Bond to Break (Stolen Obsessions #4)

17. Fyodor

CHAPTER 17

FYODOR

I pace the hall, pulling the hair God was kind enough not to take from me out of my head in my stress. I should think better of tempting my creator and find another nervous habit. The doctor steps out a few minutes after me and says he’ll be back with his supplies shortly.

“You really bought yourself some trouble, Pakhan.” He laughs, and I’m not sure why his words fucking enrage me, but everything about this situation from the moment I saw her up there has me insane.

The right thing to do is leave her alone and let her rest until he gets back. I haven’t rightfully decided what I plan to do with her, but keeping her alive and healthy are certainly on the list, possibly fucking that smart mouth and virgin cunt. Right now.

My cock pulses at the thought. I’ve been obsessed with the idea since I saw her, and showing her my cock only made it worse. The little girl licked her lips like a hungry slut. I’m not sure she even realized she did it, and ever since, I’ve been dying to feel that pink tongue on me.

I’m fuming mad and for some reason when it comes to a pretty face, that’s always made me horny. Controlling my temper hasn’t been this hard or necessary in years. She’s hurt and sick; her life is at risk, and I’ll fight with her later. That’s what I tell myself, but it takes less than a minute for my base urges to take over. I need to be near her and hear her whimper again.

Throwing the door open, I want to shout at her, but my intentions fall flat when I find her lying flat on the bed with the boots still on the floor next to her and her naked feet flat on the ground. She’s exhausted to her bones, and I’m pretty sure the damn things she’s been dragging around against the doctor’s advice are heavier than she is. A slick sheen of sweat coats her, and I realize she had the same the night before. Was she already showing signs of infection then, and I didn’t realize?

I shouldn’t have bought her. Shouldn’t have invited all these problems into my life, but I can’t find it within myself to regret it. I just want to see her healthy. My plans to fight with and fuck her sink.

I’m considering smacking her ass black and blue for the obsession she’s inspired in me. Yes, I’m faulting her for my own actions and feelings, but what right does she have to do this to me? I would have spent three million dollars on this? This is what I went to the theater to see night after night?

Even with her flat, limp, and pathetic, I can’t find any sense of disgust. She’s so beautiful. Memories of the way her body moved while she danced fill my mind, and the prone creature on the bed is nothing but a ghost of her. Her limp, half-wilted body wins my sympathy in the end.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and I didn’t even realize she was watching me, but now that I’m paying attention, her feverish eyes are open to the tiniest slits, and she’s observing me closely. “I’m so sorry…” A definitive sense that she has more to say stops me from responding right away, but she doesn’t continue.

I slide a little bit closer to her because I can’t help myself and gently lay a hand on her upper thigh. I want to see her covered in sweat in my bed, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.

“Sorry for the condition you’ve allowed yourself to fall into? Sorry for the fact you could have done something to help yourself and instead nearly died?” She should be begging on her knees for allowing my property to be treated so poorly.

She laughs, honest to god laughs, and the sound might be beautiful if it weren’t so defeated. I resolve right then to hear it again the way God intended, full of joy.

“No, I’m sorry that you wasted your money—if you wasted your money,” she amends. “At the very least, I caused you issues with Franco.”

“That was nothing.” I don’t tell her I gave my sons a hundred grand or that I enjoyed killing Franco. She doesn’t need my explanations. She will take me at my word.

“Then I’m sorry you’re wasting time and money trying to fix me. This doctor visit can’t be cheap. Did you know I’m in debt? I guess that doesn’t matter, seeing as I won’t be officially registered as owned by you or anything.”

“You’re not actually in debt.”

That seems to get her attention, and her eyes finally open wide enough to see the pretty gray.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, with Hawthorne General anyway. I don’t know if you have other debts.”

Her mouth falls open, and she stares at me.

“Why the hell would you do that?” I’m shocked to hear her shout and see that she’s angry this time. “You have to be smarter than that.”

She’s really pissing me off now, and maybe she deserves that spanking after all.

“Watch your mouth, Kotyonok.”

“I was a bad investment. I’m not the girl you watched on that stage. You shouldn’t have paid them.”

She believes it to her bones, and maybe she’s not the same woman, but I still see something in her.

“That’s my decision to make. I’ve never had a teacup tell me I did a bad job choosing.” She’s so much more than a piece of fine china. For countless nights, she was my peace of mind, my freedom from the crushing weight of the world around me. I couldn’t let her go, but if she needs to see herself as less than she is to accept what I’ve done, then so be it.

“You should cut your losses now. You seem like a good man for a criminal. Don’t waste more of your time.”

I hate how she’s speaking about herself, and I’m not any more a fan of the way her chest shakes as she draws in a breath, like it’s taking too much effort and the air is too thin. The good man for a criminal statement nearly makes me laugh. If she had any idea how vile a man I am, she wouldn’t be trying to convince me of anything. I’m the type of man who gets everything I want—except when it counts.

