13. Celia
Chapter 13
Celia
For the first time since returning to the boys’ lives, I’m finally alone.
Once Ruin disappears and leaves me to tend to the bloody aftermath of his—what the hell do I even call it?— visit , I finally decide, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve done this a thousand times. Not just in my lifetime, but since my divorce. Staring at the girl in the mirror, wondering where she came from. How she got here. And most importantly, where she’s going.
If you asked my reflection a year ago, she wouldn’t have had any idea. Drifting along the river of time, merely treading water, trying not to drown, was a full time job. Once the current of grief settled and I could look myself in the eye without flinching, I began to float.
The river twisted and bent and somehow, I ended up here. With three men vying for my attention, my body, and quite possibly, my heart.
I clutch my chest, expecting to the feel sharp, stabbing pain that’s accompanied me for so long now. A broken heart can’t beat without it, and mine’s been broken for so long, that I’ve forgotten what life feels like without the pain.
My heart beats, and for once, everything feels…
Calm.
The bathroom looks like a crime scene with my body as its victim, and yet, I’m okay.
I’m breathing.
I’m in one piece.
And despite how unorthodox Rage, Rebel, and Ruin are with how they show affection, I know they’re trying. That has to count for something, right?
I draw my gaze to my navel, tracking the bloody handprint on my hips, the crimson drops on my thighs, down to the apex between them, my curls more red than black. I’m a sticky mess. My pussy throbs from the battering it’s received from two dicks and the tip of a knife handle, with the latter being, surprisingly, the most gentle of the three. With a hiss, I run soapy fingers through my folds and try to clean up the mess. Without a towel or toilet paper or anything to catch the suds, pink bubbles slip down my legs and pool onto the tile floor. A real shower, with a generous stream of steaming hot water and enough soap to sustain an army, would work wonders.
But leaving this room means I might run into any one of the brothers, and I’m not sure how to handle them after today.
Turning off the faucet, I shake off as much water from my hands as I can. The soap cleaned up as much of the blood from my body as it could without a cloth, but the bathroom is still a hot mess. I pull my hair back and knot it in a loose bun at the base of my neck, wrapping a strand of hair around it as a makeshift tie and tucking the end inside. The bun is loose, but it holds well enough for my hair to be out of the way.
I guess I’m cleaning, after all.
Unlocking the bathroom door takes an enormous amount of willpower, and opening it is like ripping off a band-aid. It has to be done. I shiver in the cool air as I peer out into the living room.
Empty.
The brothers are nowhere to be seen.
Walking into the room without one of them watching feels strange. Stranger still is walking past the cage without being thrown inside. I hover at its gleaming golden door, wondering if I’m expected to crawl back inside. Would that make Rage happy?
The bench he fucked me on waits inside, its dark leather smeared with streaks of white. Stains across the surface—likely sweat or oils from our skin—makes the top hazy rather than shiny smooth. The blankets and pillows lining the bottom of the cage are in a disarray, tumbled into a messy heap. Rage’s clothes are gone, as are the sweatpants and t-shirt Rebel loaned me.
I lock the cage from the outside, feeling satisfied once it clicks into place.
Then, I move on.
Rebel’s bedroom door is nonexistent, so breaking into his room is easy. Dirty t-shirts and skinny jeans litter the floor around his bed, like he couldn’t care less to clean up after himself, with the only tidy space in the room being a simple metal desk with playing cards stacked neatly to the side. A poker chip stand sits in the corner, with a deep red velvet overlay taking up most of the desk top.
Does Rebel play cards?
I think back to all of our conversations in the before , when I was a regular working woman coming home to dinner and a kiss every evening. Rebel never mentioned that he gambled. In fact, any conversation surrounding his work gently slipped away without any real focus on an alternative topic.
The man is a master of redirection… with his favorite tactic being backing me up against a wall and expertly kissing away any thought that didn’t involve his mouth on mine.
I bite my bottom lip and brush my fingertips over the playing mat. I really don’t know much about him at all—or about any of them.
It’s about time I learn more.
But first, a shower.
