Bond to Break (Stolen Obsessions #4)

30. Katya

CHAPTER 30

KATYA

I’m terribly nervous to be back here. This is the site of one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me in my life. I was violated here, traumatized, tossed out by my best friend, and now with Fyodor’s words fresh in my mind, I’m considering that I was actually deeply betrayed.

But what’s really got me upset is that I’m locked in this goddamn car like a little kid. Yes, he’s supposed to own me, but after last night, I thought our dynamic had shifted enough not to be trapped in the goddamn car.

I’m staring at the building, waiting for him to reemerge, hoping and praying that something terrible doesn’t happen. I know in my heart that that’s naive. Fyodor isn’t the type of man who would drive across town to some shitty apartment if he didn’t have a very serious reason for doing it.

My heart leaps into my throat as I catch Natalia’s blond hair flying down the sidewalk. A bag hangs over her shoulder, and she looks both ways before crossing the street, but she does not look back. I smack my hands against the window, trying to get her attention. Her eyes flit to me for one moment, and it’s like she’s seen a ghost. She stops dead in her tracks for a half second before she looks away and runs as fast as she can.

I keep watching her, shocked as I realize Fyodor is right about her. When she hits the end of the block, I catch the side of her face as she darts across the street again, and for some fucking reason, even if she betrayed me, I still worry about her as she goes.

My anxiety doesn’t ease up, and I’m near the point of tears by the time he reemerges probably ten minutes later. I can’t say for certain because he didn’t leave the goddamn car running, so there’s no time displayed. I haven’t had my phone since it died in the basement of the theater, but this is the first time I actively regret that fact. He’s left me entirely powerless.

It’s not like you even have his number to call him , a nasty voice reminds me.

I don’t have to wait much longer. The door opens, and Fyodor emerges. He walks down the steps cleaning his hands with a handkerchief. The red flash of blood staining the white cloth is obvious from here. Like he’s waving his own little red flag just for me.

He approaches the car, and in the natural sunlight, I can see so many more of his scars. He looks especially harsh and cruel, cleaning blood off himself. I wish I could say I was a good enough person and that didn’t attract me to him, but it does.

He opens the door and climbs inside. I allow him to start the engine and buckle his seat belt, but by the time we’re pulling away, I’m vibrating with tension and wondering if he’ll say anything about what just happened.

“Why did Natalia run down the street like that?”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel, and I notice there’s a good amount of blood around his fingernails still.

“She didn’t try to talk to you, Kotyonok. I wonder why.”

My cheeks burn because I’m starting to believe he’s right, but also how humiliating is it that I don’t even have a friend? I had no one to take me in to the point that I wound up in an auction. The only person I could turn to would betray me to her boyfriend.

“If you’re trying to prove I’m pathetic, that point has been beaten into the ground.”

“I’m trying to prove that you deserve better than two-bit friends who betray you and stab you in the back like you’re fucking nothing. I didn’t kill that bitch because I knew it would offend you, but I wanted to, and I should have.”

I gasp, unable to believe he could do that. He doesn’t understand. I—I—he can’t.

“Please don’t hurt her.”

“Don’t ask me for things I’ve already given you.”

“You don’t understand. She’s not a bad person.”

“No, Katya. You don’t understand. You’ve never seen what loyalty looks like, but I’m going to show you.”

“You’re going to show me loyalty?” The disbelief in my tone is thick. “I told you I loved you and?—”

“And what?” he demands, but I can’t find it in me to fight for that right now too.

His hands are so clearly covered in blood, and I haven’t asked what happened to Scott. He hasn’t promised me no harm came to him because he knew it would upset me. It sounds stupid because I was glad when he killed Franco, but a part of me always felt I owed Scott for taking up space in his home, and I didn’t want to see him hurt.

“What did you do to Scott?” I finally pluck up the nerve to ask.

“You seem upset, Kotyonok. Let’s discuss more pleasant things.”

“What did you do to him?” I insist. My hands slap against my legs in my frustration, and the pain echoes all the way down, but I don’t care. “Fyodor, tell me what you just did while I sat here locked in the damn car!”

The energy in the car is positively combustible. He’s so large his shoulder nearly touches me, and a crazy part of me wants to reach out and shake him. He seems just as incensed as I am, vibrating with tension.

“I fucking killed him, Katya. Would you like to know how? Would you like to know how it felt? Would you like to know if I waited until he was dead or if I left him there to die alone?”

“Stop it, please stop it.”

My stomach hurts. I didn’t expect he would say such things to me, and yes, I watched Franco die, but somehow hearing him is worse than the distorted memories that are already starting to fade. I was so angry with Franco when he died. With everything that’s happened between then and now, I’ve practically forgotten Scott existed.

“I don’t want to hear this type of thing,” I tell him, meaning more than anything, I wish this type of thing didn’t happen. That this nasty, violent world wasn’t a part of him—but even as I think it, I know I’m lying. I’m disgusted with myself, but I’m aroused at the sight of him covered in blood.

