Chapter Seventeen
Livia
I don’t allow myself to get taken in by their mesmerizing looks, as hard as that is to do. How can they look so spectacularly handsome but also be so dangerous that my life is constantly hanging in the balance?
I squash every thought that pops into my mind about how their cocks felt inside me as well. How they moved. How they made me come. How they drank from my breasts.
If I could, I would never take a breath in their company just so I didn’t need to inhale the scent of their cologne, which only made me think of their touch.
I used to tell Faith I thought sex was laughable, but there was nothing funny about what they did to me.
They took what didn’t belong to them, and I was too weak, too overwhelmed, too drugged, and too ill-equipped to stop them. But it ends now.
“I want a divorce,” I repeat in case they didn’t hear me the first time.
“That’s never going to happen,” Mason says with a grin on his face, which clearly states he thinks I’m deluded to even think they’d give me a divorce. Deacon is grinding his teeth, and Callen looks at me thoughtfully.
I open my palm and drop the ring onto the dining room table.
“I want you to divorce me right now, and I want all records of this fake marriage removed.”
They rise to their full height, and I swallow a lump of apprehension, but I stand my ground.
“Celine, go home,” Deacon says to the girl standing beside me.
“But I was supposed to go shopping with Livia,” Celine whines, stomping her feet.
“Now, Celine,” Deacon says, and Celine gives him a pout.
“Don’t talk to her that way,” I say, as if it’s my business how they treat their niece.
“Yes, don’t talk to me that way.” Celine pipes up next to me. “Say, please.”
Silence follows Celine’s last words. I don’t back down as they stare at me.
“Fine. Please go home, Celine.”
Celine beams, then bobs her head from side to side. “Thank you. I will. Later, Livia. So glad you’re here.” She waves her fingers at me, then turns around and almost skips out of the room before she turns around and says, “I’m going to make an appointment at Scope for us. You’re going to love Gino. He’s the best.”
“Put your ring back on,” Deacon says to me now that we’re alone.
“No.” I don’t even quiver when I deliver just that one word. “I want a divorce. Celine says it’s the only way out of this marriage, which is fake to start with because I didn’t say yes—why would I?” I cry out because I’m still so incredibly confused by the whole thing.
“I didn’t sign that contract. I would never, in a million years, sign that contract. So, reverse whatever it is you did, so I can carry on with my life. Please.”
“No,” Mason says.
“Put the ring back on your finger, Livia,” Deacon orders me again.
“No.”
“That’s your final answer?” Callen queries.
“No, this is.” I pick up the ring I placed on the table and fling it into the fire that crackles softly from the hearth in the dining room. I don’t know how else to make it clear to them that I don’t want to be married to them, fake, real, or even pretend.
“I’m supposed to be marrying someone else. I. Want. A. Divorce. And I want it now.”
“Still no,” Mason offers unhelpfully.
“Okay. This whole thing is so bizarre that I can’t even understand it. Please, just undo what you did so I can go back to my life and my own responsibilities.”
“What responsibilities?” Callen asks as if he’s really interested in knowing about my boring life.
“I have school…” I mean, I don’t, but I will make my father see that I need to go back despite the fact that I’ll be married. What am I going to do with my life otherwise? “I have two jobs, and I’m marrying someone else.”
I take a tentative step back when they start to close in on me, blanketing the air around me with a dark warning.
“You mean Kirill Yenin?” Callen asks, but there’s a hardness on his perfectly symmetrical face that makes my heart beat faster and goosebumps rise from my skin.
“Yes. That was my life before this. That is still my life, and you had no right to derail it. I apologize again for stepping onto your property. It was an innocent mistake.
“Before my mom died, she believed in fairytales, and I wanted to prove she was right. I’ve said this so many times to you; please believe me. She was a descendant of the servant who worked for Bernard, Barrett, and Bruin Ursid.”
“We know all about your mom, Livia,” Mason says softly, and for the first time, I see a flicker of emotion in his eyes. It catches me off guard before I remember who these men are and exactly how dangerous they can be. It also amazes me that they know who my mom was and her connection to their family.
On any other day, I would have been fascinated to talk to them about it, but the circumstances are just too weird now.
“Then you can see my reasons for being there were innocent. But what you did to me was unthinkable. It’s still unthinkable because I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong here—”
I immediately remember them accusing me of wanting to steal a painting and claiming that I was working for my father and my future husband.
