Chapter 11 - Alexei
Ifollow her bloody footprints through the city.
Three AM. I haven't slept since she arrived. Can't sleep, knowing she's ten feet away, breathing on my camera feed. Too wired. Too obsessed. Too aware of every sound she makes, every shift of her body under those rough cotton sheets.
I don't stop her. Don't alert my guards. Just follow.
She slips through my compound like smoke, avoiding every camera, timing the guard rotations perfectly. She's done this before. Multiple times. Right under my nose while I sat in my study, arrogant enough to think I had her contained.
Clever girl.
Through the service entrance. Alarm disabled. Into the freezing Chicago night.
She's barefoot. The detail catches me, makes something twist in my chest. Her feet leave prints on the damp concrete first, faint and barely visible, then—
Blood.
The asphalt shredding her soles, and she never slows. Never limps. Just keeps moving with that same deadly grace I saw in the training room, leaving dark smears on pale concrete.
Who the fuck are you really, Sofia Rosetti?
I follow at a distance, keeping to shadows. A parking garage, one mile from the compound. Level three, northwest corner. A black SUV waits, lights off.
I watch from across the street as a man unfolds from the driver's seat. Six-two, military bearing, dark hair buzzed short. One of her brothers. Has to be.
She embraces him. Brief but fierce. Hands him something. Paper, folded small. They talk with heads bent together, intimate, familial. I'm too far to hear words, but I see the concern in his body language, the way he keeps trying to check her for injuries.
She's been feeding them information this whole time.
My hands shake with the urge to cross the street. Put a bullet in his head. Drag her back by her hair. Make her pay for this betrayal.
I don't.
Patience. You shape things slowly over years.
Instead, I follow her back. Watch her re-enter the compound through the same route. The bloody footprints are darker now, more pronounced. She's leaving pieces of herself all over my compound, and she doesn't even know I'm watching.
Back in my study, I pour vodka with unsteady hands. The Barone information, my carefully laid trap. Is that the information she passed on to her brother? Or was it something else?
I should kill her. Should have killed her the moment I saw her pass that paper.
Instead, I'm thinking about those bloody footprints. The iron will it must have taken to walk a mile on shredded feet without flinching.
She's magnificent.
And I'm going to make her pay for it.
Seven AM. I let her think she got away with it. Let her believe she's won.
The guard lets me into her suite without knocking. She's awake, sitting up in bed, watching me enter like she was expecting this. Dark circles under her eyes say she hasn't slept either.
I claim the chair by her window, morning light streaming through the bars. The tower of designer boxes I had delivered sits beside me, waiting.
"Good morning, kotyonok. Sleep well?"
Her face gives nothing away. "Well enough."
"I thought we'd do something different today." I open the first box, revealing red-soled Louboutins. "You've been wearing those rough cotton things for a week. It occurs to me I've been a poor host."
She doesn't move from the bed, blanket pulled high. Her wariness fills the room like perfume. Good. She should be wary.
"I had some things brought for you. Clothes. Shoes." I lift one heel, examining it. "I thought you might like to try them on."
Her body language screams danger, but she swings her legs over the edge of the bed anyway. The cotton dress falls to her knees as she sits.
"Give me your foot."
She extends her right leg. I wrap my hand around her ankle. Firm, possessive. Push the fabric up past her knee.
There it is.
Her sole is destroyed. Cuts crisscrossing the skin, blisters torn open, dried blood cracking at the edges. The mile-long walk on rough pavement left its signature in ruined flesh.
I say nothing. Just hold her gaze as I slide the Louboutin onto her destroyed foot.
The leather must be agony against every wound, but her face stays serene.
"Stand up. Walk for me."
She stands. Three steps forward. Turn. Three steps back. Perfect posture, shoulders back, not a hint of pain showing. The heels click against hardwood, and I watch blood begin to pool in the left shoe.
"Hmm. Not quite right. Let's try another."
I remove the Louboutins slowly, noting the smear of blood on the inner leather. Set them aside. Open another box.
"These next."
Jimmy Choos. Higher heel, pointed toe that will concentrate her weight on the worst cuts. She takes them without comment, walks again. A single drop of blood falls to the floor.