Rebel’s bathroom mirrors Rage’s, the exception being how many hair and tattoo creams Rebel owns. Spare piercings lying on the counter catch my eye, and I look at the handful of silver rings and balls with interest. Which ones are for his lip and which ones are for his… dick?
My cheeks flush and I quickly move on, grabbing what looks like the cleanest towel in the room and turning on the shower. I jump in before the water has had a chance to warm, moaning as I scrub the cum, sweat, and blood from my body. I stand in the spray for as long as humanly possible, scrubbing my body from head to toe multiple times, combing my fingers through the knots in my hair, rubbing the kinks in my shoulders and back. When I finally step out of the steam and wrap the towel around my body, I expect to find one of them standing there. Rage, leaning against the counter, a gleam in his eye as he eye-fucks me from across the room. Or Rebel, sitting on the counter with his lip pinched between his teeth as he rubs his dick through his jeans. And finally, I picture Ruin standing there, a quiet enigma with more trauma than I know how to unpack.
While I dig through the bathroom drawers for a hairbrush, I think about Ruin the most.
He fucked me with a knife handle.
A shiver runs down my spine. While he was enraptured with the hilt sliding in and out of my pussy, I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. Glittering onyx, focused and intent on their target.
Is that what I am to him? A target? A plaything to use when the mood strikes?
At least with Rebel and Rage, I have an idea of where I stand. For better or worse, Rebel’s my boyfriend in the loosest sense of the word, and Rage is…
Let me fuck a baby inside you.
I press my palm to my lower abdomen as a familiar thread of hope curls around my heart.
Rage is the father of my child.
Emotions tumble like gemstones inside my chest, each one rough and chaotic as they clash. I have mixed feelings about Rage more than the other two, but he’s the one trying the hardest to give me what I want.
I’m sure he thinks I should be grateful, and on some level, I am. He clearly cares about my happiness as long as it aligns with what he thinks is in his best interest… but therein lies the problem. His best interests and mine don’t always coincide.
It’s this thought that keeps me moving. If I’ve learned anything over the past few years, it’s that the only person I can rely on is myself. Husbands don’t always keep their promises, and I doubt that Rage, Rebel, and Ruin will be an exception to that, no matter how our relationship unfolds and no matter how much Rage may claim otherwise.
I throw on clothes from Rebel’s dresser, pass through his bedroom doorframe, find my discarded boots near the entrance to their apartment, and quickly open the door to reenter the real world. If I can swing by the boutique before anyone catches me, I can check on Sara and our inventory, grab a handful of invoices and color swatches from my desk, finally place uninterrupted calls to my clients?—
The door clicks shut behind me and a low, throaty growl fills the air.
Thanatos looks up from his cell phone, clutching the device so tightly that I swear, I hear the screen crack. He doesn’t push off from the wall he’s leaning on, choosing instead to glare at me as I hover in the hallway. If he weren’t already imposing with the armor plating strapped to his chest and the Glock hanging from his belt, his bulging biceps and triceps would do the trick. Pair the muscles with the salt and pepper stubble coloring his high cheekbones and streaking through his hair, he quickly becomes any good girl’s wet dream.
Mine included.
“Where do you think you’re going?” His voice is raspy and deep, and my overstimulated body responds accordingly: my knees buckle and I drop.
With alarming speed, Thanatos lunges and catches me before I hit the floor. He holds me against his chest and exhales hotly into my hair, his body going completely rigid as he keeps me steady and on my feet.
I push away from him as hard as I can as my adrenaline kicks into overdrive. This is the man who hates my guts. The one who hog-tied me and spat in my face, calling me a terrible mother, saying that my baby would be better off—I gasp as pain lances through my chest, the memory hurting more than I can bear. “Let me go,” I cry, trembling. Shit. I can’t cry. Not here. Not now. Not with him.
“What’s wrong?” He searches my eyes, and I spot the familial resemblance immediately. Although his brothers’ eyes are all variants of black, Thanatos’s are a deep, charcoal gray with flecks of green making them appear lighter. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me—the desperate woman taking advantage of his brothers, or the fragile girl in the mirror I thought I’d left behind?
