14. Mila
14
MILA
M y heart lurched into my throat, pounding hard as I struggled with another scream. Fear enveloped me. All traces of that bliss from my orgasm were gone. I was no longer turned on, eager and impatient for Alek to fill me with his long, hard cock.
Panic and utter fright. I was locked in a world of terror, trapped and tied to the bed with no means to run or hide or protect myself as the soldier rolled on the floor after breaking into the apartment. I hadn’t paid much attention to the one window of this place. It was curtained so well that it blended into the bland details.
But one of my father’s men had reached it. He’d broken in, and now as he skidded to a stop, he aimed a gun at us.
Alek plastered himself over me, and I wanted to sink into the mattress beneath him. Even if he hadn’t tried to paint the differences between himself and every other man, I witnessed this critical difference in live action.
Andrey had used me as a shield. But Alek covered my body with his to shield me .
In the same deft dive he made to cover me, he reached to the side and pulled his gun from the holster on his back. He hadn’t even gotten to the stage of taking his clothes off before he fucked me, and now I was glad for it.
He leaned over, his strong arm locked and strong as he aimed his gun.
Everything happened so quickly, it felt like a macabre blur, but I recognized the soldier. Yusef, one of my father’s oldest, most trusted men. He rose up on one knee, leaving it among the shards of glass, to aim his gun right at me.
I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face to Alek’s shoulder as Yusef pulled the trigger. He fired faster. I felt the kickback from Alek’s gun with his body smashed over mine, and I held my breath.
Another shot was fired, but I lived. No searing pain touched me, and Alek didn’t grunt in pain either.
“You motherfucker!” Yusef roared, pulling my focus toward him. I opened my eyes and fought the instant urge to gag at the sight of his forearm as a mangled, bloody mess. Alek had aimed precisely at his gun hand and hadn’t missed. Yusef’s gun clattered to the floor, busting another piece of the glass.
Alek didn’t speak as he rolled off me and stalked toward the intruder. I lifted and kicked my legs, trying to get my dress to fall over my bare pussy, but I couldn’t hide my breasts with Alek no longer covering me. Modesty was overrated at the moment, though. I doubted Yusef cared as Alek fired twice more, getting the man in his knees.
Yusef toppled forward, right onto the glass, and I tensed at each vicious shout and groan that left his lips. Threats and curses, hexes and damns. He hurtled every profanity he could at Alek, but he didn’t seem to listen as he tucked his dick back into his pants and zipped up. Keeping his gun at the ready, he approached Yusef then walked past him. As he walked across the room, he breathed hard, and his broad back rose and fell with his rapid inhales. It was another testament to his strength and athletic fitness. First, he went to the window and checked whether anyone else was coming. Then he slammed down a storm covering to close the entrance Yusef had formed.
I watched him, tense and so agitated from this sudden shock that I didn’t know where else to look. Seeing that tall, strong man grounded me somehow, and I was afraid to take my eyes off him. Try as I might, I couldn’t tune out Yusef’s yelling and groaning. He remained on the floor, cut among the pieces of glass and Alek’s precise shots.
Alek stood before him, training his gun on the bleeding man. Before he addressed him, he looked at me. “Are you all right?”
All right? Holy shit, no, I wasn’t all right . I had just gone from the high of almost losing my virginity to my enemy to screaming for the fear of losing my life. Still, I nodded shakily and tried to steady my breaths.
I am all right. Because you protected me.
He nodded in reply, grabbing a towel from the back of a chair and tossing it to me. The room wasn’t that large, so I wasn’t shocked that he threw it with accuracy, covering my bare breasts.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Alek kicked Yusef, prompting him to roll over.
Yusef turned onto his back and scowled at him. “I’m not telling you anything.”
Alek lowered his gun and shot Yusef’s other arm. “Talk.”
Yusef growled, then cursed at him again until Alek aimed his gun at his dick.
“I’ll keep you alive as long as I need to. Now fucking talk.”
I licked my lips, scared but not terrified by the violence. I was raised with this kind of a lifestyle. My father had never outright exposed me to this kind of killing and torture, but it always existed in the peripheral of my mind.
“He’s one of my father’s men.”
Alek glanced at me.
“Yusef,” I supplied.
“You shut the fuck up, bitch,” Yusef shouted. “You’re a dead woman.”
Alek stepped on Yusef’s crotch. “Talk. Now. Don’t look at her. Just tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“I was sent to kill her.”
I blinked, stunned that the man was speaking so easily. Or maybe it was difficult. He winced and gasped in pain as Alek kept his boot on his crotch, his gun aimed at his head.
“Who ordered the hit?” Alek demanded.
“Her father.”
I went still, freezing at Yusef’s reply. My father? He wanted me dead? I knew he never cared for me, but to wish me dead ? I tried to grapple with this revelation without letting any emotions cloud my mind.
“If she can’t serve her purpose as a virginal bride to the head of the Valkovs, she’s better off fucking dead.” Yusef turned to scowl at me with pure hatred in his dark eyes.
“Sergei wanted his daughter to marry the head of the Valkov family.”
“That would be Pavel,” Alek argued.
Yusef hissed as Alek pushed his foot down harder. “Andrey. He wanted her to marry Andrey so she’d bear a son. Or she’d keep trying until she got a son. Then Sergei would put a hit on both of them, husband and wife.” He rolled his head on the floor, sneering at me on the bed. “Her virgin pussy is all that matters. Her bearing a Valkov son would be the end and complete the coup. Power would be transferred.” He growled, reaching uselessly for his gun with his mangled arm. “But it looks like you’ve already taken her.”
No, not yet. But almost. I resolutely refused to let his words sink into my brain. My father wanting a coup. His eagerness to kill me off in order to get what he wanted.