"You know," I say conversationally, selecting a third pair, "I followed your bloody footprints through the streets last night."
She goes completely still. For the first time since I entered, real surprise flickers across her face before she can hide it. Her pupils dilate, breath catching.
There it is. You thought you were so clever.
"Quite a trail you left. Through my compound, out the service door, all the way to that parking garage." I slide on Manolos now, watching her process this revelation. "Interesting meeting. Your brother, I assume? Military bearing, dark hair. You gave him something. Paper, folded small."
Her composure cracks, just slightly. A tremor in her hands before she clasps them together.
"You… you followed me?"
"Every step."
The shock in her eyes is genuine now, mixed with something else. Fear? Anger?
"If you're going to kill me," she says quietly, "just do it."
"Kill you?" My laugh is dark. "If I wanted you dead, you'd have been dead in that garage. Your brother too."
The Manolos are soaked through now, blood visible through the open toe. But she's processing too many revelations to focus on the pain.
"Then what do you want?"
I stand, cross to her. Take her chin in my hand. "I want you to understand something. You are here because I allow it. You breathe because I allow it. You see your brother because I allow it."
"You didn't allow—"
"I followed you for ninety minutes and didn't stop you. That's permission." My grip tightens. "You think you're clever. You think you're winning. But you're only free because I haven't decided to cage you yet."
Four more pairs. Each worse than the last. She tries them all, walking on destroyed feet while her mind races behind those blue eyes, trying to understand why I let her go, why I didn't stop her, why I'm playing with her instead of killing her.
The last box contains simple flats. Soft leather, cushioned sole. Her whole body leans toward them involuntarily.
I set the box aside. "No, I don't think those suit you. Let's go back to the first pair. The Louboutins."
"Alexei—"
"Put them on."
The fury finally surfaces. She meets my eyes with pure hate, but there's something else there too. The way her breathing has changed, the flush spreading down her chest. Even now, even knowing I watched her betrayal, her body responds to me.
I watch her. Not just with my eyes, but with every inch of skin, every cell of intuition I've spent a lifetime sharpening until it cuts.
This doesn't feel like victory. Not yet.
She stands in the Louboutins, blood welling into the soles.
The set of her jaw says she'll outlast me no matter how deep I go.
I want to break her. More than that, I want her to admit she wants to break.
She waits, eyes a blue so cold they should freeze me, but I see the pulse in her throat. I want to wrap my hand around it and squeeze until she's forced to look up at me with clarity, none of that aloof defiance left.
Instead, I circle her, making her keep her balance on those destroyed feet. Make her follow me, painfully, step by bloody step, as I open the next box of shoes. Four inch stilettos, silver, the kind you’d see on a runway or in a magazine spread, never on someone who bled like this.
"Try these."
She eyes the box. A flicker of disgust.
Her legs tremble, but she holds her head high. This is the part where most people would beg for mercy or at least flinch from the pain. She doesn’t. She just stares at me, like she’s memorizing my face for the day she gets her revenge.
That possibility excites me in a way I can't explain.
She bares her teeth in a smile as feral as any wolf. “I thought we were done playing dress-up.”
I let go, step back, measure her reaction.
"You don't even know what game we're playing." I watch her try to process that, the way her hands curl into fists at her sides.
"What do you want from me?" she says. Not a plea. Not even a question, really—it's a challenge.
I want her to mean it when she calls me her master. I want her to despise me and need me in the same breath. I want to see her break, and then I want to make her whole again.
But mostly, right now, I want to see her crawl.
A memory: my father, drunk on a Tuesday, forcing my mother to eat scraps from the floor like a dog.
Her dignity never cracked, not for a second.
Her eyes burned with something ancient and ugly—hate as pure as alcohol.
I was five. I never forgot the way she stood up, straightened her dress, and smiled at my father as if daring him to do it again.
This is what I think of as I stare at Sofia, who is nothing like my mother, except for the fact that her hate could burn down a city.
I move to the desk and retrieve a file. Toss it on the bed in front of her. It's the report from the meeting: her brother, the details of their conversation, the time-stamped photographs. I want her to know there's nothing she can hide.
She doesn't even blink, just opens the folder, scans the first page, then looks back up at me. “This supposed to scare me?”
