Chapter 3
3
TOMASZ
T he gates to the old imperial palace my grandfather refurbished open. Outside of Moscow, this place was a forgotten ruin after the Russian secret service abandoned it decades ago. Now, it’s a sanctuary. The only home I have ever known, except for the years I spent in Boston, studying at Harvard while under my uncle’s protection. Safe and out of the way, but nowhere near as homely as this place.
I was born here. My sister was born here. My grandparents are buried in our own private chapel by the lake. This is Vassily land now. Our history runs deep through the earth and water. It’s seeped in the nature surrounding us.
Looking to my side, I take in the girl. Torn and shredded, but nowhere near broken, she glances up at me. A glare quickly overtakes the passive expression on her face as she uses her tied hands to brush the tangled lengths from her eyes.
“What?” she hisses like the little snake she is.
Even slithering on the fucking ground, she has indignation burning in her unseasoned eyes. So blue and brimming with a clandestine innocence that makes me question what I’m doing with her.
“You want the men to have you?” Or better yet, maybe I should send her to the club in St. Petersburg where the depraved rich pay to all but kill beautiful girls like her.
“If you want to lose another comrade,” she barks back, jabbing at me with her hands.
Before she can stick her pointed tongue back in her mouth, I grasp her jaw, pinching the hollows of her cheeks until a fissure of pain cracks her mighty veneer.
“You do that again, and I’ll put you in hell. There won’t be a single part of you left when I pull you out like a rag and bury you in the ground.”
The fire burns brighter in her eyes as I hold her glare and keep squeezing until my fingers threaten to rip through her cheeks, blanched, milky skin turning red at the edges. It makes her freckles darken, the same golden colour speckling her eyes with her vivid anger.
“Do you know what’s special about girls like you?”
The girl’s small, upturned nose flares as I release her cheeks and shove four fingers in her gaping mouth. Heated breaths coat my skin as I curl my grip into the well of her mouth, holding down her sharp tongue while my pinkie finger stretches to the back of her throat. Tears fill her eyes with muted gags. If she won’t give them to me freely, like a good pet, then I’ll take them myself.
“Do you, Red? Do you know what makes you special?”
When she holds my stare, I shove my finger deeper, hitting the back of her throat as the corners of her mouth stretch almost translucent, ready to rip her looser hole wide open.
“You are nobody. No one cares enough to find you. You’re unneeded. Dispensable and unwanted. A waste.” Heavy tears course down her face, sparkling like diamonds in sunlight. “You’re dead to this world. A ghost with no life and death in waiting.”
Tears continue to river down her face even though she’s not gagging anymore. Her throat has already grown used to the intrusion.
Little Red is a quick learner.
“You’re mine now. To do with as I like and choose. My pet.” Defiance widens her eyes as I withdraw my hand, her spit drooling down my wrist and forearm. “Do you remember what I told you at the club?”
There’s no response. Instead, her mouth snaps shut as the car comes to a stop at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the front veranda overlooking the three enormous fountains that shoot geysers from one to another.
“Master, Red. That’s who I am, and that’s what you call me…when I give you permission to speak.”
With a squeeze of her delicate neck, I push her back into her seat before I get out of the car and head up the stone steps to the house. The door opens as I get to the top, and the butler steps out.
“Good afternoon, sir.” He bows his head when I stop in front of him.
“The girl in the car.” Looking over the balustrade, I wait to see if Red will try to make an escape now that she’s only with the driver. “Clean her up and bring her to my quarters.”
Pyotr follows my gaze. I’m looking for a reason to chase her. Hunt her down and make her pay. To punish her and make her cry actual tears.
She thinks she’s better because of the family she was born into, but their clan is just as dirty as ours. They may have the polished history and image to shine, but a criminal is a criminal no matter how you dress it up. Their brotherhood kills, steals, destroys and corrupts just as we do. And when I’m done with her, Little Red is going to wish she never baited this wolf.
* * *
All the windows and balcony doors are open, letting the end-of-summer breeze gust through the room. A welcome escape after the last three hours I spent in my father’s office. With the high vaulted, painted ceilings and a prayer corner, it could almost pass for a chapel room. It’s what Mother wanted. Ever since she started intensive chemotherapy to slow the breast cancer down, she hasn’t left this room.
“Luchik,” her hoarse voice sounds from the balcony, so small that it’s a genuine wonder how the wind can carry it.
Pausing behind her wheelchair, I attempt to piece back the torn shred of my shirt. I should’ve freshened up as normal, but today, I needed to see her. The last day of chemo is always the worst, and I know that one of these days I’ll walk in here and she will be gone. The glue that holds us all together will cease to exist, and it will be chaos. It’ll be up to me then to find the glue that will hold the next generation of Vassilys together.
“Mama.” I stop myself from touching her with a squeeze of the push handles.
“Luchik,” she drawls as I round her to sit on the stone balustrade, taking her in from top to toe as she pulls up the thick blanket on her legs.
“Stop calling me that.”
A smile tugs at her lips, making the knot in my gut unwind a little. When I smile back at her, she mouths the silly pet name at me again.
Luchik— sunbeam.
She’s always been playful, a complete contrast to her husband. Mother has more than lived up to her name. Luda— love of the people.
“Would you rather she called you a criminal?” Vanya smarts from the corner of the balcony, where she’s reading one of her Russian classics again.
“You don’t talk to your brother like that.”
“Sorry, Mama,” she says sweetly, putting her book down to level me with a glare.
Fucking women.
They can’t even look at you without conveying what they’re thinking. She’s always got to yap, yap, yap. Especially this one. Considering she’s the fucking family princess and has never had to lift a finger in her life, Vanya likes to paint herself as a saint. All the hours she spends on her knees praying to God clearly haven’t enlightened her to the raw facts of her existence. She wouldn’t have the life she has without this family or our business. Maybe Father was right when he tried to insist that she go to America and study business like I did instead of Russian Literature at Moscow State.
