It wasn’t his hand gripping my hair or the cold detachment in his voice. I wasn’t frightened of his tone. I wasn’t afraid of the body he spent hours working on in his home gym to keep himself as muscular as his guards. I wasn’t even terrified of what he was going to do to me.
It was his cologne.
Thick and suffocating and permeating, it spread all over me like a poisonous fog and erased every last memory of Dane’s scent.
“Chica,” André Luna warned, his gun aimed at Viktor’s head. “You don’t have to go with him.”
The red dot on his forehead said I did.
“Of course she go with him,” my mother snapped with her Russian accent. “He is her husband.” She shoved Viktor’s shoulder. “Go.”
Viktor’s hand curled around the lock of hair he held hostage and he lowered his face to mine. “Should we show your marine what a real man does with his wife?”
Bile rose and I effected my disinterested expression. “Whatever.”
He lowered his voice and dipped a finger into the waistband of my leggings. “Did you forget what happens when you wear pants in public with me?”
I wanted to spit in his face. “My marine fuck toy picked them out after he screwed me with a dick that works.”
Viktor backhanded me.
“Fedorov,” André barked. “You hit her again, you’re dead.”
Blood pooled in my mouth.
Viktor laughed. “You move a single inch before I walk out of here and you are dead.” His hand still in my hair, he dragged me toward the restaurant as he spat out orders to his guards in Russian.
“Stupid girl,” my mother hissed.
I didn’t bother speaking to her. She had no idea how disposable she really was to a man like Viktor.
“You should listen to your mother,” Viktor mused, dragging me through a now empty restaurant. “Did I not give you what you need?”
A few waitstaff huddled in a corner as Viktor led us past them and down a hall. My mother on my heels, the guards on hers with their weapons still drawn, we made our way to a service elevator.
I didn’t bother answering Viktor, and he didn’t push it until we were all in the elevator.
“I asked you a question, pet.”
One of the guards eyed me and smirked.
Fucking asshole. “Is this the part where I tell you how great you are?”
Viktor shoved his leg between my thighs. “This is the part where you remember not to speak like a stupid American.”
I couldn’t stop myself, I baited him. “I am American.”
He slammed me back against the elevator wall as he grasped one of my nipples through my blouse. “You are what?”
I glared at his washed-out blue eyes and rugged features that I used to think were handsome. “American.”
He twisted my nipple, hard.
I bit back a cry.
He smirked. “We will fix that later, pet. That’s a promise.” He turned to my mother but addressed me. “Irina, did you know your mother has decided to move in with us?”
Disgust made my stomach bottom out. As much as I hated my mother, she was my family. My only family. But she was too stupid to realize she was Viktor’s next target. I’d realized it the second I saw him show up at the rooftop restaurant with her wearing one of my dresses. I should’ve seen this coming years ago, but I was in denial.
I glanced at my mother, but she was too busy smiling up at Viktor like he was a fucking movie star. “You two deserve each other.”
Viktor pinched her cheek. “She is the mother I never had.”
My mother blushed and called him her boy in Russian, despite the fact she was only two years older than him.
The elevator doors opened and Viktor pulled me to his chest like a human shield before walking us out after the bodyguards. “I am wondering, pet.” The hand not in my hair snaked under my blouse and shoved into my pants. “What will I find when I touch my pussy?” He licked my ear. “Will it be wet? Will I find she waited for me?”
My nostrils flared and I willed myself not to cry. Fighting to bury every thought of Dane, I reminded myself why I’d done this. Viktor was my problem. I never should’ve gone to Alex or let him take me to Dane’s. And now his friend André was involved and he’d pulled a gun on Viktor. Viktor wasn’t going to forgive that.
Attitude my only defense, I channeled it. “You won’t find anything.” Viktor hated my disinterest. He thought the world revolved around him. “Except a well-fucked pussy by a man who knows how to make a woman come with his dick.”
“Oh, pet.” Viktor chuckled. “How you like to ask for it.”
“If asking for it means telling you how much I hate you, then I’m asking for it.” I didn’t care anymore what he did to me. This was the only way I knew how to get Dane and his friend out of this.
Viktor’s guards led us to the garage and one of them opened the door to a brand-new SUV.
Viktor leaned down to my ear. “You just might make me hard yet.” He shoved me into the back seat beside my mother and slammed the door.
One guard got behind the wheel, another got in on the opposite side of my mother and Viktor got in the front passenger seat. The two other guards got in an identical SUV parked next to us.
“How much did the new vehicles cost, Viktor?”
With a smirk on his face, Viktor turned in his seat as we drove out of the parking garage. “Oh, pet, are you worried about my finances? Did you honestly think you were going to get your money after—”
He never got the rest of the sentence out.
Screeching brakes, crunching metal and flying glass all happened so fast, I barely saw it. But Viktor’s body slamming back against the seat from the impact of the airbag was gloriously in slow motion.
My body twisted, metal pressed into my side and a hand grabbed the front of my blouse and yanked.
My chest hit my thighs, Viktor landed on top of me and automatic fire started popping over the hissing sound of an engine after a violent impact.
Russian filled my head.
Screaming, yelling, barked orders, panicked voices—none of it outweighed the roar of automatic fire raining down on the SUV like the fires of hell.
I smiled.