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I swallow back a sob, my hand pressed to my face. “Adrik—”
“Shut up,suka,” he snarls. “Idecide when you speak, now.Idecide what happens to you. You are no longer the Bratva princess. You are not even Theo’s queen. You may be married to him still, but he has shown how he treats you.” His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror again, and he doesn’t bother hiding the contempt in his face. “Like a common whore. That’s all you ever were; I see that now.”
Pain clenches at my chest. First Theo, and now Adrik. There was a certain pleasurable degradation in hearing Theo call me his good little slut when he fucked me, an arousal that I wouldn’t have expected to get from such a thing, but when Theo called me a whore to my brother, when Adrik says it now, there’s no arousal. Just a horrible feeling that I’m entirely alone now, that the men I once believed cared enough about me to protect me have cast me aside and discarded me as worthless.
A set of holes to be fucked, and nothing more.
If that’s all I am, then my life is expendable. I know enough about this world I live in to know that.
And I’m afraid to find out what Adrik has in store for me.
He pulls around behind a squalid-looking house near the end of a street with cracked pavement, parking the Jeep and killing the engine. Once again, he doesn’t turn to face me, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “If you fight me,” he says in a voice that’s deadly serious, “it will be worse for you. I don’t have drugs, so if I knock you out, it’ll be the old-fashioned way. A pretty littledevochkalike you isn’t built to handle that. I don’t recommend it.”
It’s strange how he says it; almost like he thinks he’s helping me out. Like he’s giving me advice that I shouldappreciate, when what he’s really talking about is whether or not I allow him to drag me into that house without fighting back, or whether I make him knock me out cold.
“I should never have slept with you,” I hiss through gritted teeth. “But I never thought you’d make me regret it.”
Adrik gives me a look that almost seems as if he has regrets of his own. “Neither did I,” he says finally, and then he’s sliding out, coming around to open my door.
For a moment, I consider fighting. I could claw at him, scream, try to kick him in the balls. He’s already hurt, and I wonder if it is possible that I might be able to overpower him. I could punch him where the missing teeth are, where his face surely must be sore, try to aim for some of the wounds I saw—
But at the end of the day, he’s bigger and stronger than I am, and in close quarters, I’m almost sure he can evade me or knock me out before I get much of a fight in. And even if I did manage to escape, what then?
Who would I call? Where would I go? I’m in danger here or elsewhere. I don’t know exactly how to get back to Theo’s, and the idea of going back to him makes me feel sick. Going to my brother raises the same issues—both of how to get there and whether I want to lean on him for help at all.
I have no money, no phone, no identification. Going to the cops would solve little, if anything. Most of them are either in Theo's or my brother’s pocket. If I ask the right one, they might get me back to Nikolai. A different one might take me back to Theo. Either way, I’d end up back there—if I could find a police station safely.
And by the time I think of all of that, I’m already out of time.
Adrik manhandles me out of the back of the Jeep, his hand fisting in my hair as he wraps it around his hand, yanking my head back in a way that’s becoming all too familiar to me. He grabs one wrist and then the other, and I feel plastic around them as he tightens it behind my back, almosttootightly.
“Do you want me to keep all my fingers?” I snipe at him, twisting my head around as much as I can. “Because you might not want to cut off my circulation, if so.”
“Only on the right hand,” Adrik sneers, and my stomach flips with nausea as I think of the implications.
It’s hard to believe that only a brief time ago, it was hard for me to turn him down. That I struggled with both my feelings for him and my feelings for Theo. Now I think of Adrik getting turned on watching the scene in the office, and all I feel is a sick hate. Combined with what he’s doing to me now, it’s hard to remember why I ever wanted him. Why there was ever anything between us.
This isn’t the same man who kissed me on that vintage couch and convinced me to let down my guard. Not the same man who touched me slowly, gently, making my first time something worth remembering instead of something harsh and unpleasant.
There’s nothing of that man left here.
Is that what Theo thinks when he looks at me?The question slides into my head, intrusive and unwanted, as Adrik pushes me towards what looks like a basement door.Does he see me and find it hard to remember why he fell in love with me, when he believed everything I was lying to him about?
I don’t know what possessed me to vouch for him today with Nikolai, when I so easily could have made it seem as if Theo were lying, and watched as my brother found a way to rain down hell on him. Even as I think it, a small voice in my head whispers the answer.
I wanted Theo to know that when I had a real choice about telling the truth, I would. That all the lies I told were because I didn’t see any other way out.
I want him to realize that at least some of it was true.
And deep down, I also know I wouldn’t feel that way if I didn’t still feel something for Theo.
It doesn’t matter,I think miserably, as Adrik pushes me down the wobbly steps into the dark basement.There’s no forgiving what he did. You know that. Things could never be the same, even if you tried to work through it. It’s over. It was never meant to be, anyway.
If Adrik has planned for me what I fear, it won’t matter anyway.
Adrik snatches a chain hanging from the ceiling, and the basement is filled with harsh light from a naked bulb. It’s damp and smells musty, and I wince as he backs me toward one of the brick walls, where I see an iron ring hanging from it. I doubt I’m the first person brought down here.
“How did you know about this?” I whisper, and Adrik chuckles.
