15. Alek
15
ALEK
W hy couldn’t I stop myself from fucking following her?
My hand hovers over the doorknob, on the verge of yanking it open. I’ve never forced my way into a woman’s room before, but my control is fraying when it comes to Dahlia, and it makes me want to punish her. It makes me want to take out every tangled, furious, confused feeling I have on her perfect skin, to take my belt to her ass until it’s red, to spank her pussy until she comes from the leather striking her clit, to fuck her until she screams. I want to use her until we’re both spent, and the need is so violent that it makes me take a step back.
It feels as if all the wrong things are waking up inside of me. She’s making me feel things I forgot, thawing my emotions, and I want to fight it with everything in me. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want any more pain.
I was going to stay in the library, lock the door, and jerk off. But I couldn’t stop myself from following her upstairs. I needed to know if she was going to finish what I started, give herself what I denied her. And now, as I stand outside her door listening to her panting as she comes down from the high of her orgasm, I’m still so fucking hard it hurts.
I can’t remember ever having been as painfully turned on in my life as I am from listening to my wife come.
I want her desperately, but I force myself away from the door, down the hall to my own room. My entire body feels like it’s throbbing with a second heartbeat, my arousal a living thing under my skin, and the moment I’m in my bedroom with the door locked I’m undoing my belt, seeking relief.
I feel unhinged. There’s never been a woman who has made my desire spin so completely out of control, not even…
My jaw tightens, the last echoes of my orgasm fading at the chilling thought of the last woman I wanted. The last woman who made me feel anything close to this—although now that I’ve had Dahlia, even that seems to pale in comparison.
What is it about her? I think, frustration welling up in my chest as I shuck my clothing and head for the shower. On the surface, it’s easy enough—she’s unafraid of me, and she doesn’t back down, even in the face of my taunts and my distrust of her. It’s rare for anyone to be so completely unfazed by who I am and what I’m capable of, man or woman, and again, that thought brings back the memory of someone else entirely. Of ice blue eyes and white-blonde hair, of a body made for sin, of a woman who, like Dahlia, didn’t fear me in the slightest.
Until she betrayed me, instead.
I hear my teeth grind together as I close my eyes, forcing the memory of her away. I don’t want it—don’t want the pain, or the reminders of my own stupidity, even if it would be good for me to be reminded of what happened the last time I let myself be played by a beautiful woman.
Dahlia won’t betray me the way Elia did. I know that—she doesn’t have the means or the connections, even if I might have given her the desire by this point, with how I’ve acted. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t lying to me about the baby, trapping me with it, forcing me into a corner so she can take what she wants from me—even though I’m not entirely sure what that might be. Money? Protection? A father for her child? I don’t plan on giving her any of those things, except the most basic financial support if she’s not lying. I don’t want to give her my desire, either, but it feels like she’s ripping it from me every time she’s near me.
Nothing good can come from letting her under my skin. I learned that lesson once, and I have no intentions of learning it yet again, in a different way.
Sooner or later, I’ll find out what trap she’s setting for me. And I’ll make sure she’s caught in it instead.
—
The next day, Dimitri intercepts me in the afternoon, coming out of his office with a frustrated expression on his face. “I need your help, Alek,” he says, his voice ringing out in the space between us, and I stop, frowning at him.
“I don’t work for you any longer. I don’t work for the Bratva.”
Dimitri blows out a sharp breath between pursed lips. “We’ve talked about this,” he says flatly, and I shrug.
“You talked. I told you how I feel.”
Dimitri’s jaw tightens, and I see a muscle in the hollow of it tick. “No, Alek. We haven’t talked about much since you’ve come home. Especially not?—”
“I have somewhere to be.” I start to walk past him, but he steps in my path, and I stop short again.
A part of me wonders why I’m resisting the conversation that I know we need to have so stubbornly. I came here for answers, didn’t I? But once I was actually here, faced with the possibility of those answers, I’ve been too much of a coward to really seek them out. After so much pain, I can feel myself recoiling from the thought of any more—emotional or physical. That pain hardened me in most ways, but in a few others, it’s made me vulnerable. Weak, even—and that angers me.
