25. Mila
25
MILA
I can’t stop pacing.
The sun set a long time ago, and the living room of the little house in the desert has dimmed with only the orange glow of the fireplace to illuminate it. The blackout curtains are drawn—not by my doing but by Roman’s insistence—so not even the moonlight or the desert snakes keep me company.
The fire is too warm, but I keep stoking it. Let the sweat on my forehead gather and my hair dampen, just to keep my body alert. It casts my shadow along the wall as I move like a manic villain in the tiny space.
Thirty-four hours and I’m already going insane.
When an engine purrs outside, I halt my steps, my eyes narrowing as I stare at the door.
No one is supposed to come here. Not until Saturday night, after Nikita and his men are taken out. Not that I planned to wait until then, but no one should be here.
My heart pounds faster as I creep to stand beside the door, pulling the kitchen knife from the pair of sweats I found in a drawer. I hold it at the ready.
When the door opens, shielding me from view, I clench the knife, listening closely for anyone behind the intruder, but I hear only one set of steps. I raise the knife as the person steps into view and am ready to strike, but when I spot the tattoos poking from Vitaly’s collar, I freeze.
My eyes close as my breath stutters.
“Hey there, killer,” he says, shutting the door.
The knife clatters to the wooden floor as I open my eyes and fling myself into his arms, pressing my cheek firmly against his chest. I could just as easily deck him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I admonish before breathing in his scent like I can trap it if only I take enough in.
“I know.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Has that stopped us before?”
I sigh, letting myself melt into his arms for a blissful three seconds before pulling away. “If you aren’t careful, you could ruin this.”
“I am careful.” He lets his eyes dance around my face before pushing sweaty hair behind my ear. “I just needed to make sure you were okay. No one followed me, I promise. I have no phone. I have a different car… It’s okay.”
He just needed to make sure I was okay.
The look that he gives me, concerned, searching for the pain I carry inside, tries to tug me closer to him. I don’t allow it. Not because I don’t want to, but because I know if I let him hold me in my pain, I’ll never crawl back out of it. Vitaly makes me weak in a way no one else can. He unlocks emotion I work so hard to bury.
I can’t have that now.
“I won’t be okay until Nikita is dead,” I say, my tone even. Strong . My father would’ve been proud of the tears I haven’t shed.
Vitaly frowns. “Revenge is everyone’s first choice, but it’s rarely the treatment that heals.”
My fingers curl as I take a step back. “Are you saying Nikita shouldn’t die for what he’s done?”
He shakes his head. “That isn’t what I’m saying.”
“Then what the fuck are you saying?” My voice booms off the walls, too loud, too angry. Vitaly isn’t the enemy, but for a moment, it feels like he might be.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I realize it’s because he’s waiting for me to calm myself. I uncurl my fingers and hug my sides, pinching my lips as I wait for him to go on.
“Please don’t misunderstand… If I found out he was responsible for my mother’s death, I would kill him for it. If he’d killed you yesterday, I would kill him for that. I’m not telling you I’m above revenge or that Nikita doesn’t deserve to die. I’m saying if I did it, it would be out of anger, and anger never takes away grief.”
“It isn’t anger,” I spit. “It’s justice.”
Vitaly’s jaw tics. “And what justice do I deserve, Mila?”
I groan. “I already told you, what happened to your father wasn’t?—”
“Did you know there’s a caste system in prison?”
I close my mouth.
“I’ll spare you some of the details, but let me just say, I was not a part of the organized crime caste. It turns out my name meant nothing. In fact, twice in my first week, two people tried to shank me. Not a coincidence, I imagine.”
He clears his throat while a shiver runs up my spine. His tone is … I don’t know. I don’t like it. This is the first time he’s being open about prison, but suddenly, I don’t know that I want to hear whatever he’s about to say.
“So I came into prison as an eighteen-year-old pretty boy who had two different assassination attempts my first week. Things did not look good for me, Mila. I want you to understand that. There’s the lowest caste system—roosters—and it’s the last you want to be in. Once you’re there, you’re in it for life. One of the ways to get there is by being raped.”
My eyes widen, imagining the worst, but Vitaly shakes his head.
“Nope. Not what you’re thinking. It didn’t happen to me, but a man from another caste system, a goat , tried because the guards wanted to make money off of me by whoring me out. I stuck a screw in his eye before shoving my fist down his throat until he suffocated.”