“Get off of me!”
A muscle in his jaw tics. “Tell me what’s wrong, Celia.”
“I didn’t—” I take a shallow breath. “I didn’t know you’d be here!” Just like with his brothers, he’s too strong for me to escape by strength alone. I dig the heel of my palm into a gap in his armor, hoping to find flesh beneath but hitting a bulletproof vest instead. “What the hell are you wearing?” I ask, exasperated and growing more tired by the second. I didn’t get enough sleep before Rebel dragged me out of the apartment last night, and after all the emotions from learning I might be—could be—hopefully am—pregnant, and how bone-tired I am from all the sexual stimulation today, I’m running on pure willpower and a sense of responsibility that’s fading extraordinarily fast.
Thanatos pulls me to my feet. He tries to let me go, but when he does I fall back toward the wall and he’s forced to grab me again. With another growl, he curses under his breath. “So much fucking trouble,” he grumbles, gripping my arms tight. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
I blink up at him, and he sighs.
“You’re pregnant,” he clarifies, taking a step back to hold me at arm’s length. He probably thinks the baby is a disease or a menace or, I don’t know, something inherently bad. He’s said it before, and I’m bracing myself for him to say it again when his gaze drifts down to my belly. “You need to be more careful,” he murmurs, quickly looking away and clearing his throat. “That’s all.”
My mouth falls open. That’s not what I expected him to say at all.
“I can take care of myself,” I remind him. “I was doing fine before you kidnapped me, remember?”
He scoffs. “You were rolling around in a dump like a stray dog.”
I shove his chest as my anger flares. “ Excuse me? ”
“I grabbed you within sixty seconds, if even that.” He checks my body from head to toe, clearly displeased with what he sees. “Your gun wasn’t even within arm’s reach, and you didn’t have an alarm system or a dog to warn you of any security threats. It was sloppy work, which created a bad outcome for you, and an easy pickup for me. It’s like you wanted us to catch you.”
My anger flares even hotter, burning in the back of my throat like lava. “I would have been fine against anyone normal! ” I wriggle out of his grasp. The only reason I slip away is because he lets me, and it pisses me off even more. He’s right. I was sloppy with security, and even now, I stepped into the hall without a weapon. I didn’t even look for one before leaving.
“You have a murderer following you,” Thanatos continues, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “You can’t afford to be careless, or it’s light’s out, Princess.”
This again. Gritting my teeth, I mirror his posture and cross my arms. “Good thing I have three overbearing men to protect me, then. If I fail—” I barely contain a wince, but I manage—“they’ll keep me safe. Problem solved.”
He swallows, but it looks like he’s downing a bucket full of nails. His mouth pinches at the edges, the creases around his eyes giving away his age. Older than Rage, but by how much? Five years? Ten?
“Four,” he grunts.
I blink. How did he read my mind?
“You have four men now, Princess.”
Oh, fuck no.
I open my mouth to protest, but he clamps his hand over my lips.
Grimacing, he shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Look, we don’t have to get along. You don’t have to like me. But until my dad is out of the picture, you need all the protection you can get. He won’t spare your life just because of that baby in your belly. Do you understand?”
I wrap my arms around my middle and fight the panic rising like a tide. Silently, I nod, unable to speak. If I thought having Rage as a father was bad, having his dad as a grandfather is undoubtedly worse. I chew on the inside of my cheeks while Thanatos and I stare at each other, the seconds ticking past. Finally, he removes his hand from my face and looks away. “Good. That’s settled, then.”
An idea forms slowly as my emotions settle, a few of the tumbling stones inside my chest polished enough for me to grasp. I pluck out the most refined for the moment, the one that makes the most sense, and take a deep breath. “Teach me, then.”
Thanatos visibly flinches, a flush creeping across his neck. “What?”
I clear my throat, trying not to get embarrassed and utterly failing. Clearly, he doesn’t want to spend any more time with me than he already has to. I’m about to ask him to sacrifice his time—hell, a good part of his life, probably—for my sake.