“I need you,” Dimitri repeats. “There’s a job I need to get done. Vik and Gus are on other work for me, and I want Pyotr here at the house. I trust you to handle this.”
I frown at him. As much as I hate it, deep down, I feel a stirring of anticipation at the idea of getting my hands dirty again. Of doing the kind of work that I know Dimitri would need me for.
It might even be an outlet for some of the frustrated rage churning inside of me, one that I desperately need.
“What?” I ask, blowing out a sharp breath. “What is it?”
“There’s a low-level gang that’s been moving some product for us in and out of strip clubs over in Harlem,” Dimitri says. “You know otets had business going all the way from the very bottom up to the top, and these guys are pretty close to the bottom. I’ve been considering just cutting them loose. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, frankly. But right now they’re withholding money that they owe us for product they should have sold, and I need either the money or the drugs returned. One or the other. I imagine it will require some…convincing.”
I can feel my blood stirring at that. This is the kind of work I used to do for our father, a familiar kind of violence that I can feel myself already yearning for as Dimitri throws the possibility out there, like an itch under my skin. I have so much anger, so much bottled-up rage waiting to be unleashed, and he’s giving me an opportunity to let some of it out. To be angry at someone that I’m allowed to be angry at.
I’m still just stubborn enough to not let him see how much I actually want to do the job, though.
“Fine,” I bite out. “Give me the address. I’ll go after dark tonight and get your money or your drugs. Like old times, right, brother?”
Dimitri looks at me warily, but he nods. “Like old times.”
Hours later, I’m walking out into the dark, keys in hand and the slip of paper with the address in my pocket as I walk out to my bike. I can feel the cold weight of the gun resting against the small of my back, but I doubt I’ll actually use it tonight. I have other plans, if it goes that far.
The hum of the engine and the sting of the cool night air against my cheeks feels like a balm, the promise of what the night holds making my skin buzz with anticipation. For once, Dahlia isn’t at the forefront of my mind, and I welcome the distraction, the chance to get release in some other way.
I know the roads out to the part of Harlem where I’m headed well enough that I don’t need to check the address again until I’m nearly there. My destination is out in the slums, a derelict brownstone building on a street full of them. I park my bike in a nearby alley, locking the wheels and hoping for the best. If someone fucks with it, they’re going to regret that choice.
The building itself is easy enough to get into. I head down the stairs towards the basement, trying not to breathe in the scent of mold and bad weed that fills the stairwell, and stop at the water-stained door at the bottom of it. Raising one hand, I bang my fist heavily against it, feeling the wood give a little.
“Fuck off!” I hear from inside. “Nobody ordered fucking pizza!”
I almost chuckle at that, a rumbling in my chest as I knock again. “Open up!” I growl through the door, letting my accent thicken. “If you want to keep all of your fingers and toes, you’ll open the door, druz’ya .”
“I said, fuck off!” The voice is less certain this time, a little shaky around the edges, and I feel a tug at the corners of my lips. They know they’re fucked, they’re just hoping that the door between me and them provides more protection than it actually will.
“Your funeral.” I rear back, slamming my booted foot into the latch. The door gives immediately, splintering around the lock, and with one more heavy kick, it swings open.
I hear a shout, the click of a gun, and my own is drawn in an instant, leveled at the group of five men I see scattered around the shitty excuse for a living room.
“Tell him to lower his gun, druz’ya ,” I growl, gesturing at the one threatening me with my own weapon. “Or one of you dies. I’ll let you wonder which one it will be, da ?”
I can smell the stench of their fear, overpowering the rank smells of weed and sweat, and it’s almost as satisfying as a good fuck. It’s been so long since I’ve been feared, since someone has trembled while looking down the barrel of my gun, and the sensation of it prickles pleasurably down my spine.
“Put the gun down,” I repeat, my voice rough and angry, and when the man—a boy, really—holding the gun doesn’t obey, my finger sinks down on the trigger.
There’s five of them, and six shots in the gun. I only need three. I drop the one aiming the weapon at me first, ducking to one side as his finger stutters on the trigger when he falls, sending a bullet wide. I drop two more in quick succession—the one next to him and the one on the far side of the room, leaving two of the men still alive.
