Prologue
Three Years Ago
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My father’s office made me uneasy. Today it was worse, because Ilia walked in as I was cleaning the desk. He was twice my age and married, but it did nothing to stop the way he looked at me. His blue eyes raked over my body and made my skin crawl.
He’d been warned not to touch me again.
The first time it happened, I didn’t know what to do. He was my father’s employee and had a temper. He’d kissed me with slimy lips, and when I pushed him away, he apologized.
The second time, he didn’t. He grabbed me and pressed me against the hallway wall while my father was out, and the tongue shoved in my mouth was invasive. Ilia’s hands pawing at me made me buck and squirm away.
I reminded him about his wife, but all he’d done was laugh and say it was my fault. I was too tempting to keep his hands off.
Somehow, no matter how hard I tried to avoid him, he found a way to get me alone, and his unwanted advances escalated. I stopped wearing skirts after he’d put his hand up one while my father and brother were meeting with the Italians one afternoon. Ilia was my father’s right hand man, but the Italians were old fashioned and would meet with family only.
He threatened me, saying he’d tell my father I was trying to seduce him. Only a few people knew I wasn’t actually a housekeeper, but Sergey Petrov’s illegitimate daughter. My father hated me, and I wasn’t going to let Ilia give him any more ammunition. I gathered my courage, marched into my father’s den, and pleaded for help while my eyelashes were wet with tears.
He didn’t believe me.
And it broke me almost as much as the day my mother died. I felt like there was nothing left of me.
It was a blessing in disguise, though. It focused my fear of Ilia, condensing and polishing it down until it was a sharp point of anger I could wield. I fought back against every unwanted stroke or caress, every time he put his mouth on mine, even as he became more aggressive and I knew my time was running out.
Soon, touching me wasn’t going to be enough for him.
My half-brother Konstantine must have sensed something was wrong the day he’d come into my room, or maybe he’d seen Ilia go in there. I’d been changing and was down to my bra and underwear when the source of my constant torment slipped into my room and shut my door.
“Get out,” I said, grabbing a blanket off my bed and using it to cover up.
Ilia gave me the sly smile he always did when he was going to ignore my protests and do whatever the fuck he wanted. He stalked to me, wrenched the blanket from my grip, and had his hands on me a second later. His disgusting lips flattened over mine, muffling my cry. His rough fingers wormed their way beneath the waistband of my panties.
“Stop,” I said in a shaky voice.
My door burst open, and although Ilia moved fast, he was too late. My brother had seen everything, and his face turned to ice. Konstantine was barely twenty, and although he appeared skinny, he had a swimmer’s build and was deceptively strong. It took him minimal effort to drag Ilia from the room and down to my father’s office.
This time, when my father heard the story from Konstantine, he had no choice but to listen. My brother told my father to handle it, or he would. So Sergey gave Ilia a lecture, capped off with a throwaway threat not to touch me again, and Konstantine felt satisfied. My father’s orders were supposed to be law.
It kept Ilia away . . . for a while.
Then, his desire-filled glances my direction were back. He stood too close whenever we were in a room together, and he lingered. He slid back into his behavior so slowly, I couldn’t say anything about it. There was no specific moment when Ilia defied my father’s order, but I felt it increasing every day.
Building toward something terrible.
I dreamed he died in a horrible, bloody way, and it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a fantasy. I pictured different scenarios of his death in my head, and let them comfort me. Maybe I was naïve, but I believed bad people got what they had coming to them.
It was late morning when Ilia came into the office and I froze, the damp washcloth mid-wipe on the desktop. Alarm spiked and tensed my muscles. My father and Konstantine were out, and my stepmother and half-sister were in the garden in the back yard. It meant no one would hear me. I was alone, and the sly smile on Ilia’s face told me he knew this.
“How are you today?” he asked casually, strolling toward me.
I stiffened and backed away, abandoning my task. “I’m fine. I’ve just finished.”
When I tried to go around the far side of the desk and avoid him, he switched directions. “So, you have a few free minutes now?”
It hurt to breathe, and I sucked in shallow sips of air. “No, sorry.”
“Come on. Don’t be like that.” He put his hands on my hips, one then the other, and pulled me up against him. I hated his touch so much, it burned. It scorched against my skin like a hot iron. His face was right in front of mine and his thick breath was stifling, using up all the air I wanted.
With his hands on me, I couldn’t run. I had to fight instead, and my voice was full of warning. “Ilia, stop. You’re not allowed to touch me.”
There were weapons stashed all over the office. I’d cleaned this room every week for the last year, and knew the hiding places. There was a loaded gun Konstantine had showed me how to use hidden behind the books on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. A knife beneath the center couch cushion.
“I can’t help myself,” Ilia said. “I can’t stay away.”
He buried his face in the side of my neck. Shivers of disgust rolled down my spine as he sucked and licked. I put my hands on his chest and pushed as hard as I could, but he was so much bigger. I was a fly, barely of notice to a bear.
“No,” I said, loud and angry. How many times had I said it to him before? How many more times would I have to say it, and would it ever mean anything to him? “My father gave you an order.”
“He won’t care. We both know he doesn’t give a shit about you. Hell, if I asked, he’d probably give you to me.”
Horror flooded along my skin. I knew in my heart what he was saying was true. “Konstantine—”
“You think I’m afraid of your brother? I’m your father’s right hand. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
His hand snaked up my shirt, searching for my breast. No more. This will stop. I couldn’t tolerate his touch another fucking second, and slapped him across the face so hard, my palm stung. He grinned his sick, cruel smile. He seemed to enjoy it when I fought back.
“You fucking bitch,” he said, throwing me against the side of the desk. My knee cracked painfully against the solid wood. An angry sneer streaked across his face as he began to undo his belt buckle. “Now you’re going to get it.”
My knee ached, but I dashed around the desk, narrowly avoiding his grasp. I tore at the books on the bottom bookshelf, flinging them aside. My mind went blank with panic as I grabbed the gun. It was cold and dangerous in my hand. I wheeled around, aiming at his chest, and Ilia pulled to a stop.
He blinked, staring at the barrel. His reaction was pure disbelief.
The corner of his mouth lifted hesitantly.
His lips tugged slowly upward into that same sickening smile. Was this how he’d look as he raped me? He’d never stop until he had.
The gun was heavy and rattled in my trembling grip. I could read his thoughts in his eyes. He didn’t believe I’d use it on him. I was just a stupid girl, bluffing. Neither my threat or the chamber of the gun were empty.
“Oksana.” He said my name in a demeaning tone and took a step toward me—
The kick on the gun was almost as surprising as the puff of red mist and fabric fibers exploding outward from his chest. He groaned a sharp sound, stumbled forward, and landed on his hands and knees. As blood began to drip from the hole I’d put in him, splattering onto the hardwood, I didn’t feel horror or regret.
I felt absolutely nothing.
Empty.
The only thought running through my mind was I had just cleaned the floor this morning.