4. Mila
MILA
Islid into the backseat. The other man closed the door, shielding me.
No. He’s trapping me.
Confined in the back of this SUV, I was alone and with no way out. I didn’t need to reach for the door handles to verify that I was locked in. These tinted windows wouldn’t smash from the mere might of my elbow banging into it.
I was trapped in here. Caged once more.
I sat tense and barely breathing, lagging to catch up with what the hell had just happened.
I had been sold—again.
Tomas crossed out the name of my last owner and jotted down another one. Another transaction—of my life—had been completed. Without my input, regardless of my feelings, against my fucking wishes.
Don’t panic. Don’t, Mila. Don’t do it.
Anxiety spiraled through me despite my pep talk. Breaths turned shallow as my lungs raced to inflate faster and fuller. My heart raced. Dizzy and sluggish, I blinked and willed away the lightheadedness that followed suit.
Don’t…
Panic remained posed on the fringe of my mind, hanging too close to slip over me and render me hopeless. Ever since that first time when I was twelve that I’d tried to run away, and I’d been caught and beaten so badly—
No. Don’t. Don’t think about that. Don’t go back there.
I forced a hard swallow and opened my eyes wide, leaning over a little bit like that would improve my breathing.
It didn’t, but it was the furthest slant forward that I would allow.
Putting my head between my knees wasn’t an option when I had to keep my guard up and be alert.
I couldn’t be grounded without being able to look out and see where a threat was coming from.
I couldn’t avoid this instinct to pass out or faint when I wasn’t able to brace myself for a hit of danger.
I was alone in the backseat, but I wasn’t going to stay here on my own for long.
Sitting back, I sucked in two breaths, the second one short, then exhaled through my dry lips. Over and over, I forced myself to get my shit together.
Yes, I had been sold again.
No, I wasn’t free. Not at all.
But in a long line of shitty events, this wasn’t supposed to stand out.
I’m alive.
Even that couldn’t shock me into optimism. It seemed like a waste of time to think about it. I hadn’t been shot. With that gun aimed at my head, it was one of my closest episodes of a brush with death. But I wasn’t shot. I was alive.
I had been sold. Tomas was shot instead.
By my new master.
I gulped again, easier said than done with how dehydrated I was and how parched my mouth and throat were.
My master.
Not turning my head but swinging my gaze toward the windows, I kept forcing those double inhales and single, long exhales.
My new owner was still out there, talking to the other man.
Dan? No. Dean. I never forgot a name and I always made sure to label those around me, not that it ever mattered.
Too many criminals and lowlifes came and went through my miserable life, but it gave me the delusional concept of power to know who was whom.
To witness what they did. Knowledge, like my word, was something I could own and decide what to do with.
Of all the people I’d encountered in my life, though, I never expected to run into him. Into a famed enforcer for the Russian Mafia family in the Las Vegas area.
Lev Volkov.
When he’d told Tomas the name of the purchaser for my crumpled-up and wrinkled contract, my heart stuttered and damn near ceased to beat.
Lev Volkov, as in the man who was fearless and never hesitant to torture and kill?
Lev Volkov, as in the Mafia boss who left corpses and not victims in his wake?
Any member of the infamous Volkov Bratva was bad news—and that was saying something from someone like me who was stuck in a circuit of being contracted to serve one lousy crime lord or thug to another. I might have convinced myself that I knew the worst of the worst out there.
That would’ve been believable before I was bought by Lev Volkov, spared from certain death in a desert standoff.
Don’t panic, Mila. Whatever you do. Do. Not. Panic.
Constantly goading myself to stay one step away from breaking down was wearing on me.
But I couldn’t lose. Not today. Not now as Lev Volkov took off his jacket and folded it over his arm as he talked to the other man out there.
Not as he stood tall and strong, the white shirt stretching over the bulk of muscles in his shoulders, arms, and across his back as he approached the car.
Through the fabric, the dark lines of ink stood out.
Tattoos.
I blinked, trying to ground myself on the observation, as stupid and trite as it was. I’d seen countless tats on so many people, but I’d never had any myself. I’d never had a chance to make my fantasies of getting one to disguise the scars on my body come true.
