7. Lev
LEV
Mila was already awake when I sent a guard to fetch her. Fetch wasn’t the best word. She wasn’t a dog that I would train to come at my summons. But I dispatched one of the guards on the premises to escort her to my house.
Having someone else bring her to me seemed infinitely safer than if I were to walk over there and be alone with her again. After the blue balls I’d given myself when I ripped her shirt, I didn’t particularly care for a repeat of that instant lust barreling through my veins.
It was a test to see if she would react to my touching her at all and talking to her with the intention of seducing her. It was an experiment to see if she’d respond in kind, throwing herself at me or maintaining that aloof silence.
I still wasn’t sure if she had passed or failed.
She had reacted to me, though she masked it well.
She kept her composure, but she couldn’t have done a damn thing to hide what she couldn’t control.
Such as how her eyes sharpened and blazed with desire, those pupils widening.
How her breath hitched and she’d shifted involuntarily when I backed off.
I felt the tension radiating from her. It added to the spark of attraction between us, one that I seriously doubted she wanted to acknowledge or accept.
All that I accomplished from that “test” was to prove to myself how badly I wanted her. Her submission, her loyalty, her servitude. Fuck, just a chance to be near her again and try to solve who the hell she really was, who she could be with such stubborn defiance.
She entered the kitchen where I finished a protein drink. Eyeing her over the rim of the cup, I took in the simple and functional attire she’d chosen. Athletic shorts and a plain tank top. It made sense for the heat, and it was probably what she was used to as a runner the Cartels used.
“Eat,” I said once I was done with my drink. Gesturing at the dishes that my cook, Selma, had laid out, I indicated for Mila to sit down and have breakfast. Much like how I’d tossed her that water in the car ride, I wanted to see if she’d shun my offer of food and nourishment.
She sat and began to eat.
Obediently.
But not too quickly to give the impression that she’d been starved.
While she ate, I took a seat and checked over messages on my phone.
It wasn’t quiet, with several guards and soldiers switching over for their patrol shifts in the other room.
Selma and a couple of maids were noisy in the other part of the kitchen.
Out front, the landscaping crew was making a ruckus with blowers and other gas-powered tools.
And I watched her through it all. In my peripheral vision, she showed how she wasn’t merely sitting there and eating. She was observing. Picking up clues and marking who was where and what happened when.
She was sharp. Perhaps too sharp for her own good. Too sharp to do something as simple as assisting on smuggling runs.
When she seemed about finished and put her fork down, I laid my phone on the island counter and faced her expectantly.
She raised her brows in a silent question of what? “Should I bring this to the sink for Selma?”
I smiled slowly, appreciating how damn fine-tuned she was to picking up on her surroundings. An older maid had only just whispered to Selma in the kitchen, yet Mila heard her among all the noise. “No. That’s not necessary.”
She lowered her hands to her lap and watched me with that stubborn sass burning in her eyes.
She was compliant with the understanding that I was her boss, her owner.
The spirit she couldn’t hide shone through her, though, proving she did not like her situation.
It only made me more curious as to how she’d ended up as a slave.
I could bide my time to discover her story, though.
“How many men are working outside right now?” I asked her calmly.
She didn’t have a good view. Maybe she might have spotted them in a reflection of the window. But if she could count and track the different voices…
“Five.” She frowned slightly. “Five on the crew, but one of them is a woman.”
I nodded once, my mind made up. Classifying her as my lover would have been infinitely more rewarding, but I wasn’t a fool. I wouldn’t dismiss an asset when I saw one.
“Are you ready for your training?”
She swallowed and stared at me, back to the mute bullshit. It didn’t last long, though. “I’m ready for anything that’s expected of me.”
Hmm. That answer could work if she were still under the impression that I only wanted her for her body.
There’ll be time for that later.
“Good.” I stood and gestured for her to come with me. “I expect you to begin the orientation that we have all of our recruits complete.”
She didn’t speak as I led her from my ranch.