And he hates me.
“Please… teach me. I need to know what to do if someone comes after me. I—” I bite my lip—“I know I’m a bratva daughter, but my father didn’t believe in girls having guns, and I was happy enough to ignore the need for most of my life. The gun you saw when you kidnapped me isn’t even mine. It’s my brother’s. I’ve never used it. I don’t even know how to load it or clean it or?—”
Thanatos curses in heavy Russian, suddenly walking down the hallway. He runs his hands through his hair, stops about twenty feet away, then turns on his heel and stares at me.
My heart thunders in my chest. I take a few steps closer to him, knowing that even if he hates me, he loves his brothers. He loves his family. And like it or not, we’re going to be family if this pregnancy is real and I’m carrying his brother’s child.
“Please,” I murmur, clenching my hands by my sides. I can’t read his expression. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he’ll say yes or insult me some more or?—
“ Fine, ” he grumbles, holding out his hand. When I don’t take it, he reaches for my hand and shakes it stiffly. “We start tomorrow. After you get a full night’s sleep. I’ll tell Dmitri that you need a real meal—not that shit Rebel eats—and you’ll eat every bite he puts in front of you. I won’t have you passing out because you haven’t had enough calories.”
I’m so stunned that all I can do is grab his entire arm in earnest. “Thank you,” I breathe, overwhelmed with relief. “Thank you so much.” He falls forward as I shake his arm, caught off guard by my enthusiasm, and tumbles forward. Before he crashes into me, he slams his hand on the wall beside my head and steadies himself.
We stand in suspended silence as he studies my face, his gaze flicking from my eyes down to my lips. His warm breath ghosts across my cheeks as he exhales. “Be ready at eight A.M. sharp, Princess.” He pushes himself off the wall and opens the apartment door for me. “Now get back inside before Rage finds out you tried to leave.”
I don’t move, and he scowls. “What is it now?”
“I have things I need to do out here.”
“Like what? ”
“I have a business to run, thank you very much!” I roll my eyes. “I’m not just a baby factory, you know! How many times do I have to tell you guys? I have responsibilities!”
Thanatos clenches his jaw. “What do you need to do your job from here?”
I purse my lips. “I can’t do my job from here.”
“You managed just fine for the week you stayed in your little hideaway,” he snaps, glaring at me.
So much for progress.
“I need things from my office. And a cell phone. And to check on my employees and my shop.” I count on my fingers as I list items off. “But it would be much easier if I could get everything myself?—
“No.”
I throw my hands up. “You won’t know what you’re looking for if you go without me!”
“I’ll manage.”
“No, you won’t!” I jab his chest with my finger. “I need my things, and I need my tasks done properly. No one can do this but me.”
Thanatos doesn’t look moved by my plight. “Give up the business, then. It’s not like clothes are as important as, oh, I don’t know, your life. ” He glares right back at me. “If I take you outside of this building, Rage will blow a fucking gasket. Not to mention, I’ll have to work double-time to watch your ass, because your situational awareness is some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
My body shakes with fury. “You don’t know what I’ve put into this business. None of you know. It means a lot to me, and I?—”
He lifts an eyebrow and cuts me off. “You sure about that?” Gesturing broadly all around us, he scoffs. “Have you forgotten where we are? Who runs this place? Who owns it?” Shaking his head, he smacks the heavy metal door to his brothers’ apartment. “If anyone will understand, it’s that man you fight with so goddamn much. Talk to Rage about your business, and he just might help you keep it.” He nods toward the apartment, and my gaze lands on the golden cage gleaming within.
Fucking Rage.
“He won’t listen,” I protest.
“Then you have to make him listen.” Thanatos plants his hand on my lower back and shoves me through the open doorway. “Make him listen or lose everything you’ve worked for in your life. Your choice.”
The door slams shut behind me, and I turn around and kick it, screaming. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
I hear Thanatos’s laughter louder than any fuck you I’ve ever gotten in my life. The man might be willing to teach me self-defense and basic weapons handling, but beyond that?
He isn’t interested in helping me at all.