Day four…

I’ve avoided her for two days now.

I know she and I aren’t a forever thing, and I’m bracing myself for the shock of losing her in twenty-six days.

I’m trying to wean myself from her, like a drug addict. I will only let myself have a little bit of her at a time. I will never let myself get used to the peace I feel when I bask in her sweet presence.

Just having her back under the same roof helps ease the craving a little, but it’s not enough.

The frustration’s starting to build up inside me, and I know I won’t be able to hold out much longer. I should hate her for making me a slave to my desires, but I just can’t. God help me, I’ve tried.

Now I’m leaning back in my leather chair, in my recently repaired office with Jasha, Maks, and Slavik, and they’re sitting in a half-circle of chairs facing my desk. Watching me and trying not to let me see that they’re watching me.

A week ago, the day before I went bring my Willow home, I was swallowed up by one of my black rages.

It happened when I found out that Vilyat is most likely operating under the name of Cataha in a district east of Leningrad. My men believe that he was involved in the gutting of a young, kidnapped secretary who tried to escape him as he transported her to a brothel. He’s managed to bribe the police into looking the other way, though.

I saw the autopsy pictures, the look on her face. There’s a particular way that Vilyat guts his enemies and drags their intestines out of them; this matches his M.O. exactly, and the physical description relayed by my spies matches him as well.

I shouldn’t have looked at the close-ups. The secretary’s face gaped open, her mouth slack, her unseeing eyes a mirror reflecting back the agony of her last moments. She’d been pretty once; you could just barely tell from the picture.

The pictures had slipped from my fingers, drifting noiselessly down to my Oriental rug. I’d destroyed my office. I’d also broken Slavik’s nose. That was when I knew I couldn’t finish my mission without Willow.

I need her. She’s the only thing that holds back the darkness.

My men want reassurance. They want to know that their leader hasn’t fallen off the deep end. We’re so close now.

We have a list, and we are crossing names off it.

The men on that list are rich and connected, and they aren’t easy to get to. And it is vital to us that not a single one of them dies quickly or easily. They all have to know that it is coming, and suffer for months before the horrifying finale.

Humiliation. Terror. Despair. Those are the dishes we force down their throats before they die.

It was the list that inspired us to embark on what seemed like a suicide mission all those years ago – a bunch of street rats starting from nothing and building our own criminal empire in St. Petersburg, Russia. Creating legitimate businesses both to earn money and to hide our less legitimate enterprises.

We were attacked, and every time we struck back ten times as hard, with a viciousness that left no doubt as to the high cost of resistance. Year after year, we forced our way further in. Every last one of us has been shot at one point or another – more than once. We’ve fought until our bones broke. Our knuckles are studded with thick, knobby scars. Feodyr was run over. Jasha, Maks and I have been stabbed. We’ve survived car-bombing attempts that scorched and scarred us. A whore on a rival’s payroll tried to cut my throat.

None of it even came close to the agonies that we suffered at the hands of the Toporovs and their lackeys. The men on our list.

“Maks, why don’t you tell everyone our excellent news?” I say, gesturing at him. He smiles grimly and nods at the other men.

“We’re in, all the way,” he says. “We will be providing the security.”

The other men start cheering, and Jasha hurries over to the liquor cabinet. He starts pouring vodka into glasses. This is truly a cause for celebration!

We’ve been working on this plan for the better part of a year now. Eliminating competition of all kinds. Bribing or killing officials, whatever it took.

We’re building a giant trap to catch a bunch of rodents. The last few names on the list.

One of my shell companies was awarded the construction contract for the rat trap a couple of months ago. We’re almost done. It’s not fancy or pretty; it doesn’t need to be. It serves a purpose. A hideous purpose.

The most important thing about the building is the location. Deep in the forest, in an area far enough out from the city that nobody will accidentally stumble on it. The clients who will use this building demand guarantees of safety and anonymity. We’re giving them the illusion of it. Then the trap will snap shut on their vile necks.

As we built the trap, we wove in security systems hidden so cleverly that they’ll never be found – until it’s too late.

And with us providing the “security” now, we will have complete control over the grand opening.