After that initial assessment of her, realizing how damn observant she was, I imagined that she could fit right in as a spy for the family.
We had many in our employ, and she would likely do well as an extension of eyes and ears for us, wherever we needed intel.
I brought her to a training facility where we usually had new soldiers go through a series of trainings and assessments. On the walk there, I tried to figure out where a good starting point would be with her.
“Have you been employed as a spy before, Mila?”
“I’m not employed,” she corrected. “I’m owned and used.”
If that difference bothered her so much, I wondered why she hadn’t answered me truthfully yesterday about whether she wanted freedom in death or under my ownership.
I tried again. “Do you have experience as a spy?”
“Yes.”
“What else do you have experience with as a runner?”
A few gunshots rang out in the distance, near the shooting range, but she didn’t flinch. “Transporting goods, surveillance. A variety of tasks.”
We continued to walk through the morning heat.
The interview-nature of our conversation was unconventional, but so long as she was supposed to serve a purpose for being with me, I needed to know what she could do.
Every word that she shared was delivered in an emotionless, detached tone, though.
It gave me the impression that she’d been questioned like this before.
That it was a routine. I wondered if all of her other owners had seen through her stubborn exterior.
After we entered the training facility that doubled as a large gym, I debated whether she was sharing the whole truth.
I summoned Nikolai over, who was here working out.
My cousin preferred this gym over the other facilities we owned because it was the largest. As one of the top enforcers for the family, I was most used to overseeing the recruitment of new men on our force.
Not directly, but it was within my sphere of responsibility, hence the training buildings on my property.
Nikolai and I greeted each other, but I had to give him credit for how he refrained from checking out Mila.
“This the new runner?” He tipped his chin at her, sizing her up.
“I’m not sure. She might prove to be resourceful in other ways.” I looked her over. “We’ll see what Roman says.”
Nikolai nodded and called over the supervisor who personally trained the newest members to the family.
He was partly a drill sergeant and partly a coach.
Known for weeding out the weakest and spotting the threats of potential moles, he was precisely the older, rugged disciplinarian I wanted.
He’d give me an independent opinion of what Mila could do.
If I were to personally and directly run Mila through the exercises and tests to see her worth, I’d get too close.
If I watched her run and go through trials in the training course, I’d be that much more addicted to the mystery she was.
That first test that I’d given her last night—to see if she’d respond to my slight attempt at seduction—proved how much she could impact me.
Letting Roman start this recruitment process gave me a little distance.
I watched it all, though, sticking around and seeing how she handled it. The fitness assessment with running, weights, and general endurance took up most of the time.
Roman huffed with a wry laugh after her time trial in the massive gym. “She beat all those other fuckers.”
I smiled. “I saw.” It wasn’t often that a woman could outrun all the men.
“Short but fast,” he commented.
“And I suspect she’s smart, too.”
I knew she was sexy, as well, but I didn’t need to admit that to him. Hell, anyone with eyes could see that for themselves.
Throughout that first day of seeing what Mila could bring to the table, I stayed close by the recruitment gym and watched from afar. I handled calls. I arranged a few meetings. I followed up with some texts, but I mostly paid attention to how Mila was standing up to the pressure to perform.
The bottom line was that she did. She performed—excelled—with all that Roman put her up to.
Other trainers and supervisors weighed in, too, instructing her through field exercises.
No matter what she did, she proved that she was highly observant and quick on her feet.
During the scavenger-hunt exercises, she showed an instinctive and acute understanding of risk.
It wasn’t just that she could figure her way through a maze or figure out the best way to hide.
It was how she demonstrated something deeper.
She could pick up on deception. She was keyed in to following and learning behavioral patterns.
All in one day.
“But how do you know if you can trust her with anything?” Alexei asked me as evening approached. He’d come to talk to me about some other matters I had been helping with, and he stayed by my side to observe her as well.
I shrugged. “It’s not like she has a choice to behave in anything but a trustworthy manner.”
He arched a brow at me, skeptical.
