Chapter 2
S amara
My scream drowned out the hollow metallic click.
It took a full moment for me to realize something wasn’t right.
Gregor had pulled the trigger, but the gun hadn’t gone off.
Peter was running his hands over his chest as if he, too, couldn’t believe he wasn’t dead.
“Are you familiar with the laws of probability theory?” asked Gregor in a casual tone as he spun the revolver chamber.
Peter looked past him to me before answering. “What the fuck is this?” he sputtered.
Gregor raised the gun again, pointing it directly at Peter’s face. His voice was deceptively calm and even. “In Russian roulette, the probability you will die on the first shot is sixteen point six percent. The probability you will die on the second shot goes up… to twenty percent.”
Gregor pulled back the hammer.
Peter shook as streams of sweat stained the armpits of his shirt. “We didn’t touch or take anything of yours. I swear!”
Gregor turned and pierced me with a glare. Without looking at Peter, he growled, “Now that is where you’re wrong. You touched something of mine.”
My stomach flipped.
His meaning seemed clear, and yet it was impossible.
He couldn’t mean me ?
The idea was ludicrous.
Still keeping his gaze trained on me, Gregor pulled the trigger a second time.
The hammer slammed down, but again the gun didn’t fire.
My knees buckled, and I collapsed to the floor.
“Please, please stop!” I begged.
A dark stain spread over Peter’s crotch. He had pissed himself.
Gregor spun the chamber.
“What is your name, boy?”
Boy.
Peter was a boy compared to Gregor.
He was my age, eighteen, and was all limbs and skin and bones like a typical teenager.
Gregor was twenty-six but looked older in that scary he’s seen-and-done-some-serious-shit kind of way.
Where Peter was awkward-looking and gangly, Gregor was handsome as hell and powerfully built.
The type of man where even an expensive suit always fit a little snugly over his heavily sinewed arms and chest. He still wore his jet-black hair long so it curled a bit at the ends.
Even so, it was his eyes which ensnared me.
They were the most startling grey. Bright silver one moment. Smoky steel the next.
“P… P… Peter.”
“Peter what?”
Peter inhaled a shaky breath. “Peter Fischer.”
Gregor threw a hard glance over his shoulder at my kneeling form. I knew that look well. I had already gotten it a thousand times from my father for dating a non-Russian boy.
Gregor cocked his head to the side as he stroked the barrel of the gun. “So, Peter Fischer , you come into my family’s home and trespass on our hospitality by taking advantage of one of our guests?”
“Look, me and my girlfriend were just—”
“Don’t say that,” interrupted Gregor.
“What?”
“She’s not your girlfriend. She’s not your anything. Not anymore.”
My cheeks burned. The possessive undertone of Gregor’s words was unmistakable, yet still made little sense. Maybe he was angry because I was his sister’s friend and Peter had hurt me? Or, like he said, because I was a guest in his family’s home?
“Is that what this is about? Dude, you can have her! Good luck!” Peter nodded in my direction. “The bitch’s legs are locked at the knees.”
My mouth fell open as my cheeks burned.
Gregor walked over to Peter, placed the gun at his temple and without preamble pulled the trigger a third time.
The gun made a hollow click.
“Stop doing that!” Peter screamed as his face and neck became a mottled hue of red and purple.
Gregor sneered. “What? Does the little American boy not have the stones for a silly Russian game?”
He spun the gun chamber and raised the revolver to his own temple as he pulled back the hammer.
Horrified, I stretched out my arm. “No!”
Gregor pulled the trigger.
It clicked but did not fire.
All the air left my body.
Gregor spun the chamber again and raised his arm a second time.
I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it was all fucking madness.
Crawling on my knees, I lunged for Gregor’s legs. “Stop! What are you doing? Don’t!”
I knew the laws of probability theory. You didn’t grow up in a Russian family and not learn the odds of Russian roulette. That was the fourth shot. This would be the fifth, which meant there was a fifty percent chance the gun would fire. Gregor knew that as well as I did.
I clawed at his suit pants. “Please, Gregor. Please, stop.”
He reached down and brushed my cheek with the back of his knuckles. I snatched at his hand and opened it, pressing my cheek against his palm. “Please,” I whispered against his warm skin.
“Would those pretty green eyes fill with tears for me if I died, malyshka?”
Malyshka.
Gregor Ivanov had just called me malyshka . Baby girl.
“Yes! Please, Gregor. Please, stop!” I begged, pressing my lips against his palm. I could smell the hint of tobacco and gun oil on his hand and felt the slightly calloused touch of his fingertips along my jaw.
“Why don’t I leave you two alone?” Peter snarled.
“Shut the fuck up,” Gregor snapped as he pointed the gun at Peter’s crotch and pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked down. The gun didn’t fire.
Peter flew out of his seat. “You’re fucking insane! You know that?”
Afraid of getting trampled by the two angry men, I scrambled out of the way and back onto my feet.
Gregor grabbed Peter by the front of the shirt and swung him wide, slamming him against the wall before placing the gun under his chin. “Five empty shots in a six-cylinder gun. Do the math, boy.”