“You have to believe me. I wasn’t there to steal any paintings of yours. I know nothing about a painting. I don’t work for my father or Kirill Yenin. My father is a lawyer. He owns a small law firm that is struggling right now, putting him in a huge financial mess, and Kirill, the man I’m supposed to marry, is going to be his partner. That’s all.”
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Mason asks.
“I don’t. That’s what I’ve been telling you this whole time.”
“Kirill Yenin is the head of the Yenin Bratva, a small but over-zealous outfit, and your father works for his organization,” Callen offers.
My father is a lot of things, but to be involved with the mafia is so far out that it can only be untrue.”
“What?”
Still, it’s too much information to take in. No, they’re wrong. They must be wrong about my father. But my mind starts to swirl in a million different directions. Black spots explode from under my closed eyes. I might pass out, but I force myself to get a grip, and suddenly, my thoughts become clearer.
Given who they are, according to Celine—heads of the Ursid Syndicate, an organized crime family—it’s possible what they’re saying about Kirill Yenin might be true. But that doesn’t mean my father is working for him. I still want to hold onto the hope that he won’t do something like that. He wouldn’t sell me out for marriage to a man he knows is a criminal.
But my father’s innocence is a separate issue from the one I’m facing right now.
If they believed that Kirill Yenin was out to steal an obviously very valuable painting of theirs, it means they’re enemies. Oh, dear god. I’ve been caught up in a war between two crime families.
“Please, just listen to me. If you married me out of vengeance or retaliation against Kirill Yenin because he’s your enemy—”
I can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth. Everything is just too unreal.
“Yenin is so inconsequential he doesn’t make it onto our list of enemies,” Deacon says, annoyance lining his voice.
“I don’t understand. Why did you have to marry me then?”
“Because we like owning pretty things,” Mason says.
“That’s not an answer. You don’t get to take human beings just because… you like pretty things.”
“We can,” Callen adds.
“You belonged to us the minute you set foot on our land.” I watch Deacon’s lips move, and my pussy starts to throb as I remember his mouth there, his tongue. A blazing sheet of red-hot embarrassment covers me when I also remember I came in his mouth while Callen and Mason sucked my breasts.
No, I wasn’t supposed to remember all that.
“You know the real fairytale about The Three Bears, Livia. You were either going to die or we were going to make you our bride.”
“We were the first men to touch you and the first men you bled for. You’re ours,” Mason says.
“No. No, I’m not.” There is so much exasperation in my voice that I can hear it hammer against my nerves. Why won’t they understand? “I don’t belong to anyone. You drugged me and made me humiliate myself. You have already stolen my virginity. I don’t have anything else to give you. Let me go.”
“You think that’s how it works? Taking your virginity only made us want to fuck you even more in every filthy way possible. You’ll be bred like an Ursid bride is bred in time. You have everything to give us, Livia.”
My brain can’t compute their words. It’s too far beyond me.
“We already knew you were ours; we just needed time to decide if we’d be keeping you in our bed or imprisoned in one of our cells.”
“And you had to drug me for that?” Hysteria laces my voice, and a panic attack looms over me now because I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I can’t keep track of this conversation. It keeps going over my head.
“You came on our cocks,” Callen says softly. “So we’re keeping you in our bed.”
Arrogant is too small a word to describe these three men.
“Because you drugged me,” I hiss. “You made me eat those candies; that made my breasts leak and my mind so fuzzy that I was acting out of character. And then that chair?
“Watching you make yourself come was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, pretty girl,” Mason says, stroking his jaw as his eyes glide over me. I hate, absolutely hate, that wherever his gaze lands on me, I burst into flames.
“You made me do that.” My voice breaks as I shout out my words. “I am not like that. That’s not who I am.”
“Is that so?” Callen asks with a lazy lilt in his voice. They’re too close now, and I can’t breathe to save my life. But I keep my shoulders square despite the telltale signs of me quivering in fear.
“Yes. Whatever was in that drug is completely out of my system. I won’t get caught up in some criminal war you have going on that has nothing to do with me or my father. I’m thinking clearly now, and you will never touch me again. Ever.”
I turn around, ready to storm out of the room, my mind already contemplating what means I can use to leave this place of horrors and go home. Without my clothes, my purse, or my phone, I don’t care if I have to walk home barefoot, but I’m leaving, and no one is going to stop me.
I need to let Faith and my girls at FFF know I’m alive, or rather, still breathing, under the mountain of things that have happened to me. Then I’ll need to face my father.
But I don’t get very far.