Paid for by the Bratva (Morozov Bratva #23)

Chapter 1 - Ilana

The first sound I heard was the crack of glass.

It was sudden when a hand clamped over my mouth, forcing all sound to die in my throat.

My sketchbook hit the marble floor, pages fluttering open like startled birds as the world around me blurred into a flurry of chaos.

One moment I was staring at a painting, leisurely examining the soft brush strokes trailing across the face of the woman in the portrait, and the very next moment I was staring at my own reflection in a man’s black visor.

“Don’t scream.” The voice was low, accented, and sharp enough to slice air.

I screamed anyway, but the sound never made it past his gloved hand. I tried to wriggle away, push him, and bite his hand, but the man was much taller and built like a wall. All effort was useless.

Pain bit into my wrists as zip ties locked around them while I continued to kick, catching someone’s shin.

That earned a muttered curse in Russian, which twisted something in my stomach.

They were Russian. My own people. Which only meant that they weren’t some random thugs, apparently common in the United States, but men who knew what they were doing.

Only someone with connections could get inside the closed gallery past visiting hours anyway.

They hadn’t broken in. They had simply walked inside.

A black van waited just outside the gallery doors, engine still humming.

The street was empty, indicating that the security guard was gone, the bright lights of the exhibit flickering out behind me as they dragged me across the polished floor.

An image of my brothers suddenly came to my head. All four of them.

Kliment. Nico. Jarek. Fyodor.

Their faces used to mean safety, at least until we were back in Moscow. They had insisted Miami was an opportunity. A fresh start. A chance to expand. And I had believed them. I had believed everything they said until this moment.

The van door slammed, shutting out the world around me.

The windows were all tinted black, making it impossible for me to see outside.

But even if I could see, I would never be able to remember the route.

I had only arrived in Miami two weeks ago, and those two weeks were spent driving around to art galleries with my chauffeur and bodyguards, completely sheltered from the city.

I had wanted to go out. Explore. Breathe the sea air.

But my brothers had said no. They had talked about my safety being of utmost priority in a new city.

To hell with their safety precautions.

Where are they now?

The air inside smelled of metal and gasoline, but before I could try to discern anything else, a hood dropped over my head.

Rough hands shoved me down on a leather seat unceremoniously, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out in frustration.

The seat vibrated as we sped away, tires screaming against the asphalt.

I had never felt so helpless in my entire life.

Everything seemed wrong. As if my world was breaking apart before my eyes, and I was being forced to watch.

My voice came out hoarse. “You’ve made a big mistake.”

“Shut it,” someone in the darkness said.

“I have money—”

A laugh, soft and amused, cut through the humming of the engine. “We don’t need your money, sweetheart. We already know your family has plenty.”

Cold spread through my chest. “You know my brothers?”

“Know them?” Another voice replied, this time from the front seat. “We know what they’re trying to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Orders,” the first one said. “No one has allowed you to ask questions, so zip your mouth and save your energy.”

“When they find out that you have kidnapped me, you will have a lot to pay for.”

The man in the front seat laughed.

“Right now, it is your brothers who have a lot to pay for, and you will become the form of payment.”

What does that even mean? I wondered, my mind racing.

The van hit a turn, throwing me sideways.

My shoulder slammed against the metal, but the pain helped me focus again.

I already knew panic was useless. I’d learned that much from living around the Romanov men.

They had taught me early how panic only made you weak, and weakness was something no one respected.

I forced myself to breathe instead. In. Out. In. Out.

I can get out of this. I have to.

Every vibration of the van was a reminder that I was moving farther from everything familiar.

Everything I had ever known. These men could very well kill me, but I did not understand what any of the Romanovs had done for me to be treated like this.

My brothers ran an honest hotel business that they wanted to expand to the United States.

None of which was wrong. I tried to memorize the turns, the stops, the sounds outside of waves, traffic, and maybe a bridge, but the city bled away too quickly.

After a while, there was nothing but an eerie quiet and the low humming of the engine.

Time dissolved. It could’ve just been minutes or hours before the van stopped. I had lost all track of it.

Rough hands pulled me out, and this time, my feet met the dirt. Damp air. Crickets. It was evident we were in a rural area, a little farther from the city. All hope of trying to run away from here and getting home died in my heart because the prospect suddenly seemed even more impossible.

They dragged me down a hallway that smelled of mildew and bleach, and a door opened. I was pushed inside, cold concrete under my knees as the wires burned against my wrists.

Finally, the hood came off.

Light stabbed at my eyes, and I blinked until the blur shaped into four men.

Three of them were masked, nothing visible except their eyes, while one of them still remained unmasked.