Alex didn’t speak, staring down at Yusef. I couldn’t look away as he remained still and pensive like that, eerily calm and not alarmed. He moved like that predator again, always in charge and sure of his motions and how he held his body in the face of danger. Yusef was no longer a danger. He couldn’t grab his gun, let alone aim it. His knees were shattered, and he wouldn’t be running. With the copious amount of blood leaking from his body, he was damn near dead.
“And you can’t blame him for wanting it. All the glory, the power. The Valkov name was once so feared and revered,” Yusef taunted. “Back when your father was alive, at least.” He chuckled, but the mirth seemed forced and mean, like he wanted one last chance to hurt Alek in any way he could. “He saw to that.”
“What do you know of my father?” he demanded, kicking him in the nuts. “Who saw to what?” Dropping into a low crouch, he yanked Yusef up by gripping his shirt.
“Your father,” the man said, smirking with a delirious tone. “I was there.”
“You were where?”
“At the… shop. When Pavel shot…”
Alek shook him. “When Pavel shot what? Who?”
Yusef breathed shallower and shallower, and his head lolled to the side. “Your father.”
Alek released him as though his fingers burned. Yusef slumped down, crashing to the floor littered with glass. Still, he spoke on his deathbed, confessing, “Pavel shot your father, boy. Because he wanted it all.”
A few more labored breaths left Yusef’s mouth, and with a gut-wrenching sob, he exhaled one last time. Blood stained the rug as his life drained from him with a steady, pulsing push.
I’d never witnessed someone’s death. I knew it happened every day in our world. Violence was a way of life for the bratva, but until this moment, I’d been sheltered. I’d never been asked to handle anything that would lead to such gore and killing. The threat was always there. Every day and night, the danger of losing lives lurked so close to each and every one of us.
Until this moment, with Yusef bleeding out on Alek’s rug, I’d never witnessed it firsthand. I didn’t stare at him. I didn’t allow myself a chance to take in a single detail of the soldier’s lifeless body. Instead, I latched my concentration on Alek as he stared at the man. As long as I looked at this protective enemy, this man who’d shielded me from being murdered, I could breathe. I could see him and know that as long as he stood between me and the rest of the world, I might have a chance to make it out of here alive.
After a long, tense span of silence, he lifted his face to me. He holstered his gun and looked me over, nodding to himself. I didn’t know what that nod meant, but I replied in kind. If he was seeking me out for a visual reminder that I wasn’t killed, then, yes, I’d acknowledge that.
Without a word, he got to work cleaning up the mess. I couldn’t have helped if I’d wanted to. I knew not a thing about transporting a dead body and handling that much blood. I was bound to the bed, and it didn’t seem like a good time to repeat my request that he untie me. I didn’t want to interfere with getting rid of Yusef, and I wouldn’t have been much help in physically dragging him anywhere.
Instead, I faced the ceiling and stared at it, letting the activity in the rest of the room fade to a blur in the corner of my eye.
Alek took minutes to remove Yusef from the place. I didn’t know where he took him, but he had to have had practice with this. A plan was likely in place for these sorts of things. After he rolled Yusef up in the rug, which must have had plastic beneath it because no blood had leaked to the hardwood floor, he disposed of him by carrying him out the front door. Knowing Alek had left me alone for those few minutes was unnerving. I was tied up, slightly naked, and vulnerable. If anyone else had intruded, I would’ve been dead.
But he returned shortly, leading me to assume he’d dumped Yusef out a window in the hall or something. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I took comfort in was that Alek was back, sweeping all the broken glass and setting the studio apartment back to as much order as was possible.
He didn’t speak at all throughout the entire afternoon as he handled the mess. I almost figured he’d call one of his brothers to take care of it for him, but Alek wasn’t the kind of man to give others his dirty work. He dealt with it all, quietly and efficiently.
Once he finished and showered, too, I started to slip out of the numbed shell-shocked status I’d fallen into. As he returned from the bathroom, cranking out the kinks in his neck as he approached the bed, my head filled with all the thoughts and questions I’d suppressed so far.
I didn’t want to dwell on my father wishing me dead. I knew I was a pawn, but it hurt deep down to know I was that expendable.
“What happens now?” I asked Alek as he drank from a glass of water as he stood next to the bed. He seemed calm yet pensive, and it felt like a risk to speak up.
He stared at me as he swallowed.
“What do you mean?” He set the glass down and walked closer. As he sat on the bed, I held my breath. He seemed so calm, so sure of how this would go, that it bothered me. Being kept in the dark was the way my life was supposed to go. But after hearing that I had a hit placed on me by my own father, yeah, I was eager for him to say something .
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
He arched one brow. “Are you asking me to predict the fucking future?”
“With my father.” I struggled to swallow past the anxiety lodged in my chest at the news of how I was to be killed off. “All of it.”
“The next thing that will happen is exactly what that soldier predicted.”
Huh? I furrowed my brow, not following at all. What is he saying?
“You’ll marry and sleep with the head of the Valkov Bratva.”
I gaped at him, unable to inhale. “What?” With…Pavel?
“And your children will represent the power of the Valkovs, not the Kastavas,” he declared.
He made no sense. Why would he want to see my father’s goals met? And how? I scrunched my nose, staring at him and searching his face for a clue about what he meant. “By marrying Andrey after all?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I told you. You need a strong man, Mila.”
Okay, not Andrey.
“How?” I shook my head, wishing something would click. “How am I going to marry the head of your Family? Who would I marry and?—”
He isn’t suggesting… I tried to wrap my head around what he was scheming.
His lips remained straight in a firm line as he looked me over. Then the start of a cocky smile crossed his face. “Me.”