Willow is back, and the last piece of my plan has fallen into place. It’s like she’s my good luck charm.

“So soon,” Slavik gloats, rubbing his big, meaty paws together. “I’m going to blow up pictures of their faces and jerk off to them.”

Maks gives him a scornful look. “Whatever turns you on. Freak.”

Slavik cuffs him on the side of the head, hard, but from him, that’s a gesture of affection.

Jasha comes back and hands us cut crystal glasses of pure, clear Stoli Elit vodka, and we knock it back, savoring the ice-cold liquid and the taste of revenge.

“Who ever thought we’d come this far?” Maks says happily. “Pour me another, Jasha!”

“What, I’m your bitch now?” Jasha growls, but he complies.

After a few more rounds, the other men head back to work. Jasha stays behind.

“Anastasia asked me if she could go back to her old house to get a few personal mementoes,” Jasha says. “We burned all of Vilyat’s crap, but we saved her stuff and boxed it up in the garage.”

When Vilyat fled the country, I was able to do some behind-the-scenes maneuvering and I got the deed for his house signed over to me.

“Whatever. Go get whatever dumb shit she’s asking for and bring it back here.”

“I could, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

I shrug. I’m feeling magnanimous. The people who live in that house work for me. The house was a gift to them, a reward for their excellent service.

“Sure. Watch her every second. Let me know if she tries anything. Obviously, her kids stay here.”

“Yes, she says she’s fine with that. She said she just wants to get some baby albums and their baby shoes.”

I shake my head at the foolishness of women. And at children who grew up with a life like that – with parents who would save a curl of their golden hair, or their tiny little shoes.

Vilyat was an abusive bastard, but fortunately for them, he was a workaholic who wasn’t around them that much. His kids grew up drowning in luxuries, and their mother loved them.

As for me? The only reason I didn’t starve to death as a baby was because the family next door crept in while my parents were passed out drunk and fed me. They live in comfort now, in a retirement home I bought for them ten years ago, in the Mediterranean. They don’t know that it was me who bought it for them. Maybe they suspect. But they haven’t questioned their good fortune. They went from living in a tin shack and digging through dumpsters for filthy clothing and rotting food, to living in a warm, sunny seaside condo.

And then my mother miscarried multiple times, because after I was born, her drinking got worse and worse, and my father would punch her in the stomach whenever he found out she was pregnant. Between the alcohol and my father’s blows, nothing could grow in that poisoned flesh. She was in jail for slashing the face of one my father’s whores for most of the time that she was pregnant with Pyotr. That’s the only reason he survived. He would have been better off if he had died like the others.

I was six when she came home with him, and the neighbors had recently moved away, but I was there to care for him. I stole food for him. I stole money to buy him diapers and clothing.

Thinking about Pyotr too much makes black spots swim in front of my eyes, and I shake my head violently to dislodge them. It doesn’t work, because they’re not real. Jasha looks at me questioningly, with a hint of worry carefully but not completely hidden.

I have to cover. He can’t know the truth. He can’t know the darkness isn’t gone, I’ve just forced it into a corner of my mind until the last man on our list has gurgled his final breath.

“That’s it?” I bark, waving my half-empty glass of vodka at him. As if that’s why I’m shaking my head. “What am I, an infant? Why didn’t you serve it to me in a baby bottle?” I drain it all in one gulp and thrust it back at him for a refill. He takes it and visibly relaxes. Asshole Sergei, he’s used to. It’s Crazy Sergei that’s making him nervous.

Later that afternoon, Jasha and Anastasia come back from their trip, and he comes to report to me.

“As far as I can tell, she didn’t try anything,” he says. “She didn’t take a purse with her. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and sandals, so she wouldn’t have been able to hide much, but even so, I searched through everything she brought back. It was all picture albums and baby stuff, like she said. She did ask to use the restroom at one point, and I didn’t go in with her, but I patted her down right after she came out, and again when we got back here.”

“Her tits? Her crotch? Her ass?”

“What do you think I am, sir?” he snorts. “Soft? Afraid of a little titty? Yes, I patted her down everywhere.”

I frown. Something feels a little off.