“She’s not here by choice,” I reminded him.
“That doesn’t inherently mean you can force loyalty from her, though.”
“No, it doesn’t. But who else would she want to favor or go to? She’s not from any one family. She’s not indebted to anyone else but who currently has her in contracted servitude.”
Which was me.
I understood his hesitation. Letting anyone in was a risk. When Maksim married Carina, he had to deal with the worry that she was a spy. And when Adrik was given Elena, he had issues with whether that would backfire.
But Mila was distinct. As a slave, she wasn’t anyone’s to count on for intel.
“I’ve got a couple of men looking into her background,” I told him. Adrik would’ve insisted on it, anyway. I was too much of a control freak to allow the most basic questions to go unanswered.
“And? Anything showing up?”
I shook my head. “No. Not much at all. A birth certificate, and that’s it.” I refused to believe she was a nobody. Mila had a story. She had to in order to be this tough and defiant.
I only had to bide my time and peel back her layers to get it.
The next day, I arranged for her to do more assessments. More like survival tests, and she aced them all. Her stamina was impressive. Her lack of critique and complaints was a bonus.
Again, at the end of the day, her strength and stubborn unwillingness to speak much got to me. She wasn’t some expendable worker. She had the mind of a warrior with animal-quick reflexes that many men failed to perfect.
I walked her back toward the safehouse, once more asking a series of questions about her past. The IT guys hadn’t found anything else about her, but details were lingering out there somewhere.
I asked who she used to work for and she replied, “You mean who owned me?” The distinction mattered to her, suggesting she would rather be free.
I asked which Cartels she had been with, and she said, “You’re better off asking which ones I wasn’t with.” I read between the lines to understand she’d been bought and sold multiple times.
It didn’t matter what I asked about her past. She remained closed-lipped and elusive. Her refusal to open up to me was frustrating, but I wouldn’t quit.
For a week, each day that I supervised her in the training assessments, I wondered what would make her crack. Every night that I escorted her back to the safehouse, I imagined what it would take to fully know her.
At the end of the first week of owning this magnificent and uncommunicative badass, my brother remarked on how stuck I seemed to be on her.
“You’re obsessed,” he commented at the training field as she ran laps as a warmup for yet another test of her endurance. Most of those things were designed to break weaker souls, but not her.
“Obsessed with what?” I asked, slow to tear my gaze off her ass as she ran by.
“With what?” He shot me a side-eye.
“I’m obsessed with figuring out what to do with her,” I told him.
He scoffed. “Sure, you are.”
I shrugged, leaning my forearms on the railing that bordered the track.
“You’re obsessed about training your new ‘acquisition’ purely for the sake of what contribution she can make to the family. Is that what you want me to believe?”
I nodded. She had a purpose, but I had yet to officially label what it might be. The idea of her purpose being in my bed, her pussy wrapped around my dick, was still lingering as my main goal.
Watching her slim arms pump as she ran and her confident stride carrying her fast, I sighed with the vision of her running to me.
Of not looking at a vague spot on the horizon but targeting me as her destination.
Fuck, I was obsessed. Even when I wasn’t here and supervising what she was doing through this trial period of an assessment like anyone else would go through, she was on my mind.
A week ago, I didn’t know she even existed.
Seven days ago, a woman wasn’t on my mind.
My dying uncle was. The return of Gregori was.
I stood up, smirking.
Now, with her taking up my head space, I hadn’t been dwelling on those messy parts of my life. I hadn’t expected that.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Alexei watched my profile, taunting me to face him. To face him with him calling me out on how hung up I was on Mila.
I lifted one shoulder and let it fall, dismissing him the best I could. Having this woman distract me and intrigue me for a little bit couldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.
“I know what I’m doing,” I lied. Gesturing at her running by, I shrugged. “I bought her and I’m trying to decide how she’ll be useful to me.”
Other than as a muse I hadn’t realized I wanted or needed to feel more in control with the unknowns looming so large in my life.