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For the rest of the meal, I sit with my head bowed, and my hands resting lightly in my lap. O’Sullivan has filled his dining room with his best men tonight, including his clan chief, his chief enforcers, and his quartermaster… He’s gathering his war council together, and these are the conversations I pay the most attention to.
For the last seven years, the Irish and the Semenov Bratva have maintained a majority rule over most of the criminal organisations in London. Kirill’s dark obsession with me has proved useful to him in that respect. In turn, any truce with the British crumbled long ago, and they’ve been testing his patience ever since.
I know this because I listen out for hidden keys in conversations. Keys unlock knowledge, and one day, they’ll help me fly away from this hellhole.
Roisin and Mikhail Sidorov, Kirill’s favourite Brigadier, are making up the numbers. Roisin’s pissed as usual, staring glassy-eyed at the half-empty hundred-pound bottle of Château Latour in front of her. She knows the rules, just as much as I do. A broken jaw, and a week-long private hospital stay ingrained them for her on her honeymoon. She’s only ten years older than me, and most of that is resentment and spite.
Once dessert is over, O’Sullivan and his guests move to his study while Roisin and I sit there like statues until everyone has left. The minute the door closes, she rises from her seat in a swish of floral-print Balenciaga silk.
“Enjoy the diet,” she sneers, her pretty face hard and unkind.
Enjoy the depths of your misery, I reflect silently, as the door slams shut behind her. O’Sullivan stole her too, from a junior soldier of his, three years after he took me. The next day, the man she loved was found face down in the River Thames. It doesn’t matter that we trod the same poisonous path to this house. She’ll never see me as an ally. She’s the kind who views every female in a five-mile radius as a mortal threat.
I stay sitting in the empty room, long after her heels hit the stairs.
It’s quiet.
Too quiet.
I’m not allowed music, so I cast my mind back, listening to the notes from my memories instead. Every night before I went to bed, my mother would find a music station on the radio, and we’d listen and dance.Listen and dance.I remember the softness of her skin, and the way her hair smelled of the watermelons that she sometimes bought from Spitalfields Market as we filled our tiny living room with twirls and laughter.
She never sent me to ballet lessons, unlike all the other girls in our neighbourhood. She once told me that dancing didn’t need to be taught, that it was instinctive, like breathing. Some steps would be jagged and uneven, and some would be deep and smooth. If you messed up, it didn’t matter because one person’s slip-up was another person’s pirouette.
I’m so lost in the past that I don’t hear the door opening.
“Ada.”
My head snaps up, fear washing over me.How can I have been so stupid?Up until now, I’ve taken every precaution not to be left alone with Kirill. I don’t remember a time when his heavy gaze hasn’t followed me around, hungering for something he’s running out of patience waiting for.
As the huge Russian steps further into the room, the burgundy walls start closing in on me. I drop my eyes to the table and count the footsteps until a rough finger is sliding under my chin and jerking it back up.
“Stand,” he orders.
I do as he says, my white napkin fluttering from my lap. He stinks of hard alcohol, strong cigarettes, and something cruel and unforgiving.
“Your fear has the sweetest scent,meelaya.” He presses his fleshy wet lips to my cheek, his words curling around my soul and squeezing. “You don’t think I see the fire in your eyes? The way you long to be free of this house?” He clucks impatiently with his tongue. “Your quiet defiance is louder than you think. O’Sullivan may have beaten some modesty into you, but you’re still just a little English slut hungering for my cock.” With this, he wraps his palm around my throat, his fingers bruising my skin. “I don’t think I can wait another four weeks,meelaya,” he adds huskily. “O’Sullivan won’t mind if I have a taster tonight. You’re as good as mine already.”
He crowds me up against the table.
“Please,” I whisper, reaching behind me, my hand closing around an empty wine glass. “I don’t want it to be like this, Kirill.”
“You’ll take it however I give it,meelaya.” His flat face curves into a lethal smile. “My heirs will be created from suffering to make them stronger. You will bleed before I am satisfied.”
Nausea burns the back of my throat as he drops his other hand to the hemline of my dress. Humming to himself, he draws it slowly up my bare legs as I cringe against the edge of the table—still gripping the stem of the wine glass—not thinking about consequences anymore, just survival.
“It’s time to see what O’Sullivan is prepared to offer me in exchange for my cooperation.” He sweeps aside the plates and cutlery and tries to force my shoulders flat to the table.
“No!” I go to swing the glass against the side of his head, but he catches my wrist.
“I like it when you fight, Ada,” he says, chuckling darkly. “Just remember you will never win. I have been dreaming about breaking this pussy ever since you were a little girl. Ever since O’Sullivan forced you to come and live in this house.”
Disgusted, I try to roll away, but he’s twice as big as me and twice as strong. His grip on my wrist tightens, and I drop the wine glass with a yelp.
He goes to pull my legs apart. Rough fingers start tearing at my underwear.
“Please, stop! Please!”
Somewhere outside this nightmare, outside the sound of Kirill’s determined grunts to get at me, I hear the door to the dining room swing open.
