearl of the full moon bathes us in an otherworldly glow.

We sit at a table, and a maid hurries over and serves us. Tonight we’re eating cedar-planked salmon with a side of asparagus. She pours wine for me and vodka for Sergei.

We sit there in silence as we eat. A couple of minutes pass by, and still he doesn’t speak. His silence makes me nervous. It feels ominous and heavy.

“So you’re from Russia,” I blurt out. “Where in Russia, originally?”

He just looks at me with a frown and shakes his head.

“Do you still have family back there?”

He sets down his fork and flashes me a look, and for just a microsecond, I see an explosion of rage.

Don’t talk about his family.

“This bonding crap? Don’t bother,” he says coldly. “Save it for whoever you hook up with after you leave here. Normal guys eat that kind of shit up.”

Fucking douchewad.

“How would you know what normal guys do?” My tone is mild and conversational. I’m on risky ground, but it may be a risk worth taking. The last time I reached out to the human side of him, he walked away for a few days…but now I’m sitting outside under the stars, wearing normal clothes, and none of his men are there.

“I study them for weakness.” He stabs his salmon with his fork for emphasis, and shoves a huge bite into his mouth. He chews it with vicious bites.

“That sounds like a fun hobby.”

“I don’t do anything for fun.”

“You don’t read? Listen to music? Go to plays, or football games?”

He snorts in contempt. “You want to get to know me better, Willow? Would you like to paint each other’s nails and braid each other’s hair?”

Stung, I push my plate away. “Why, exactly, am I having dinner with you?”

He keeps eating. “Because I told you to, and I fucking own your ass, so you do what I say, when I say.”

“You own my ass for the next sixteen days.”

“Maybe.”

And what the hell does that mean, exactly? Is he threatening to keep me here indefinitely? But there’s no point in asking what his plans are. He’ll do what he feels like, when he feels like it.

“So you’re going to sit there and insult me for acting like a normal human being. We’re right back to where we started the first day I got here. Good to know where I stand.”

“You stand exactly where I tell you to stand.” I hear the sharp snap of warning in his voice, like a whip about to come down on tender flesh.

“Yes, you’ve made that clear. Repeatedly,” I say, with an unusually nasty tone. I stare down at my plate in silence, my stomach twisting. I’m losing my appetite.

“Eat.” There’s a tsunami of rage behind those words.

I could be childish and refuse, but I’m pretty sure he’d either beat the hell out of me or force-feed me. There are certain things that make him genuinely dangerous, and refusing food seems to be a trigger point for him. So I take the smallest bites that I dare, like a child having a mini tantrum. I stare into space, not saying a word. I wait for him to either send me back to my room or order me to bend over the table.

Instead, after a long, uncomfortable silence stretches between us, he speaks. “Don’t ask me about myself, my family, or my past.”

I feel the heavy darkness lifting just a little bit.

That’s progress. At least he’s telling me the rules.

I take a sip of wine and set the glass down. “So, did you mean what you said about thinking I should be an art therapist? Or maybe just an art teacher.”

“Or an artist with a gallery. I saw your sketches. You have talent.” His tone is considerably calmer now. It feels like a thick black storm cloud swept over him and then drifted away.

“What did you like about them?”

“Did I say I like them?” he grunts.

I shrug, keeping my face carefully neutral, but inside I’m hurt.

He takes a healthy swig of his vodka. “Everything you draw, you make more beautiful. It’s a reflection of the way you see the world.”

I’m shocked and touched that he thinks that. I’m amazed that he took the time to notice my artwork and form a judgement of it – and of me as a person, because of my artwork.

“I’m kind of a private person. I like the idea of painting to help people.”

“I could pay for you to go to grad school after you leave. You could get a master’s of fine arts.”

I look at him, startled. I almost ask, Why would you do that? But I suspect whatever answer he flung out would wound me. This need to follow up every moment of tenderness with a punishing blow…I am so tired of it.

So I get in a pre-emptive strike. “I won’t touch a cent of your money, ever. When I leave here, I’m done with all this. Your world, my family’s world. One way or another, you all make money from other people’s misery, and I hate it. If I go back to school, I’ll get loans or scholarships or work as a teacher’s assistant.”