“How would I cut my losses? Sell you? Turn you out on the street to hobble around on broken legs with no crutches?” I tighten my fists, telling myself smacking her ass will have to wait until later. “You want your little hole fucked that bad?” I’m hoping my vulgarity will shock her, but I only succeed in turning myself on.

Her eyes light up like she suddenly has a very good idea, but her entire demeanor looks even more sullen than it did an hour ago. She’s not doing well.

“You could kill me. Shooting me in the head would be easy enough but messy. I’m sure you have a gun right now. I’d get in the bathtub.” When she was having her wounds touched and actively in pain, asking to die wasn’t that absurd. Right now? My stomach turns.

A sliver of unease creeps through me. For all the people I’ve killed, I’ve never had someone offer to climb in the tub so I can wash away the blood when I’m done. I don’t actually keep count of the people I’ve killed, but it’s a lot. This is the first time I’ve ever felt so vulgar for it.

I recognize the same somber look from the night before when she was up on the stage and then sitting beside me in the car. I only saw one brief flash of her true emotions when she saw the glass ceiling when I showed her the city.

I still don’t know why she made the sign of the cross—though it did tell me she’s Russian Orthodox, using a different formation than Catholics. The choice feels poignant like she’s not really of this world anymore. She’s so convinced she’s ready to die her soul is flirting with the afterlife and carrying her body behind them.

“Or ask that doctor of yours to overdose me once I’m hooked up to the IV. That one wouldn’t even be messy. When I was in the hospital, I read that if you’re rich, they’ll do that for you in Sweden, end-of-life care or some shit. It wouldn’t even hurt.” She sighs dreamily.

“That’s Switzerland,” I answer her, ignoring the way my gut complains. You’re going to live, I don’t bother to tell her. Why argue with someone you own? But how the hell do I fix this?

“Fine, then Switzerland. You can be like Switzerland.”

“Fuck the Swiss,” I answer.

Fuck anyone who would give in to her ludicrous demand. I always have a gun or three on me, and I’ve killed a lot of people, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been so sick at the suggestion of killing someone. I paid those bills because even if I keep her for another twenty years, she’ll have a life to live without me at some point. I’m only thirty-five fucking years older than her.

“I don’t have to be a burden to anyone.”

Who the fuck is she burdening? I have more than enough money. She’s wearing on my fucking patience, though.

“You don’t really want to die, Kotyonok.” She’s too young to understand that your life goes on after loss, that you don’t get to lay down and die next to the person you love no matter how badly you want to. That a changed life doesn’t mean a lost one.

The fever is getting to her head, and I remind myself not to take out the worst of my frustrations on her, but I’m genuinely scared I should have admitted her to the hospital. Last night when she was more herself, she wasn’t talking this way. She’s not serious.

She’s quiet for a moment. “I would be with Pietro. Nothing would hurt anymore. This would all be over.” She gestures around herself to me and the room. The anger that shoots from my gut to my chest surprises me. Am I jealous of some poor dead kid?

“None of this would be over. You would just be dead. The world doesn’t actually revolve around you.”

She laughs once more like the idea comforts her. My skin crawls, and my chest aches. I haven’t felt so fucking low in a long time, and I can’t even explain how helpless the sound of her laughter makes me. Especially when giving a shit about her life has suddenly shifted to a spark of jealousy. Would I have cared if she died and I had just read it in the paper? Was this already inside me, or did she create it at that auction?

I would have at least cared that I never got to see her dance again. I decide.

“Killing you would be a waste of money,” I tell her, but those words don’t even begin to encompass the truth. A sick image of her dead body floats in my imagination. She merges with the ghost of Sne?ana lying in a similar bed, and I want to hurt her for bringing me back to that place. I can’t fucking breathe.

Everything about what she described would be a waste. Is she really this broken? Sne?ana’s prone body fills my vision. I’m not letting another gifted woman die under my watch if it can be avoided.

“I’m a waste of money either way,” she argues. “This way, you waste less. If you changed your mind about fucking me, you can do that first. Do whatever you want to me, Fyodor. I just don’t care anymore.”

When she says my name, it’s like a jolt to my heart, exciting and painful.

“I’m not goddamn killing you, Katya.”

She is so goddamn pretty, and the little wrinkles of distress around her eyes fill me with a horrible sadness.

“I sent the doctor to get what he needs to treat you. The expense is already made, and you’re really starting to piss me off. I have more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes, and you won’t tell me how to spend a measly portion of it.”

“Fuck,” she moans in defeat before falling quiet. We sit in silence for a few minutes after that, and I wonder how much of this is the fever and how much is her. I expect more of her sass and more convoluted arguments on why she should die.

“Fyodor, are you going to make me sleep outside like a dog?”

I breathe deep before I answer, “No.”

I’m not sure what I expect, but it’s not for her to start crying like she was truly afraid of that option. My anger yields to a sharp stab of guilt. I’ve been so soft on her thus far. I thought she had no caution with me. The broken noise of her pain is what convinces me she is afraid, and she truly wants me to kill her.

I can’t put words to why that makes me so murderously angry, but I place my hand on her stomach, listening to her sob as we wait for the doctor to return.