He pauses a few moments, as if I have anything to say to that, before he goes on. “And that is how I became a goat, which is what someone who does the guards’ and warden’s bidding is called. If they felt a prisoner might have money or family with money, they assigned one of us to torture them until they paid to keep us off their back. We whored out the younger and weaker ones. And we kept the other prisoners in a constant state of distress, just to make sure everyone was in line. In exchange, we received extra food, medical care, and safety.”
When Vitaly steps closer to me, the fiery look in his eyes makes me want to backpedal. But I hold still anyway. I want to prove to him that he doesn’t scare me, even though right now, he does. A little. Only because I’m thinking about all the things I must not know.
“I know Nikita is cruel.” Vitaly’s gaze softens ever so slightly. “Everything he’s done to you makes me sick… But if you knew half the things I’ve done, you would see that my actions are hardly different. I like to think I’m a better man, but I’m not innocent, Mila. No one is, not even you. So let’s not call it justice. If there was justice in our world, we’d all be dead. Let’s call it anger-motivated revenge, and let’s do it knowing when it’s all said and done, our fathers will still be dead, and we’ll always have those holes to fill.”
I stand still for several moments, letting his words sink in. Deep down, I know he’s right, but I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe killing Nikita will make the pain go away. That my father will be avenged, and my grief will ease.
But in the end, it was my hand that killed my father. My actions. My thrust of the blade. In a way, Vitaly is right... To bring my father justice, I’d have to kill myself. To bring many people justice, I’d have to kill myself.
I can’t think of that right now.
Shaking away the thoughts, I narrow my eyes. “Call it whatever you want, Vitaly. It just has to be done.”
He nods once.
My neck lengthens as I tilt my head back, my chest rising with a breath. I didn’t plan on seeing him until Saturday, so I never planned on telling anyone this, but now that he’s here…
“And I know you think I’m some damsel in distress who needs to sit back and wait for you to do it, but I would like to remind you that I was a soldier before you got here. I know how to fight.”
He nods. “I remember.”
“Then I hope you’re not expecting to stick me on a mantle to collect dust. If you think I’m going to let you treat me like a delicate piece of?—”
“I have no intention.”
I swallow and stand as straight as I can. “I don’t care what you and Roman think. I’m coming to the dinner on Saturday. I’ll wait until after it starts, but I’m not going to hang back when my people need me.”
I expect his nostrils to flare at the challenge. For his lips to tighten. I prepare for a fight now , one I intend to come out the victor of one way or another, but Vitaly doesn’t blink.
He reaches behind him and pulls something from his back pocket that makes my heart stutter. It may as well be a wedding ring with the way my shoulders, squared in defense, slouch with a released breath.
A throwing knife.
“Don’t ever assume my mind works the same as Roman’s or any other man’s,” he says, dangling the knife in his fingertips. “I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you were the type to hide behind me.”
He spins the knife in the air with a gentle toss to me. I catch it with a firm grip, my throat thickening. I stare at it for a long time while I try to wrap my mind around so many things. Like how he had the foresight to bring this here, inviting me to the war, treating me like the warrior he claimed I was.
“What did you say?” I choke on the words, my throat too thick to speak. I’ll never understand how he can do this to me.
Well, actually… Maybe I do.
“I said I love you, Mila.”
I don’t look at him. Instead, I stare at the knife while my heart pounds in my ears. Two loud thuds, over and over, reminding me of the heart Vitaly is so capable of squeezing. He always has been.
Somehow, I think it was supposed to be this way. I think I was supposed to hate him with a fire that burned so hot it thawed my defenses and allowed him to break through.
I think I was supposed to see him as a man before a Pakhan, something only possible in this scenario. An obstacle before a target. I needed to see him, truly see him in the most stripped-down sense, before I could ever love him and before he could ever love me.
The deserter and the whore.
Enemies.
Bratva scum.
I close my eyes, trying to decide if I love him back, but the answer is so achingly obvious that it hurts. It hurts to love when you’ve never felt it before. It makes you grieve not having it sooner.
I drop the knife, letting it stick straight into the floor before I walk to Vitaly and reach up on my toes. My hands cradle his face as our lips touch, sending a warmth along my spine that pushes me closer to him.
He rips off his shirt, breaking our kiss for a couple of seconds before he bends to scoop me up by the backs of my thighs. His touch is rough and needy, impatient , like he won’t be staying long, and I’m reminded of everything happening. I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the one bedroom with the musty bed where he lays me down before jerking my sweatpants down my legs.