Anastasia loves her kids. It’s not unreasonable to think that she’d want to get all that sentimental crap that women love, all those childhood mementoes. It’s not surprising that a woman would need to go pee after a two-hour drive.

And yet.

It could be something, it could be nothing. I’m not sure what I suspect. She certainly couldn’t have smuggled any weapons past Jasha.

I can’t imagine what Anastasia would fetch from her former home that would be any threat to me, or what she could possibly try to pull. Up until a couple of months ago, she was a drooling, drugged-out husk. She doesn’t seem like the type who is capable of making long-term plans. And she knows I’m letting her and the kids go after thirty days. Right now, they’re safer than they will be once they leave.

Still, I haven’t gotten this far by ignoring my instincts, or by being too trusting.

“Just watch her,” I say. “Keep an extra eye on her. Monitor her computer activity especially. She’s obsessed with that shit.”

He nods, and leaves.

Maks passes him, coming into my office, carrying a laptop.

“Sir?” he says.

“Yes?”

“You need to see what Willow’s been searching for on her computer.”

He carries over a laptop.

When I see it, fury rises inside me.

Who is Ludmilla? Ludmilla Volkov. Is Ludmilla a common name in Russia? Ludmilla Toporov. Origin of the name Ludmilla. Variations of the name Ludmilla. Ludmila. Ludmylla. Famous women named Ludmilla.

These are some of the search terms that she’s been typing in.

“I see.” Anger bites into me.

She did this, after I delivered the turquoise jewelry and shoes to her room. She did this knowing that I can see everything that she’s searching for online. So she wanted me to see these searches.

Her computer activity has been a concern to me. In Ohio, when she was at her apartment, she used a very effective virtual private network. There are numerous reasons that she could have done that. I understand that she needs to protect herself against her uncles, Vilyat and Edik. Either one of them would snatch up her and Anastasia and the kids for their own revolting purposes. Vilyat would punish his wife for running and taking the kids; he’d torture her to death, he’d sell Willow off to be married or enslaved, and he’d marry his daughter off to someone much sooner than Willow thinks. And sweet little Yuri? Vilyat would beat him to death for not being a cruel, dark monster.

As for Edik, if he got hold of them, he would use all of them against his brother, because Edik knows that Vilyat is the reason I’m destroying their family. He doesn’t know why, but he knows that he’s lost at least half of his business and has been marked for death. He lives in fear because of something Vilyat did, and for that, he wants to hurt Vilyat and then kill him.

Of course, I plan on ending this long, drawn-out game very soon, but Willow doesn’t know that. So maybe she was using the VPN to try to keep track of what her family is up to.

Or maybe she has been spying on me. Maybe that’s how she found out Ludmilla’s name. How else would she know it?

I send Maks to get her, and have him bring her straight to my office. She’s never been here before. I don’t mix business with pleasure, but this won’t be pleasant.

I am standing by the door when Maks shoves her through it. He slams the door as he leaves her with me.

She’s wearing white cotton Palazzo pants and a scoop-neck shirt, and a flower crown headband. My sweet little bohemian angel. I slam the door shut, then smack her on the side of the head so hard she staggers.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing with that search?” I snarl at her. I back her up against the wall. “You think that was funny?”

She goes as pale as a ghost and shrinks in on herself. She’s genuinely afraid of me right now. Once upon a time, that would have turned me on. Right now, I feel sick and furious. I don’t want to have to beat the shit out of her, but I need to know what she knows.

I grab her throat and squeeze until she wheezes and claws at my hands. “You knew I’d see that search!” I bark at her.

“Yes!” she spits back at me, tears filling her eyes.

I slam her so her head bangs against the wall. “Where did you get the name Ludmilla? Did you hack into my computer?”

She’s crying now.

“No! I overheard you talking in the hall the other day! You said that you couldn’t wait to kiss her! Or something like that.” She glares at me, tears spilling onto her cheeks.

I let go of her, and let out a long, angry breath that I realize I’ve been holding.

Then I measure out each word carefully, to keep myself from shouting. “I remember exactly what I said. I did not say I couldn’t wait to kiss her. I said I could kiss her. That’s an expression people use when they are very pleased with something that someone has done.”