A laugh bursts out of me. I can’t help it. The sound is ugly, too loud. “You aren’t afraid of anything, are you?”
“I’m afraid of becoming like you,” she says, voice flat. “That scares the shit out of me.”
The words hit, but I hide it. That’s the game, after all.
"You think you're still playing by your rules," I say. "Let me show you what it looks like when you lose."
She doesn't flinch, so I take a step closer. Tower over her. "On your knees."
She hesitates—half a second, maybe less. But I see it. The moment she considers refusing.
I give her the out. I want her to take it. I want her to fight.
Instead, she does as I say.
She kneels in front of me, blood pooling around her feet, her posture perfect even in defeat. I look down at her—this woman who has bested men twice her size, who’s outmaneuvered cold-blooded killers since she was old enough to walk—and I feel the last of my self-control slip away.
"Look at me," I say.
She tilts her chin, meets my gaze. Eyes wild, lips parted, hair stuck to her cheek in sweat-damp strands.
"You want to play games, Sofia? Fine. Let's play."
I reach for her, winding my fist in her hair and yanking her head back. The action exposes her throat, that pulse hammering like a hummingbird’s wings. I want to bite it. To taste the copper of her blood on my tongue.
Instead, I press my thumb to her jaw, force her mouth open.
She knows what’s coming. Her tongue flicks out, quick as a snake.
“You want to break me?” she says, voice hoarse, almost a whisper.
“I want you to remember who you belong to.”
“Then take it.”
It’s not an invitation, it’s a dare. I accept.
I unbuckle my belt, every motion deliberate. Her eyes never leave mine. Even now, there’s no shame in her, just the white-hot hatred of a caged animal. She’s magnificent, even as she kneels in blood and pain, waiting for the next test.
I free myself, already hard. I want to prolong the moment, to make her suffer, but I can’t wait. I grip the back of her head, thumb digging into her jaw, and push inside.
She opens for me—wide, ready, unflinching. The first thrust is brutal, hitting the back of her throat. She gags, just once, then recovers. Breathing through her nose, she looks up at me.
I fuck her mouth with savage strokes, giving her no time to breathe. I want her to cry, to break, but she doesn’t. Her hands clutch my thighs, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks. Each time I slam into her, her gaze sharpens, as if each blow hones her further.
She is suffocating, but she refuses to pull back. Tears stream down her cheeks—part pain, part defiance. Mascara smears like war paint. She chokes on me, but never averts her eyes.
My vision blurs. Every synapse in my body fires at once. I want to make her beg, but I’m the one who’s helpless. This is not the power trip I intended. This is forfeiture, surrender.
And then she moans, vibrating against my cock. Her eyes close in pleasure, and in that split-second I realize she’s enjoying this, controlling this, controlling me. Sofia Rosetti, on her knees, is still more powerful than I will ever be.
The orgasm hits like a car crash. I come hard, and she swallows every drop, never breaking eye contact. I shudder, entire body shaking, then rest my hand on the top of her head, forcing her to hold me inside until I’m spent.
When I finally let go, she sits back on her heels, chest heaving. Her throat must be raw. A line of spit and semen slips from her lip; she wipes it away with the back of her hand.
She smiles at me. Bloody, broken, but triumphant.
I stagger back, unable to hide the tremor in my hands.
"Did I pass your test?" she asks, voice hoarse, wriggling slightly to relieve the ache between her legs. "Or should I try on more shoes?"
I stare down at her, chest heaving, more undone than I've ever been. She's on her knees, bloody and used, and somehow she's still winning.
I tuck myself away with unsteady hands. "Get cleaned up. We're done for today."
At the door, she speaks again.
"Alexei."
I pause but don't turn.
"I wasn't the only one on my knees just now."
I leave without responding, closing the door hard. In the hallway, I lean against the wall, breathing ragged.
She walked on bleeding feet for ninety minutes without flinching.
She took my cock down her throat like it was her idea.
She's turning me into someone I don't recognize.
I should kill her. Should let her go. Should do something other than stand here shaking, tasting her defiance on my tongue, seeing those bloody footprints leading me somewhere I can't come back from.
The game has shifted into something neither of us expected, something that tastes like blood and cum and obsession.
And the worst part? I don't want it to stop.