A breath hisses past my teeth at the intense look on his face when he meets my eyes, one hand on my panties. He pulls until they’re to my bent knees, then he points to my chest. “Take your shirt off.”
I laugh lightly, writhing beneath those eyes. They’re the eyes that saw me for the first time all those years ago. Judging, only this time I think I meet his rigorous standards. “And what are you going to do if I don’t?”
His lips lift into a wicked grin. “It’s what I won’t do that you should be concerned with.”
My smile falls as my pussy throbs, and this only makes Vitaly’s lips spread wider. He takes my panties off the rest of the way then splays my legs apart. Cold air kisses my sensitized flesh, and I find myself clenching again while Vitaly watches.
“Take your shirt off.” He doesn’t look at my face when he says it.
It isn’t a big deal. In fact, I want him to see me, all of me. But even more, I want to see what happens when I don’t do what he says.
“No.”
He chuckles. “Okay.”
He shifts my hips so I’m hanging over the edge of the bed, then he drops to his knees. I inhale a sharp breath and point my gaze to the ceiling.
“I thought we didn’t do this.” I try to sound amused, but my heart is racing.
I’ve never told him this. I don’t know why I would.
But this isn’t something I’ve experienced… Ever.
Nikita doesn’t give oral sex. He’ll touch, but he does not lick. He has very strong feelings about it. Men who give oral sex are subservient, they’re weak, they’re… You get the idea.
“I said you didn’t suck cock. I never said I didn’t eat pussy.”
When Vitaly’s lips press against my thigh, I shudder, closing my eyes. “Because you think I’m a queen,” I say, my voice squeaking as he moves up my inner thigh. “Aren’t you a king, though?”
His tongue slides up my center without me expecting it, and I snap my eyes open, my hands gripping the blanket. I try to focus on his answer, but it doesn’t come, the glide of his tongue back down my slit his only response.
I can feel the moisture between my legs, feel my core lubricating for him. My face heats wondering what I must taste like, but I don’t voice the thought. For some reason, I’m embarrassed.
“Do you not like this?” he asks, lifting my hood to flick his tongue on my clit once before looking up at me. Despite the action, his voice sounds serious.
“Of course, I do. Why?”
He tilts his head a moment then goes back to licking. I slam my eyes shut as he winds my core with his tongue like a fucking jack-in-the-box. And like the toy, I feel ready to burst.
“You like it, Mila?” Vitaly slips a couple fingers into me as he pulls up.
I swallow and nod.
“Good. Take your shirt off.”
My eyelids get heavy as his fingers pump inside me, and I find my hips lifting, aching for his mouth again.
“ Now .”
“You do it,” I pant, arching against his hand. I only mean the words as a blow off, so I regret them as soon as they’re out of my mouth and his fingers leave me. He snakes his way up my body and presses his forehead to mine before lifting my shirt to my chin.
“You’re such a bossy girl.” He shakes his head with mock disapproval. He brings the shirt over my face and leaves it there, blocking my sight as he clasps my wrists in his strong palm and takes my nipple into his mouth.
I let out a sharp cry when he bites, and I try to jerk my legs that are uselessly held beneath his body. My shirt vacuum seals to my mouth when I suck in oxygen through the cloth, and I have to spit it out just to get a proper breath.
But his lips sucking the swollen and tender bud he abused curls my toes with pleasure that makes it worth it. When he pinches my other nipple, hard, I try to yank my wrists free, but he doesn’t allow me to budge, and I can’t bring myself to ask him to.
He brought me the knife. He told me I’m a warrior, that I’m a queen.
I’m allowed to want to be his whore.
“Fuck,” I cry when he nips my other nipple, sucking it into his mouth right after.
When he’s finished with his assault, he removes the shirt over my head and looks at me plainly. “Ready to play nice?”
“Fuck you,” I say, my voice low as my core blazes with need.
His lips lift as he searches me, his eyes roaming my flushed face. He knows I want him. I don’t think he’ll make me say it.
And I’m right.
He releases my wrists only to cup a hand over my mouth as he slides on top of me, one hand hurriedly working the buttons on his jeans. He pushes them over his hips and drives into me. My eyes roll as my pussy stretches. I moan around his hand while wrapping my legs around him, and the moment he releases my mouth, I know our game is over.