The acrid scent of urine fills the air, and when I look over at the scrawny man in basketball shorts sitting in a gaming chair, I can see that he pissed himself. His other friend, a stocky man who looks like he played football ten years ago, is sitting frozen on the sofa near the wall, the shattered glass of a bong on the floor at his feet. His face is bone white, green around the edges, terror written across his features.
“Now that I have your attention—” I look between the two of them. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the Yashkov Bratva. You’ve done business with them, even, although you must not be very good at it, given your…living situation.” I look around, the derision in my voice making it plain what I think of their hideout, or home, or whatever they want to call it.
“Look, man, we just need some more time—” The skinny one blubbers out the words, and I stalk towards him, shoving my gun back into my waistband and my other hand into my pocket.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you have something here, or at least enough to buy yourself some time. Either what you owe the Bratva, or the drugs you were given—either one will do. But you’re going to give me something, and until you do?—”
I reach out, grabbing the skinny one by the front of his t-shirt, and I bring my other fist around. The brass knuckles on my hand gleam in the fluorescent light from the lamps by the couch as they connect with his jaw, sending a spray of blood over the carpet, my shirt, and my hand. I see one of his teeth fly free, hitting the corner of the table, and I hear his friend let out a grunt of shock.
That shock lasts only a second. The friend is up a moment later, barreling towards me, and something like relief washes over me at the promise of a fight.
It’s fast. I jerk the skinny one to one side, pivoting just in time to hit the stocky one in the chin with the knuckles. He drops like a sack of potatoes, and I fling the skinny one back into his chair, knocking him back onto the floor in full view of his friend.
“Whichever one of you talks first gets to live,” I growl. “So make up your mind.”
Twenty minutes later, the stocky one is dead on the floor with his other friends, his jaw broken and eyes sightless. The skinny one is crying bloody, snotty tears through a mouth that’s missing teeth, but I have half the money Dimitri is owed and the remaining pills.
“Forget you ever worked with the Yashkov Bratva,” I warn him, shoving the brass knuckles back into my pocket before striding back out into the rank warmth of the stairwell.
Once I’m back outside, I draw in deep lungfuls of the fresh air, rotating my neck from side to side as I go to collect my bike. I feel a bone-deep sense of satisfaction, almost on par with the relief that comes after an orgasm, my muscles looser than they have been in years, the skin of my hands bruised and tight with blood.
It felt fucking good to let loose. It felt good to make someone else hurt. I feel viscerally aware of my freedom as I rev my bike’s engine and pull out onto the street, a pulsing, vibrant feeling of being alive churning through my veins.
Halfway home, as I look in one of my mirrors, I see a black car two lengths behind me. I frown, a sudden chill running down my spine, a prickling awareness that I’ve had since I was young. I’ve always known how to be aware of my surroundings, to watch for anyone following me, to know when something is wrong. And something feels wrong.
I turn right, and the car follows. Left, and they’re still behind me. I grit my teeth, veering down a side street, hitting the gas as I speed up with the intent to lose them. And for three more turns, I don’t manage it, until I veer down yet another alley, zipping through a four-way intersection on a red light. I swerve around passing cars, ignoring the honks and shouts, nearly sliding as I whip down another alleyway on the other side, speeding forward until, when I look behind me, the car is gone.
Still, I was being followed. I’m sure of it.
I should tell Dimitri. Regardless of the tension between us, he’s the Yashkov pakhan, and if someone is following me back from a job, he needs to know about it.
But something within me resists the idea. Not just because some leftover need within me for his approval doesn’t want him to know I had a tail, but also because I don’t want to be dragged deeper back into the machinations of the Bratva. I did this for Dimitri because I wanted those men’s blood and fear, but I’m not sure I really want any part of the family business any longer.
Tonight was for me, not him. And as I pull up to the front of the mansion, looking up at the darkened windows, I know I’m not going to breathe a word about it.
If danger comes for me, I’ll deal with it. I don’t need to rely on anyone else to do my dirty work.
I learned a long time ago that there’s no use in it, anyway.