Instead of giggling, when I think aboutwhat Vera said, my skin erupts in heat under his gaze. There’s no obvious sign of attraction on his side, but Idolike the fact that he’s staring at me and not her.
An amused smile touches his lips. “Whatever she’s told you, it’s not true,” he says before he heads upstairs to his bedroom.
9
LEKS
Istare at the darkening city. The patches of golden light are slowly fading.
In Siberia, there wasn’t a sunset. At least, not for those of us locked in the Ivanov Center with only a tiny patch of sky visible out the window. That’s if we weren’t locked in a padded cell with no windows. The days are so short in the winters and long in the summers that there’s never this gradual sense of nightfall. I never got to watch the sun gradually slip below the skyline.
The place had been a real asylum at some point. Then it became a clearing ground for everyone the Bratva didn’t want to deal with. Our own and our enemies. The outsiders had a worse time than the rest of us because they couldn’t understand what the guards or nurses were saying. Trying to follow the incomprehensible rules of the place was hard enough if you spoke Russian. If you didn’t speak the language? You stood no chance.
People died.
Constantly.
The most common was neglect. The staff weren’t directly murdering anyone. The place kept up the pretense of being some kind of medical facility. The rules were strict and if you broke them, you lost privileges — eventually you ended up with no blanket, no heat, no mattress, shivering away strapped down to a metal cot.
You’d hear them, in the night, begging for God or some other fucking deity to save them in whatever language they had left. And then, mercifully, they’d fall silent until the guards came to retrieve their frozen bodies in the morning.
I have seen so much death. All because of Maksim Bryusov. I take a gulp of vodka, the burn not nearly enough to erase the echoes of those cold nights in Siberia and the things I did to survive. Numbing myself to it isn’t enough. I needrevengefor what I went through, for what Yulia did to me, for what I had to do to escape.
And especially for the fact that the situation turned me into a sociopathic bastard who couldn’t keep people safe. Just like my father. I did what I had to do to survive…but the guilt at what I left behind eats at me a little more everyday.
I hear Natalia appear behind me, her heels clicking against the concrete floor.I wonder if she can tell that I’m fantasizing about killing her father. Maybe not, in her sheltered mind.
I bet the rumors are true and she’s a virgin. God knows her family kept her locked in that tower for long enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d taken out an insurance policy on her virtue.
This is a surprise. She’s been avoiding me since her nightwith Vera, which is faintly irritating. I run a hand over my bruised knuckles. Time to schedule another fight with Yuri to get this out of my system.
I turn to watch as she struts over to me. If her calls home are anything to go by, this conversation will not be good news for our non-existent relationship, but the outfits she’s wearing hardly encourage me to let her go. Every day there’s a new part of her to become obsessed with — today it’s the slight dip of her navel.
It’s a shame that she’s only here because she has to be.
She stops right in front of me, hands on her hips. Even in her heels, with her standing and me sitting, we’re at eye level.
“This isn’t working.”
She sounds…angry. I take my time with a mouthful of vodka while I admire the pants that are molded perfectly to her hips and the cropped singlet that reveals her midriff. “It’s working just fine for me.”
As usual, she either doesn’t get the innuendo or chooses not to respond to it. Both options are equally bad as far as my cock is concerned.
That green fire is burning in her eyes, looking at me with some kind of accusation. I like it when the princess mask slips. When I manage to get through to the real person that’s trapped inside that sparkly varnished shell.
I tilt the glass of vodka to her, and her face only sours further. So she’ll drink with Vera, but not with me.
“You’re not fit to be anyone’s husband.”
I huff a laugh out of my nose. “That’s hardly new information, princess.”
“It is. Before, it was only me I was worried about. Now, Idon’t think there’s any woman you could marry without making her miserable.”
The good news for those hypothetical future wives is that they don’t exist.
“Womankind is safe from marriage proposals from me as long as you’re here.”
“Not safe enough, apparently.” She folds her arms across her chest and the accusation burns bright on her face. So there’s something specific I’m being accused of. That can only have come from one place: Vera.