He was clearly older, bald, and his nose crooked from a break that never really healed right.

He watched me like I was an animal up for inspection.

“Ilana Romanov,” he said slowly, testing the name on his tongue. His voice immediately told me he was the one sitting up front. “You are quite a pretty little package, aren’t you?”

I stared at him, refusing to lower my eyes, forcing steel into my voice while I talked to him. “You have no idea what you are doing. My brother—”

“Your brothers won’t risk a war for one girl.”

“You don’t know them. I am not some random girl. I am their only sister.”

He smiled, yellow teeth flashing in the low light. “We know enough.”

He turned and left, the door slamming shut as each one of them filed out, the lock clasping shut in place.

How am I going to escape this torture?

The next few days blurred together, all of them the same. Dim light, the stench of damp cloth, footsteps echoing down the hall at odd hours. They fed me once a day, mostly bread or water, and sometimes nothing. I tried to keep track of time, but it was impossible in a windowless room.

Instead, I learned their voices. The tall one with the gravel tone liked to whistle when he walked past me, but the one with the scar on his neck said nothing at all.

Every night, when I lay on the thin mattress they had thrown inside the room, I tried to piece together why. It was impossible to decipher.

My brothers ran a luxury hotel and restaurant chain, or at least that’s what I’d been told.

They had always been busy in meetings, with investors, or endless amounts of travel.

They never talked about business in front of me, but I’d seen the bodyguards, the encrypted phones, and the way they changed topics whenever I entered the room.

I was beginning to doubt everything as if I had been living in the middle of an elaborately fabricated lie.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe I’d been stupid enough to think we were normal.

But this clearly tells me we are not.

I didn’t cry. I refused to give them that satisfaction.

But when the door opened to what I could only assume was the third night, and two men came in with a black dress draped over one’s arm, my stomach turned uneasily.

“Get up.”

I still didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because you’re on the list tonight.”

“The list?”

They didn’t answer. One of them threw the dress at me. Silk as thin as paper, smelling faintly of perfume and fear. The dress was soft and clean in my hands, but despite that, I had no urge to put it on.

“Change. Or we will be forced to do it for you.”

My fingers trembled as I simply obeyed the command, slipping out of the dress I had been wearing for three days now and slipping into the black silk.

A beautiful dress couldn’t have magically fixed my appearance, but I didn’t care.

My reddish-brown hair was greasy from not being washed for three days now, but looking pretty was the least of my priorities in that moment.

My only priority was escape. Maybe this could be my chance to run.

I will have to make it count.

I followed behind them as they guided me towards a similar van, this time without any hoods or handcuffs.

I felt free yet strangely trapped. The van ride this time was shorter, and the hood returned for the journey.

But when they finally removed it, I almost wished they hadn’t.

Somehow, we had managed to reach underground, or at least close enough.

Dim chandeliers hung from a ceiling of exposed stone, casting yellow lights over rows of red velvet chairs.

Men in suits filled them, glasses of whiskey balanced on knees, eyes hungry and cold.

I wasn’t new to men like these.

My brothers were always decked out in powerful suits, as were the men who often visited our house. But seeing them here, in a setting where I was clearly at a disadvantage, somehow felt wrong.

A man in a tuxedo stepped onto the platform, microphone in hand. His voice was smooth, practiced, soulless.

I needed to run. And I needed to run fast.

“Gentlemen,” he began speaking, “tonight we begin with something exceptional. Fresh blood of Russian descent. She is eloquent, educated, and untouched by our world.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd as my stomach dropped.

They were talking about me.

My chest tightened, and I wanted to scream, to fight, but two of the masked guards held me from behind, steering me towards the light, which was clearly waiting for me.

I felt as if I was going to be sick, and I began to fight them.

It was impossible to push them away, but I would rather die than go down without a fight. I needed to do something.

The curtain lifted, and for a heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe at all.

Dozens of eyes were fixed on me, their sleazy gazes scanning and assessing every inch of my body.

I tasted blood from where I had bitten my lip, the coppery feeling making my mouth go numb.

I could see the hunger in the eyes of the men ahead of me, filling me with disgust. I tried to fight, but escape felt impossible.

“Item four,” the announcer said, his voice booming loudly through the well-placed speakers around the large hall. “We’ll start the bidding at fifty thousand.”

Someone whistled. Another man raised his glass.

I didn’t see faces but the flashes of watches, rings, and that terrible gleam of amusement in their eyes.

In that moment, the harsh reality of my situation hit me completely.

A reality I could not escape from. A reality that was already knocking on my door, making me sick to my stomach.

I was being auctioned.