“And that’s a luxury that I am happy to afford you, but don’t you dare ask me questions and expect me to lie.”

“I don’t want you to lie to me.” That’s true. I need to be able to trust him, and I don’t want to live in a fake world where I pretend he’s someone else. “I just hate this.”

“I am going to have to do a lot of things you don’t like. I have and will do things that disgust you, and if you’d prefer to stay in the dark, I can leave you there. But the reason you have to come with me everywhere I go is because I can’t trust you yet. Think about that the next time you imagine doing something stupid to yourself.”

I stay quiet as we take our trip back to the apartment. We head up in the elevator, and I don’t speak until we step out in the foyer.

“Are you sending me back to that room?”

“I told you, you sleep with me now.”

“We are not sleeping.”

Rather than answer me, he grabs the handles of the wheelchair and leads me deeper into the apartment. I don’t know the layout well enough to know if we’re anywhere near the room I spent those days in. He opens the room we stayed in together last night and wheels me inside.

First, we go to the closet. He opens it, showing me half of it’s been cleared away. There aren’t many things in the empty space yet, but what there are are items for me. He never said he loved me, but after what happened in that club, this seems like a pretty big gesture.

“Would you like a full tour?” he asks me. Before today, I would’ve said no, too overwhelmed with my new lot in life and the disparity between us. Now it feels like accepting. It’s an olive branch, and I want to take it.

“Okay.”

We tour the apartment not talking much, just me listening as he explains what and where everything is. When we’re finally finished, we come to a large dining room, where the table is fully set and waiting for us to eat.

“Have dinner with me?” It sounds like a question, a romantic one that makes my heart beat a touch faster.

“Do I have a choice?”

He laughs. “No.” It should ruin the moment, but it doesn’t. Him taking my choices from me has made everything about this relationship possible. There isn’t one moment of this I would have allowed myself, and I would have missed out on what was left of life for me.

“Then I’d love to.”

He brings me to the table and serves me. When he’s finished placing decadent scoops of food onto my plate, he takes the seat beside me instead of the one across from me. My stupid heart beat a little faster for him, and I have to remind myself not to forget my irritation.

I take a bite of my food before I speak, and he does the same.

“You said something earlier that bothers me.”

His dark eyes find mine.

“I said a lot of things earlier that bothered you.” His patient gaze waits for my explanation as he chews.

“You were talking about the type of friends that I deserve.”

“And?” He sticks his knife into his meat and cuts his next bite like this isn’t a very interesting topic of conversation.

“How am I supposed to have friends when you own me?”

He puts a bite of steak in his mouth, staring into my eyes as he chews, and when he’s finished, he says, “You’re going to have a very full life with me.”

Around the time dinner ends, there is an alert at the front door. Fyodor tells me he’ll be right back and leaves me alone at the table. When he returns, he’s holding a large gift box and wearing a slightly frightening expression.

“What’s this?”

“I realized you had a better reaction when I shot Franco in front of your face than when I left you locked in the car to deal with Scott.”

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t think you’re mad. I killed some fucking scumbag who sex trafficked you.”

“Then why am I mad?”

“Because I left you out, and I made you feel small.” His words register slowly, and my surprise is deep in my gut as I process, but ultimately, he’s right. That’s exactly how I felt.

“What’s in the box, Fyodor.”

He gives me a wolfish smile that raises a chill over my skin and sends a shiver down my spine.

“Open it if you’re so brave, Kotyonok.”

I open the box, first revealing a tissue paper in a gruesome shade of red. On top of it lies a note, and I immediately recognize Fyodor’s writing.

Kotyonok,

Your claws are too small for your enemies. You must allow me.

-Fyodor

The sentiment of the note as well as the color of the tissue have sweat breaking out along my skin. My heart pounds, and I remove the tissue to reveal Scott’s head inside a plastic bag. There’s too much blood to see much other than his open mouth and some chunks of his neck.

I stare for a minute, and his features become more apparent, changed though they are by death. I could scream or cry or act otherwise disturbed, but I remember how he choked me and told me I would make myself useful. How when he didn’t get what he wanted from me, he sent me to be useful for someone else.

He called Franco, and the fact that I found Fyodor is nothing more than an act of God. The fate he tried to send me toward was a hell of a lot worse. His actions merge with Franco, and I remember it all so much more vividly now that I am looking at him than I did when we were sitting in the car talking about it. I’m fucking tired of being taken from.

I find I’m not actually as bothered as I thought I would be. A part of me recognizes that all these dead ends in my emotions are a response to trauma, but they’re not because of Fyodor. They’re because of men like this severed head. I guess there’s some benefit to being with an older guy. They’re mature enough to point out when you’re mad for a completely different reason than you thought.

I look at him and smile. “You’ve got a really fucked-up way of proving a point.”

“And for the record, I do love you,” he says like it’s nothing. Like he didn’t just give me a man’s head in a box and rock my entire world in the same beat.