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14
CATERINA
We manage to get the girls bathed without too much hassle. To my surprise, there’s plenty of hot water and towels in the bathroom cupboard, and Sofia even discovers a children’s room further down the hall with clothes that look like they’ll fit Yelena. All she can find for Anika is an oversized t-shirt that looks like it was worn by a very petite woman at some point. I can’t help but notice the array of sizes in the women’s clothing. Alexei had said the man who owned the place was a client, so I can only imagine why there’s a variety of women who have stayed here.
A client was given this place by Viktor.The reminder is sharp and painful. It’s easy to forget, especially when faced with a horror like Alexei, that my husband isn’t without fault. He isn’t the sadistic sociopath that Alexei is, but neither is he blameless. He’s sold women to the man who owns this house, the house that his family and associates’ family are being held prisoner in.
It will be a long time before I forget the burning humiliation of Alexei forcing me to strip in front of him and my friends. I’d thought that Viktor had made me feel humiliated in the past, in the bedroom, but now I know the difference. Nothing about what Alexei had made me do had felt arousing in the slightest. It just made me feel sick.
With Viktor, it’s different. His dominance, orders, and demands all make me feel things that I’ve never felt before, that I’d never imagined I could feel. I realize now, still shuddering from Alexei’s ordeal, that while Viktor’s humiliations of me might be very real, they come from an entirely different place.
Viktor doesn’t want tohurtme. He wants to possess me. Own me. Dominate me. But he doesn’t truly want to harm me, and he doesn’t take pleasure in my real, true pain, only the pleasurable pain that he sometimes inflicts on me.
When I step out of the bathroom with Anika in tow, Yelena in Sasha’s arms, Alexei is waiting for us. I feel my stomach drop the moment I see his hard expression and icy blue eyes. Still, I force myself to keep an even expression, meeting his gaze as if I’m a guest in his home and not a prisoner waiting to be sold to a new master.
“You’ll stay in that room where my men left the girls,” Alexei says coldly. “All of you. Divide up the beds how you like. Your door will be guarded, and there will be men all down this hall and at every door throughout the house, so don’t bother thinking of escape. You won’t make it, and I’ll ensure that you regret it.” He pauses, his gaze raking over us. “If you remain on your best behavior, you’ll continue to sleep freely in that room without being restrained.”
I feel my mouth go dry at that thought. Viktor tying me to the bedpost is one thing, the idea of anyone tying me up with the intent to keep me prisoner after what happened in that cabin is enough to make a sick panic flood through me.
Keep it together.I force my hands not to shake, gripping Anika’s in mine. “Thank you,” I manage, the words burning like acid on my tongue. The last thing in the world that I want is to thank Alexei foranything, but I know it will help us.
Whatever will help us, I have to do.
He eyes me as if it’s some kind of trick. “I’ll have buyers lined up soon,” he continues casually, as if we were discussing the price of meat at the butcher shop. “Until then, behave like good girls, and things will go easier on you,” Alexei smirks. “Viktor’s clientele has jumped ship all too easily. But then again, Viktor never was good at changing with the markets. It’s a new day, and I’m ready to greet it.”
“Viktor had a moral compass,” I grind out through my teeth, my anger rising up again, sharp and hot. I can feel Anika shrinking back behind me, and the thought of Alexei finding abuyerfor her, separating her from us, makes me see red. “One in need of a good cleaning and polish, that’s for sure, but a moral compass nonetheless. You—”
“I am a man who can see where the future will take us—myself and the Bratva who stand with me.” Alexei shrugs. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You are nothing but a woman. After all, a Bratva wife meant to suck, fuck, and bear children. But I do feel sorry for you, in a way.”
I blink at him, startled. “Sorry? For me?”
“Certainly.” Alexei’s mouth twitches. “You thought you married a powerful man, but you married a bear with no claws. And now you’re here, at my mercy. Such a tragedy for a prettytsarinalike you. He even let the men I hired kidnap you from Moscow and rough you up. Let them take you and scar you so that you’re worth almost nothing. An old, tired bear indeed.”
“My worth has nothing to do with my body,” I snap at him. I know I should keep quiet, but I can’t. I’m exhausted, cold, frightened, and trying desperately to keep up hope that’s slipping away quickly. “And my husband is a man who is respected among other men. Just because you don’t respect or fear him as you should mean nothing. And you’ll regret your words when you find his claws in your back.”
I half expect Alexei to hit me, but he starts to laugh instead. “I see you’ve developed feelings for your Bratva husband,” he says with a smirk, still chuckling. “How embarrassing for you. I wonder what your father would think to know his daughter is taking Bratva cock nightly. You were meant for better than one of us, I know that. And yet Luca Romano sold you for a promise of peace that is worthless now. Viktor couldn’t even keep the promise that bought him your body in his bed.” His eyes rake down the front of me lasciviously, and I repress a shudder.
“What a sight you must have been in your wedding bed before you were scarred.” Alexei licks his lips, and to my horror, I see him reach down to adjust himself. “A mafia princess, a Rossi girl, sold to the Bratva because the Rossi heir was so desperate for peace. I wonder if Viktor knew what a prize he had.”
Of course, he did,I want to say.That’s why he demanded Luca give me to him. Why he threatened war and bloodshed if Luca didn’t concede, or I didn’t agree.But I don’t. I’ve said too much already.
“And now I can see from your face that you’ve fallen for him.” Alexei laughs again, shaking his head. “What a problem that must be for you! I know how much you detest his business. I was there that day in his office, remember? When you knocked over those files and found out what your husband does to give you that mansion to live in and the fine food on your plate and the unlimited credit cards in your wallet? But you’ve fallen in love with him anyway. Which makes this all the sweeter, if I’m being honest.”
“What?” I croak the word, my senses pinging with alarm, picking up where Alexei is headed before he even says it.
“You’ve only had one Bratva cock since Luca bartered you away,” Alexei says with a smirk. “I think it’s high time you had something to compare it to.”
My stomach drops. I’d known this was coming, of course. With how I’d bargained for Viktor and the others’ lives, there was no way that Alexei wouldn’t capitalize on it in this way. But I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
“I need a shower—”
“You can bathe later.” Alexei reaches out, stepping forward so he can tip my chin up with one finger. “I like it, I think. The princess in borrowed rags, dirty and on her knees. Give the girl to her,” he orders, jerking his head at Sasha. “And come with me.”
I don’t have a choice. I’d promised him my willing compliance, and if I go back on it now, I know he’ll make someone other than me pay. One of the girls, maybe, or Sasha. Maybe Sofia or her baby. There’s no way to know, and anyway, I can’t let someone else be hurt because of me.
Not again.
I have to do what I’d said I would.