“Suit yourself.” He drinks some vodka, then pins me with his gaze. “But you should take the money, because you’re going to need it. Your family will reject you when you leave here. Because of what I did to you. They are old-fashioned, and will view you as tarnished goods. An embarrassment. They’ll marry you off to someone who can keep you hidden away…or they’ll take more permanent measures.”

I open my mouth to argue, then shut it again. My heart sinks as he realize he’s right. I planned on taking my cousins, and hopefully my aunt, and disappearing as soon as I got home – but will I even be allowed in the front door of their mansion? Coldness seeps through me as I think about the fact that I may never see them again. I should have realized that, but I was too preoccupied with thinking about how to survive another day.

Even if Vilyat is dead – and he will be soon – that won’t help, because Edik and Latvi will never tolerate a woman shaming the family name.

Helenka, Yuri, their mother, me…all of us will be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.

“You knew that all along,” I say, looking at him accusingly. He knew that his punishment of me would last far longer than the thirty days he kept me. He knew that by taking me, and using me the way he did, he was handing me a life-long sentence when I’d committed no crime.

“Yes.” No apologies. No excuses.

I try to take another bite. Food suddenly tastes bitter in my mouth, and I choke down that one piece and push my plate away.

“So quit being so stubborn, and do something smart for once. Take the money. You’ve earned it.”

His words slash through me like a scorching-hot blade. It takes all my self-control not to grab my knife and jam it into his thick neck. “For being your paid prostitute?”

He meets my gaze, completely unruffled. “For putting up with my crap. For having more loyalty than the rest of the entire Toporov family put together. Not that they deserve your loyalty.”

“I already told you, I won’t touch a cent of your money.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself. It’s your funeral.” He attacks his salmon again, with gusto.

I look up at him. He just delivered my death sentence, and now he’s sitting there enjoying his dinner without a care in the world. A wave of rage swells up inside me, and it grows higher and higher and higher, until it’s a tidal wave that could drown skyscrapers.

I know it’s suicide, but I need to strike back, to hurt him the way he hurt me. I can’t stop myself. The wave is pushing me forward, helpless before it.

What can I do to him? If I throw my food at him, scream and rail at him, he’ll just smile. Kindness is the only way to wound him. And what kind of sick bastard is he, for that to be the truth?

“I know you weren’t born like this,” I tell him gently. “Something terrible happened to you when you were a child, to turn you into this. I can see the good man underneath all that, the moments of decency and humanity, and that’s what I will remember about you after I’m gone. The gentle way you touch me when we make love. The way you protected me from those men.”

I am a fool for doing this. I am as good as calling him a weakling. I am taunting a rabid animal.

Just as I guessed, he flies into a fury. I know him well enough to know what buttons to push. Where his tender spots are. Thank you, Sergei. You have made me into the kind of person who would use that knowledge to wound.

He leaps to his feet and his chair flies backward. “Don’t fucking tell me what I am, you little shlyuka!” I know that one. It’s the Russian word for whore. “If I tell you what made me into this monster, those will be the last words you ever hear!”

“I am sorry about whatever happened.”

And that, I mean sincerely. Something nightmarish shaped him into what he is, and whatever it was, no human should have to experience such suffering. But I am also using his pain as a weapon to be turned back against him.

Instead of answering, he springs forward and pulls me to my feet. He twists my arm up behind my back.

It hurts so much I cry out. He marches me past servants, past bodyguards. He takes me down the hall to his play room.

He doesn’t bother giving me orders. He bends me over the bed there.

“Move, and you die.”

Right now, I believe it. My words had their intended effect. They sent him into a different place, pushed him into the ice-cold steppes, a land where only monsters can survive.

He roughly shoves my dress up, shredding it, and yanks my panties down.

Then he lubes up my rectum, forcing his fingers into the tight, puckered hole. I jerk. He’s not gentle this time, and it really hurts.

A second later, he pushes in a butt plug, but it’s much larger than the last one he used, and it burns like a lump of coal shoved up there.

“Stand up.”

I do so, trembling. I am an idiot. I did this to myself. What kind of fool picks a fight with Sergei?

The black rage in his gaze is truly terrifying. He slowly, methodically, shreds my dress with his hands until it falls off me.

“Go back to your room. If you take it out, I’ll beat you until I see the light leave your eyes.”