Peter’s toes barely touched the ground as his hands scraped for purchase along the wall. “I don’t know what you’re saying!”
Gregor cocked his head in my direction. “Samara?”
I licked my dry lips before responding. Nervously clutching the neckline of my torn dress together at the base of my throat, I croaked, “A hundred percent. There’s a hundred percent chance the gun will fire this time.”
Peter’s eyes widened in horror as he whimpered.
Gregor’s voice lowered to a dark rumble in his chest. “If you so much as look in Samara’s direction ever again, I will hunt you down and kill you like a rabid dog in the street. Do you understand me?”
Peter tried to nod his head, but the gun pressed under his jaw prevented him.
“If there is so much as a whisper about what happened here tonight at her school, I will rip away all that you hold dear. Have I made myself crystal clear… Peter Fischer?”
“Yes, sir! I promise!”
Gregor released him.
Peter crumbled to the floor as his knees gave out. He slithered a few feet back on his ass before scrambling to his feet and scurrying through the door without even giving me so much as a backward glance.
The room fell silent again.
My heart was beating so fast I was lightheaded and sick to my stomach. It was going to take me a week to process everything that had just happened.
Portland Cool Grey. The color of his eyes.
Indanthrene Blue. The color of his tie.
Transparent Earth Red. The color of blood.
Picturing the aluminum paint tubes and their tiny white labels inside my artist oil paint kit, I recited the colors in my head to calm myself, a strange coping mechanism I’d had since I was a little girl.
Twisting my fist into the collar of my dress, my curiosity overrode my fear of being alone with him. I had to know. “Would you have pulled the trigger?”
Gregor turned those inscrutable eyes on me.
For half a second, he didn’t move or respond.
I was about to turn and leave, assuming I, too, had worn out my welcome, when he moved so quickly the breath was knocked out of my body.
One moment I was standing in the middle of the room, the next, he pressed me against the wall, towering over me. His hips leaned into mine as his right arm rested high over my head, caging me in. His warm spicy scent enveloped me. The sensation was overwhelming… and terrifying.
Still, he didn’t speak.
I licked my lips and watched as his gaze zeroed in on my mouth.
“Answer me,” I demanded with more boldness than I felt.
“Would I have pulled the trigger?” he repeated.
I nodded.
He lowered his right arm. The cold barrel of the gun grazed my cheek.
I sucked in a breath. He pointed the gun off to the side and cocked the hammer.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced for the gunshot, but only heard the same hollow metallic click.
Opening my eyes, I watched as Gregor tossed the gun onto the bed.
“But… I don’t….”
Lifting his left arm, he held up a bullet between his thumb and forefinger. He had never truly loaded the gun. It had all been a twisted game from the start.
My brow furrowed. “Why would you do something like that? You scared him to death!”
“He deserved to be punished for touching you.”
He said it so matter of factly. As if we weren’t discussing terrorizing my now ex-boyfriend with a fucking gun!
I shoved at his chest. It was solid muscle, so of course he didn’t budge. I hated that I had to crane my head back to meet his gaze. It made me feel small and vulnerable. “No one asked you! I can take care of myself!”
“Malyshka, you can’t honestly think I was going to let him assault you like that and just walk away unscathed? He’s lucky it’s my little sister’s birthday, and the house is filled with witnesses, otherwise I would have beaten him within an inch of his worthless life.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you care?”
I hadn’t laid eyes on this man in over five years. I was just his little sister’s friend. I was nothing to him.
He reached down to pull back the fabric of my dress, exposing the top of my breast and shoulder.
His fingertip traced my collarbone before slowly moving down to caress near the bruise marks.
His brow creased, and a small tick appeared high on his cheekbone just below his eye.
He breathed heavily through his nose as if he were trying to calm himself down. His anger was palatable.
“He hurt you,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice gruff and low. “When I entered from the patio, even before I saw your face, I could feel your fear. If I hadn’t come in when I did? That little bastard would have….”
It hadn’t occurred to me he might actually be shaken and upset at Peter’s treatment of me. Gregor almost appeared human in this moment. Vulnerable.
“Yeah, but he didn’t.”
He cupped my jaw and gazed down at me, his eyes as hard as flint. Gone was my brief glimpse of his unfamiliar human side. He was back to being the scary, inscrutable man I knew him to be. “It will never happen again. Do you understand me? I’m here now to make sure of it.”
What was that supposed to mean?
Alarm bells raged inside my head.
He ran his thumb over my bottom lip before continuing. “From this point forward, you are under my protection. I will expect you to behave accordingly and not put yourself in these types of dangerous positions again. I will be obeyed in this, malyshka.”
Under his protection?
Obey him?
Malyshka?
No.
Something was wrong here.
I couldn’t think straight. Too much had happened in the last hour.
My head was spinning.
Nothing he said or did was making any sense to me.
My eyes welled up as the trauma set in.
Frustrated, I swiped at a tear that fell down my cheek. “Stop calling me that!”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“Malyshka?”
“Yes, malyshka! I’m not you’re malyshka. I’m not your anything! You can’t just come in here and start dictating rules to me!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re mine now.”