The displaced bones in my foot are stopping it from healing. It’s becoming infected and reeks of rotting flesh. If we didn’t do something drastic, Roman was on the verge of amputating it. Since I refuse to be an invalid, we did something we both said we’d never do. We forced an innocent into a world he doesn’t belong in.
The once-unknown medical student isn’t studying to be an orthopedic surgeon. He wants to deliver babies, for fuck’s sake. I’d laugh at the lunacy if my punctured lungs were up to the task.
Instead, I groan through the pain of him drilling my bones back together with equipment most households have in their garages. Then I groan again when his focus shifts from my shattered ankle to the crotch of my pants.
Bile scorches my throat when his dainty hand circles my cock to stroke it through my pants. Even on the verge of collapse, I lunge for him. His death will be quick but as violent as the punishment Vladimir’s men instilled on me weeks ago.
He will lose his tongue first to ensure he can never share how my cock reacted to his touch, then I’ll slit his throat with the bloody scalpel resting in the stainless steel kidney dish next to my thigh.
Once I have the doctor’s throat in my clutch, my spare hand creeps across the mattress for the scalpel. My eyes blink in rapid concession when my hunt comes up empty. The make-shift surgical dish is gone, and the pulse weakening under my touch doesn’t belong to a first-year medical undergrad. It is owned by one of my men’s favorite whores.
Luyca is peering at me with tear-filled eyes. She’s naked, and her mouth is as circled as the rosy pink disks on her breasts.
What the fuck?
As reality dawns, my anger skyrockets. I’m not recovering from my attempt to tiptoe onto the right side of the law when I was sixteen. I’m in the guest bedroom of Justine’s apartment, being manhandled by whores who should know better than to touch me without asking.
After releasing Luyca from my hold, I push her away from me by her surgically enhanced chest. Her eyes shoot to Alyna, who’s naked body is heating the right side of mine. I don’t know why they’re surprised by my anger. Touching me without permission is as punishable as disrespecting me.
Both result in death.
When they remain frozen in fear, mute and blinking, I shout, “Get the fuck out. You were told this domain was out of bounds.”
Trapped between the past and the present, I leap out of bed to throw a shirt over my sweat-clammed skin. I feel sick. My stomach is cramping so intensely, I almost want to bend in two. And I’m angry, really fucking angry. The dreams I face around my birthday are already horrific. I didn’t need molestation added into the mix. Vladimir is a monster, but the only dabbling he does to his children is mind-fucking them.
With my mood hostile, I drag Alyna and Luyca off the bed, march them to the door, then toss them into the living room with the other whores—where they belong.
When their perfume-drenched clothing overtakes Justine’s pure smell that had me nodding off like a baby after a warm bottle of milk, I gather it up and throw it at their feet.
Alyna looks like she wants to say something, but before she can, I warn, “Disobey me again and I’ll send you to live with Yakor.” My voice is hoarse from just waking up, and brimming with uninhibited anger. “He’ll beat the disrespect right out of you.”
Yakor is one of Vladimir’s first soldiers. He learned all his best traits from the man he’s worked under the past forty years. If he couldn’t beat disobedient whores into abiding housewives, no one could.
Alyna looks at me as if I have a screw loose. “Nikolai, darling, it’s me, Alyna. I brought Luyca—one of your favorites.”
“I’m. Not. Interested.”
I take a big breath between each word, hopeful it will stop me from retaliating to their stupidity now. I recorded my first kill at the age of eight, but I usually reserve multiple casualties for rogue sanctions and takeover bids. Their disobedience has me wanting to ignore that. I’m itching to kill, and I only ended a life a mere three hours ago.
When I slam my bedroom door shut in Alyna and Luyca’s faces, the feeling of being watched overwhelms me. Vladimir’s men had his surveillance equipment installed in a record-setting time this morning, but this isn’t a depraved watch that makes my skin crawl. It speeds up my pulse as quickly as the light fading from Officer Prentice’s eyes thickened my blood with adrenaline, and has me convinced an angel is on the cusp of making a deal with the devil.
The heat of a humid night roars through me when I glance up at the blinking contraption in the corner of the room. Justine is watching me, I know it. I’ve never been wanted, not even by my mother, so the foreignness of Justine’s promiscuous stare dissociates it from Vladimir’s hate filled one.
As the rage in my gut switches to roguishness, I smile up at the camera before hot-footing it out of the room. I barely register the party-like atmosphere in Justine’s living room. My focus is on one thing only: convincing an angel even the purest minds can have wicked thoughts.
I’m not surprised when my blast through the swinging door is greeted with an empty space. Roman would never leave an imperative piece of equipment out in the open. He would have hid it in a place men in my industry would never look. In a place where whores go to retire and limp-dicked men go to feast. The kitchen.
A grin curls my lips when Justine exits the door she nudged her head at this morning. Clutching a packet of instant pasta, she walks by me, acting as if every fine hair on her body is standing to attention from my watchful gaze. “Hey. Hungry?”
After dumping the sour cream and chives concoction onto the counter next to the stovetop, she heads to the fridge to gather milk, butter, and a jug of water. The cool air pumping out of the dated appliance fades her heated cheeks, but it does little to the hue creeping up her legs. She’s so hot, her bloomed coloring hides the scars on the back of her knees.
I watch her for several long seconds, taking a minute to recover from the aftershocks of a nightmare, while also drinking in how she can make something so mundane appear as if she’s performing on stage. She moves with such grace, not even the low hang of her shoulders can lessen my fascination.
Once I’m confident sweat is no longer clinging to my skin, I make my way to Justine’s half of the kitchen. Her breaths come out in a purr when I sneak up on her so agilely, she doesn’t register my approach until my torso is heating her back. I want to take her now. I want to relight the fire in her eyes while also marking her as mine, but since not all the spike in her pulse is from excitement, I’ll place her needs above my own—for once.
“You went to the store for an hour, and all you came back with was a box of pasta?”
“No.” She licks her dry lips before continuing, “There are ample supplies in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