He rounded the car, leaving the other man. Coming toward the driver’s door, he pushed my anxiety to escalate again.
Don’t panic.
This was my fate.
And I would survive it.
Breathing faster again at the idea of sharing space with this man, with my new owner, I frantically tried to center myself.
Grounding myself with the slide of my thighs over the leather cushion of the seat, I finished off the last of my two-in and one-out respirations.
I’d be damned if I let him see that I was struggling to get control of myself.
I’d be furious if I let him see me vulnerable and scared at all.
Get a grip. Come on!
I set my teeth on top of my lower lip and fought to maintain a blank expression, staring straight ahead out the windshield as he opened the door.
A whoosh of hot air snuck in as he climbed behind the wheel. Then with a slight shift of his big body, he adjusted himself on the seat and pulled the door closed.
No squeaks whined with the hinges of the door. No stink of old piss, sweat, or weed clogged my nose as we sat here together. No grumbling protest of a rumble followed when he turned the key and started the engine.
Because it’s not the same.
Nothing will be the same again.
I’d been sold and owned by morons who ran small criminal groups and gangs.
Filthy, reckless, undisciplined thugs. People like Tomas and Emilio who used beat-up clunkers and shitty trucks for smuggling runs.
I was used to ripped vinyl seats and smoking engines.
I was familiar with the bouncing sway of vehicles going too fast on unpaved roads full of dips and holes, all without shocks and any suspension systems.
He’s a Volkov.
They represented wealth. Power. Prestige.
He didn’t speak as he drove, steering toward the highway. The lack of silence might have been his attempt to make me nervous, expectant for a conversation, but I wasn’t bothered. I could wait out anyone on earth. My word was all I owned.
I’d been transferred like property to a dangerous man whose reputation was whispered with fear. A deadly enforcer who was usually rumored to be a control freak and a meticulous boss.
He owned me now, and of course my mind was racing at the unknowns that awaited me.
But I refused to say a single thing.
He’d asked me one cruel question back there in the desert. If I wanted to be free—dead or alive. His mistake was in assuming I’d ever feel alive and free.
I will. One day.
It wasn’t today, the afternoon of him being handed a contract for me.
I was far from free as he transported me from the site where Tomas’s body would be picked apart by the scavengers of the desert, steaming and burning under the harsh rays of sunshine.
Free?
He was an asshole to tease me about freedom.
I’d only be free when I could escape. When I could run and never have to deal with anyone of the likes of him or his Bratva members. When I could distance myself from the hints of any Cartels or gangs.
Feeling my skin crack on my forehead from where my flesh was starchy with dried sweat, I caught myself from showing a reaction. From letting him see an emotion or expression.
Blanking my face again and hiding my scowl, I doubled down on staring out the windshield again. As I locked my gaze dead ahead, though, I caught a glimpse of him. Of his eyes on me through the reflection in the rearview mirror.
His lips twisted.
A smirk.
He was amused by me.
Entertained as I sat back here as the new thing he held a contract of ownership for.
You asshole.
I ground my teeth and exhaled through my nose. I refused to let him see a hint of what I was feeling. Of who I was. To him, to people like him, I wasn’t a woman. I wasn’t a human or an individual with dreams and fears.
I was a thing.
Bought. Sold. Always captive.
Maybe I should’ve answered him.
I forced another rough swallow.
Maybe I should’ve asked for “freedom” in death.
He moved then, reaching for something in the passenger seat. I refused to track the bulges of his muscles as his arm moved. As his shoulder rotated. Without taking his eyes off the road, he tossed an unopened water bottle back at me.
I caught it. My reflexes were too fast for me not to.
I wasn’t interested in an offer of water from him, but as I vowed again to survive even this round of captivity and being owned, I opened the bottle and took a long sip.
I will survive.
I won’t give up.
Whatever it took, I would scrape by and do all I could to achieve my freedom one way or another.
I’d watch. I’d learn. And I’d never, ever appear weak.
It was all I could do until I could find another opportunity to escape this excuse for a life again.