His lips plant to mine, and I kiss him with my mouth opened slightly, inviting him in before he even knocks. I wrap my hands around his neck and moan as he thrusts, ecstasy warming my skin and squeezing my limbs around Vitaly.
My chest feels like it’s filling with something warm and thick, making it hard to breathe. I break away from Vitaly’s lips and pant against them, closing my eyes while trying not to suffocate.
He just feels like too much. And everything I want. And not nearly enough to satisfy my craving all at the same time. It overwhelms me. He overwhelms me.
I find my eyes watering, which is absolutely ridiculous, so I keep my eyes closed and ignore it, focusing instead on his cock stuffing me. Every thrust presses against a button that sends a wave of tingles up my core, and I move with it, my hips moving to meet his.
The waves build until it’s a tsunami crashing over me, washing away every thought from my mind in one dizzying spell of endorphins. Except for one...
“I love you,” I cry through my orgasm, stupid tears wetting the creases of my eyes.
Vitaly replies by speeding up his pace, rocking into me with so much force that my whole body jolts. He grunts as he comes then stills on top of me, resting his forehead against mine.
A minute passes while we pant, our hands finding each other’s arms in an embrace that says everything our winded lungs won’t let us.
“’Bout time,” Vitaly manages, an amused grin playing on his lips.
I smile with him but don’t reply. He rolls off of me and wipes the sweat from his forehead, facing me on his side. I roll to face him as well.
“I knew I loved you as soon as you said it.” I crook my arm beneath my head. “I just needed a minute to digest.”
His smile falls. “I was just teasing, Mila.”
I nod. “I know…”
My eyes feel heavy with a peaceful kind of sleepiness, but I only close them a moment before opening them. The tattoo on his chest comes into my view.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
I smile at it, but it isn’t happy. It’s sad.
I get it now. I get him .
When I first spotted it, I wondered if he was religious or something. I wondered what horrors had happened to him in prison to turn him humble. To turn him kind.
He was never afraid to talk about what happened to him in prison. He was afraid to talk about what he did.
“You’re not religious, are you?” I ask, my finger tracing the cursive letters.
He doesn’t look down at his chest. He seems to know what I’m talking about. “No… A friend of mine is. The tattoo is a story he liked to tell me… It’s to remember him by.”
To remember him by.
I don’t believe it. I think I know what he’s really trying to remember.
“Everyone is always looking for revenge,” I say with a sigh. “While all you’re doing is looking for a second chance… You’re noble, Vitaly. No matter what you think of yourself.”
He huffs, but there’s a soft smile left in its place. “Do you believe in giving people second chances?”
I shrug. “For the right person.”
He stares at me like he’s considering that, and for a solid minute, he seems lost in thought. It isn’t long before we both come down from our momentary bliss and remember the lives we’re living, the responsibilities we have.
He can’t stay.
But what if…
When I walk him to the door, I hesitate to open it, spinning to face him as my heart quickens. “What if we just left?” I ask, my ears grating at my words.
His brows pull together slightly. “You mean…”
Leave.
Desert.
Abandon.
I cringe thinking it. My stomach twists.
I don’t know this person I’m becoming. I don’t recognize her. Tomorrow, if Vitaly somehow agrees and I wake up somewhere in another state, I’ll hate her.
But…
“Vitaly.” My eyes begin to water again. “If things go wrong Saturday… If I lose you…” I inhale a shaky breath, my hands tingling. “I told you power was the thing I wanted more than anything in the world. That’s no longer true.”
He steps up to me so our chests brush. Tucking hair behind my ear, he looks at me seriously. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I’m not sure he’s thinking anything . It’s more like he’s digging deep inside me, penetrating my soul to find something.
I know when he finds it. The skin between his eyes, once wrinkled with concentration, loosens as he sighs. He leans in to plant a kiss on my forehead before whispering in my ear.
“Alekseevs don’t run.”
He squeezes my shoulders, holding his grip for a few seconds before releasing and stepping around me for the door. He leaves without a proper goodbye, and I’m grateful for it. I think he knew I would say more things that would only make me hate myself.
I flatten my palm against the door and close my eyes. I know he’s right. I know we can’t leave. It isn’t who I am. I wonder if he knows it isn’t who he is either, or if he believes it was truly Roman who lured him here instead of fate.
I know this is the choice we must make.
I just hope it’s the right one.