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17
CATERINA
He’s dressed already despite the early hour, and from the irritated look on his face, I can tell that we disturbed him. He grimaces as he looks at the bed where I’m sitting with the girls, and it’s all I can do to not shrink backward.
“What’s going on?” Alexei demands, annoyance coloring his every word. “Why won’t those brats shut up? And the crippled one, is she always like this?”
“She’s scared,” Sasha hisses, some of her backbone returning as she turns to glare at him. “She can’t help it. You’re not the first man to—”
“To what?” Alexei’s eyes gleam, his gaze fixing on Sasha. “No, go on,” he says, as she flinches, paling as she realizes she’s said too much. “Tell me what I’m doing. I’dloveto know.”
“You’re keeping us prisoner!” Anika blurts out from the circle of my arms, leaning around me to glare straight at Alexei in the way that only a nine-year-old with no concept of just how much danger we’re in can do. “You’re a bad man! And she’s scared because you’re a bad man!”
A slow smile curves Alexei’s lips. “Oh, so it can speak, as well as cry.” He smirks, taking a few steps closer to the bed as my arms tighten around Anika, my pulse speeding up warningly. “You shouldn’t be scared, little one. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to find you a new daddy, someone who will takeverygood care of you, as long as you’re a good girl. You can be a good girl, can’t you?”
Anika doesn’t understand the double meaning behind his words, but I certainly do. I can feel myself starting to tremble, anger surging inside of me as I look at Alexei’s cruel, smirking face and feel a deep, visceral desire to claw the expression off of it.
You can’t. You’ll make things worse.I repeat it over and over in my head, trying not to think about what he did to me last night, about what he’s taken from me, what he’s going to take from all of us. I cling to the thought that I have to stay calm, that I have to protect the others, and for a moment, I think he’s going to retreat, maybe threaten us, and leave.
But instead, he reaches out to stroke Anika’s hair, smiling as he does so. “You’ll be a good girl for your new daddy?”
Anika’s mouth drops open. “I don’twant—” she starts to say plaintively. She doesn’t get a chance to finish her sentence because I pull her sharply away from Alexei, depositing her on the pillows as I lurch towards him, every bit of self-control that I have fleeing at that moment.
“Get away from her, you fuckingmonster!” I screech, shoving at his chest, my hands clawing as I try to rake him across the face with my nails, only for him to grab my wrist in a quick reflexive motion, his fingers wrapping around it so tightly that I cry out in pain.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. The word echoes in my head, because I know this was the wrong thing to do, that I should never have lost control, that in doing it, I’ve failed Anika and Yelena and Ana and everyone else depending on me. I’ve made it all so much worse. Still, my rage feels like a living, breathing thing, twisting in my gut until I feel like I’m going to be sick, until I feel as if I’d sacrifice everyone just to see Alexei’s face turn to bleeding ribbons.
“You’re not going to touch my children,” I hiss, my chest heaving. I can see Sasha moving quickly across the room out of the corner of my eye, grabbing Anika and Yelena and moving them to where she and Sofia and Ana are, out of reach of Alexei. Sofia moves in front of all of them, her face pale and tense, but Alexei isn’t paying attention to any of them. His attention is focused entirely on me, his grip tightening until it feels as if he might crush my wrist with his long-fingered hand, and I’m on the verge of tears from the pain.
He looms over me, that cold, calculating smile that I’m beginning to know better than I’d like creeping across his face. “Oh, but they’re not your children, are they?” Alexei smiles coldly. “They’re Viktor’s. Viktor’s andVera’s, to be exact. Not a drop of your blood in them. Oh, I knew Vera, in case you were wondering. We all envied Viktor. She was perfection—blonde, blue-eyed, porcelain skin, and a figure a man dreams about at night. We all jerked off thinking about her.”
He grins, licking his lips. “Come to find out, though, we were all lucky not to have her. You know about that, don’t you? How she turned out to be an insane cunt, spoiled and fat, desperate and needy, how she slit her own wrists because she was so weak?”
I hear a soft gasp from the other side of the room and catch a glimpse of Sasha and Sofia moving at the same time, covering the girls’ ears so they won’t hear. Sofia’s mouth has dropped open in shock, but I can’t do anything about that right now. Alexei is still leering at me, that malicious smile growing ever wider.
“Viktor picked you next. A beautiful Italian bride. So out of place, among us brutish Bratva. Or that’s what you’re told, right? We have no sophistication, no manners. Just animals, foraging out in the cold, killing indiscriminately.” He laughs, his tongue running over his lower lip wetly. “Life is so much better, really, once you stop trying to be better than everyone else thinks you are. Once you give in to your baser nature.”
“Let me go.” I try to twist away from him, but his grip only tightens, until I can feel the small bones of my wrist rubbing together. “Please, you’re hurting me—”
“I can imagine that Viktor taught you aboutyourbaser nature, didn’t he?” Alexei smirks. “I’ve been to Moscow on business trips with him before. I’ve seen the women he seeks out at clubs and brothels. Women who can take pain, but even more to the point, women wholikeit.” He raises my hand to his mouth, sucking two of my fingers into his mouth. “Salty. I do enjoy the taste of your tears.”
“Alexei, please—” I don’t want to beg him, hate that I’m reducing myself to this after attacking him only seconds ago. He’s dangerously close to breaking my wrist. The pain brings tears to my eyes, my body trembling with agony and fear, and I’m growing more panicked by the moment.
“Ah yes. I do enjoy hearing Viktor’stsarinabeg. I’m going to fuck you every night, I think, until you beg me like that between the sheets. Until you give in to your baser nature with me, just like you did with him.” He leans forward, his breath tickling the shell of my ear. “Until I’ve taken everything he has from you away from him.”
“Why?” I nearly sob it, gasping. “Why me?”
Alexei smirks. “Why? Because I want everything Viktor has. And you—you’re very nearly the most important thing to him. The only thing dearer to him than you are his children.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper desperately. “It’s not. I’m not even close to being that important to him—”
Alexei snorts. “If you really think that,tsarina, you’re stupider than I thought. And I actually thought you were quite intelligent.” His eyes rake across me, lingering on my breasts. “So, what should your punishment be, do you think?”
“Punishment?” I croak the word, suddenly very aware of the eyes on me, Ana’s soft, frightened gasp at Alexei’s words.
“You can’t think that I would simply allow you to attack me without consequence. What should it be? Should you blow me in front of your friends? Bend over for me so I can fuck you here? Lashed with my belt?”
I stare at him, dumbfounded, until hetskswith irritation, his cruel smile faltering.