Awkwardly, cursing him in my head, I do the naked walk of shame, and this time it’s a million times worse – because there is a plug protruding from my butt cheeks. Men are patrolling the halls, servants are cleaning, and they glance at me, their gazes holding a little too long before they look away. I’m mortified. I’m furious, and helpless. Tears roll down my cheeks, and I am shaking.

I limp all the way back to my room, lie down on the bed and wait for him.

The butt plug burns and throbs inside me, and every second feels like minutes, and every minute feels like hours. Time drags on.

Tears leak down my cheeks, and I squirm on the bed. I can’t focus on anything but the fiery pain inside me.

I struggle not to regret standing up for myself.

Damn it, I’m a human being, I can only stand having my feelings kicked and stomped for so long. It’s not fair. Why do I have to just sit there while he mocks me and gloats about ruining not just my life, but my cousins’ as well? Who wouldn’t lash back, eventually?

I can live through this. I can, I can, I can…

Can I?

I start to sob. How much longer will this go on? Would he really kill me if I disobeyed him? Mere days ago, he was kissing away my tears and holding me in his arms. Is that Sergei gone forever? Did I push him into a place from which he’ll never return?

I roll onto my stomach. It doesn’t help. I roll back onto my side.

Every second is a pulse of pain. Throb, throb, throb, throb, throb, throb…

I grit my teeth. I climb out of bed slowly, carefully, awkwardly, and hobble across the room, hoping that somehow shifting my body will help ease the pain a little bit, but it doesn’t. It feels like there’s a hot poker shoved straight up my ass.

I am crying big, gulping tears.

The door bangs open. He points at the bed and I stagger over.

“Face down,” he barks at me. I obey immediately.

I weep with relief as he slowly, slowly slides it out of me.

“Having fun?” he says nastily.

“No. Sir.” We’re back to being formal, and I want to make sure that he knows it.

More lube drips onto me, and he works it inside me with two rough fingers. I tense.

“If you tense up, it’ll hurt more. But I’ll enjoy that.”

He mounts me from behind…and reaches around and strokes my clitoris with his finger. He rubs the pad of his finger across it, back and forth.

Despite the pain, despite my fury, I feel those red-hot flames of desire licking up inside me, and he pushes the enormous head of his cock into my rectum. I stiffen, then force myself to relax as much as I can.

He thrusts into me, grunting with the effort, and it slides up further and further.

His cock is enormous, and it hurts. Every brutal thrust hurts. I’m crying, but at the same time, my need burns inside me like a bonfire.

He begins to pump into me, stretching me. It’s too much. I can’t go on. I buck and try to squirm out from under him, throw him off, but he holds me to him.

“Please,” I sob. “You’re hurting me.”

He stops instantly, and the pain fades. Then he resumes, but slowly this time. “Is that better?”

“Yes.” I choke on the word. I could beg him to just stop taking me up the ass, and I think he actually would. He’s never forced himself on me sexually. It seems important to him that I want it.

And I do, even now.

His sickness has found an answering perversity, deep inside me. It’s a sickness that I never knew existed before. The need for pain to spice up the pleasure.

Did he create it, or was it always there?

He picks up the pace and fucks me harder, but now it doesn’t hurt as much, and every fiery thrust is pure ecstasy. The pleasure builds and builds until I’m crying out, until that great explosion inside me sends rivers of pure pleasure burning through my body. His thrusts quicken, and I hear his harsh gasps of pleasure, and then he’s gripping my hips so hard he’ll leave bruises. He explodes inside me, and collapses on top of me, gasping. We lie there in silence, and he’s still thick and hard, and I feel the pulsing burn in my rear channel.

Then he slides out of me.

He’s about to leave me. I am desperate for some connection. For reassurance. I crack myself open to let him in. I burn for him. And he’s going to leave me with nothing.

“All those clothes that you picked out for me,” I call out to him, as he’s about to walk away. “They were perfect for me. And the books. You took the time to get to know me, even before I came here. You did it to make me comfortable. Because you’re not all bad. You’re not.”

The look that he casts back is half pity, half amusement. “Was it love at first sight, Willow? Or did I do it to mess with your head?”

His words are like a punch to the stomach. I feel sick as I watch him go, the way he always does. Without a backward glance. Dismissing me from his mind.

Sixteen more days.

My body may survive this, but my mind? My heart? If he were brutal all the time, it would be easier. It’s the taste of paradise followed by the toxic rain of his hatred that’s corroding me from the inside out.