“You see the irony, don’t you?” Vanya curls her lip up at me, before telling our mother, “You call him a ray of sun while he shows up looking like he’s the lord of darkness.”
“Did you get that from your book too, or is it just your flawed sense of piety?”
“Humanity isn’t piety.”
The anger that sparks from her ridiculous comeback translates into a burst of acrid laughter that whooshes from me.
Fucking humanity! Is she for real?
“Humanity,” I repeat her remark so that maybe she can get a better picture of her stupidity. Of course, she doesn’t. She couldn’t because it’s not her hands that are dirty. “You think humanity pays for your tuition? Do you think that it’s what pays for your shopping sprees? Or maybe it’s fucking humanity that’s keeping your mother alive…”
Fucking humanity.
“Tomasz.” Mother tries to reach forward and grasp my hand, but the sight of my dirty nails has me pulling back from her.
“This is your fault, you know?” Standing, I swallow back the deluge of reality that’s swelling in my throat. One day, I’ll show her precious daughter the true measure of it in this fucking world. However, one day is not today. Not in front of our dying mother. “He’s right. You fill her head with too many stories and not enough truth.”
I start inside, only to pause when she grasps my hand and weakly tugs on it to bring me closer to her.
“Mama,” I groan at her recklessness, trying to free my hand from her frail one.
It’s small and pale, and her rings jingle around her thin bones, and for a small fraction of a second, my thoughts go to Red—to her dainty bones and dainty face and dainty neck. How they feel in my grasp.
Every part of her I’ve laid eyes on is perfectly petite, filling me with an overwhelming need to break her. Even more so now than that night at the club because she’s slithered her way into my head. And now and then, it’s as though I still feel her slight weight on my shoulder. The heat of her body when she was beneath me.
“Who is that?” Mother asks, drawing me from my dark, bludgeoned thoughts.
The moment I turn to find who my mother is talking about, I curse my memories and the girl’s existence. Even in the setting sun, her eyes gleam like sapphires begging to be plucked from their sockets. Her pale skin is as lustrous as the sheen of the white silk rag she’s wearing.
The dress barely conceals her slender curves. With every step she takes, the slit opens wider to her hip, exposing the fact she’s not wearing anything beneath it. My blood heats as it pounds through me with her fading floral scent whispering at my fraying edges.
“Son…?”
“No one,” I say, trying to clear my throat as I pry my hand free and place hers on her lap.
“Doesn’t look like no one.” Searching eyes peer from me to the girl being escorted towards the house.
Vanya shakes her head down at the ground as she mutters, “New day…new whore.”
“And what do you know about whores, nun?” The heated frustration already coursing through me inflames with rage at her jibe, and before she can make a move to save it, I flip her book over the edge of the balustrade.
She’s lucky it’s not her instead. I’m growing tired of her constant criticism and indignation of late. Our father is worried about subterfuge in our ranks, but his daughter isn’t exactly flying our flag.
“Have I taught you nothing?” Mother asks, patting one of the push handles over her shoulder.
The scarf on her head shifts, showing her bald scalp. It sickens me. The sight of her like this makes me want to tear these walls down. Instead, I suck in a deep breath and take her inside.
“You never bring your whore into your home…into my home.”
“She’s not a whore.”
My steps falter at my snapped words. The knot inside me that had loosened at Mama’s smile tightens again.
The girl is a snake , I quickly tell myself, one I’m going to pick apart.
“Not a whore?” she asks, looking over her shoulder with a wince, the slightest exertion paining her.
“Why is she dressed like one?” Vanya laughs, disgust dripping from every trill of her voice.
“You want to know what a whore really looks like?” I turn so fast that my sight blurs. It takes a moment and a couple of strides to clear and set on her. Tunnelling my hands into the blonde hair at her nape, I shake her up onto her toes. “Don’t fuck with me, or I’ll take you to the whore house and I’ll fucking leave you there for enlightenment.”
“Did you take her too?” The question comes out gritted and full of venom while her hands grapple at my chest and fear storms in her gaze. “Did you take her like the other girls?”
“Yeah, I did. I drugged her, I took her, and I’m going to fuck her. Until she cries. And for every time her father has fucked us over. In the end, I’ll kill her too. When I’m done.”
Throwing her down into her reading chair, I head for the door. If she says one more thing to me today, I’ll fucking make her watch me break the bitch waiting for me. I’ll fucking break them together.
Shutting the door behind me, I stride down the corridor leading to the opposite wing of the palace. Pyotr is just shutting the door behind him when I get to my apartment. Every muscle is coiled tight with the need to blow off steam. Rage is hazing all my senses as I push past him inside.
“Fuck off,” I spit at the security guy standing on the other side of the door, staring at Red in that fucking dress that leaves nothing to the imagination.
“Take it off.”
A beat of stillness follows my command. The click of the lock behind me echoes in the silence.
“Take it off!” The reverberating yell has no effect on her.
Without so much as the flutter of her dark-painted lashes, she holds me with her striking gaze, sullen pout puckered in defiance as I close the space between us.
We’re toe to toe, her gaze admiring the bite she left on my chest, along with the scrap of my shirt. The honeyed scent from the oil on her skin fills my lungs, and I want to scrub her clean of it all over again.
I don’t fuck whores. Never have and never will. Right now, Red reeks like one.
Lifting her eyes to mine, she licks her lips, exactly like she did at the club. Teasing and lewd. Expelling a deep breath, she states, “Make me.”
If this is the game she wants to play, I’m more than happy to oblige. I never lose, and it won’t be any different with her.