“Who is she to you?” she screams at me. “Is she your girlfriend?”

I could just slap the shit out of her and tell her it’s none of her business. Instead I’m even crueler. I say the one thing I know will break her heart.

“I never told you we were exclusive,” I say nastily.

She lets out a screech of pain and rage, and flies at me, trying to claw at my face. God help me, it turns me on so much that my cock leaps to attention, instantly rock hard. She’s a magnificent tiger, and her jealousy speaks to her burning passion for me.

I grab her and pin her up against the wall, stretching her arms above her head, shoving my groin against her so she can feel my full, hard length.

She writhes madly, turning me on more. When I lean down to kiss her, she spits in my face.

“Fuck you, you asshole!” she screams at me. “Go kiss your girlfriend!”

I want her right now. I have to have her. The need roars through me, a freight train drowning out sound and reason. But the only way she’ll submit to me is if I open up to her. Yet again. I’m giving more and more of myself to her. What will I be when she finishes with me?

“Ludmilla is not my girlfriend, not my mistress,” I tell her truthfully. “You’re the only one I want to kiss. Or fuck. Honestly, I wish that wasn’t true, I wish I could satisfy myself with a whore or a gold-digger, but ever since I’ve met you, you’re the only one that makes my dick hard. In fact, I’m going to bend you over my desk right now and take you up the ass. Do you think you have a choice in the matter?”

Her expression has softened now. Her lips part for me. Her eyes go misty.

I cup her chin in my hand and bend down and kiss her as if I’m drowning and she’s my only oxygen. I thrust my tongue into her mouth, caressing the warm silken cave, swallowing her moans of pleasure.

And I don’t tell her a secret, one that I think would ruin me.

She’s the only woman I’ve ever kissed on the mouth. In my entire life.

I want to tell her, to make her feel special, because she deserves to feel special and she deserves the truth. But something silences my voice. Something weak and cowardly. I just keep kissing her, drinking her in. She melts into me, pressing herself up against me. Her eagerness turns me on so much I’ll come in my pants if I don’t get relief.

I spin her around, arm up behind her back, and march her over to my desk.

I bend her over and release her arm. “Pull down your pants for me,” I say. She does, with a moan. Her pants fall in a puddle around her ankles.

I kneel behind her and lave her rosebud rectum with my saliva, and slide my fingers in and out of her butthole, moistening it. Stretching it.

Then I stand and push my cock against the tight little hole, and she tenses and cries out.

“Relax,” I growl. I move in very slowly, forcing my way up. The resistance of her muscular tunnel makes me want to tear into her like a battering ram, but I listen to her gasps of pain and inch my way in bit by bit, until I’m buried to the hilt. She’s quivering, and clutching the edge of my desk so hard her knuckles are white.

She’s enduring the pain for me. She gets pleasure from letting me hurt her. God, she’s magnificent.

I grab her hips and pump into her slowly. She’s whimpering, and I know it hurts and turns her on at the same time. My balls slap against her flesh, and I pump faster and faster, and the hot pleasure builds and builds. I pull out and let go of her hips, and explode, splattering my warm come on the smooth, round globes of her ass. I stand there as the waves of pleasure splash over me, and my panting breath slows to normal.

“Oh,” she moans. She turns around, her eyes huge with desire.

I know what she expects. What she craves like oxygen.

She’s not getting it. Not today.

“You shouldn’t have tried to check up on me,” I growl. “So here’s your punishment. I’m not going to make you come today. Not only that, but I’m going to come in and handcuff you to your bed tonight, so you can’t make yourself come. You’re going to tell me before you shower, and I will watch you on the video I have installed in your shower, and I’ll jerk off to it, but you’re not allowed to touch yourself. I will do this for as long as I want, cuffing you every night, and if you dare to get yourself off before I let you, I will never make you come again. Understand?”

“You… But I…” Tears of frustration fill her eyes. Beautiful, beautiful tears.

“‘You, but I,’” I mock her. “Did you actually think that your bad behavior would be without consequence? Get out of my office. Now.”

She pulls up her pants and stumbles from the room, gasping.