Chapter Eighteen
Ava
The past two days drug by. My ass cheek wasn’t as sore today and my cuts were healing nicely but I still had to keep small bandaids over them. I tried to search Roman’s room for anything of importance but all I could find were clothes, some old vinyl records, books, and a pair of handcuffs. The handcuffs intrigued me. Though, I threw them in the drawer as hard as I could with more of a pout than I would have liked.
Tingles creep over my skin as I lay in his bed, prickling the sensation like how his cool breath brushed against my skin. I can’t believe I enjoyed his sadistic blows to my ass and deep kisses on my mouth. How he demanded me to get on my knees so I could suck his cock, makes my lower ache.
He doesn’t care about you Ava.
He was trying to punish me, to make me afraid but I felt safe around him for some reason. I know the oldest trick in the book, but he wasn’t born yesterday and knows it too. What was that old saying again?
Keep your friends close but enemies closer.
I have to keep myself close to Roman if I want to have him trust me and I need to come up with some plan about that album. I was so close but I need to dust off the oldest trick to if I want to survive this.
I know my name is on that list, but the FBI should understand I am being pretty much held captive for labor. I pull the comforter up scrunching it to my face as I close my eyes. Flinging back the comforter I shrug it off as best as I can. When I hand over that album they will see. All the blood sucking, bone cracking, assholes, that work with the Volokhov, and the best yet—the Volokhov themselves.
I can do this. Fake it until I make it.
My heart tore a bit with a heavy slump in my chest. The images of Roman with his brother as young boys flicker. His smile that wasn’t yet tainted and crooked. Him hugging onto what I am guessing was his mothers dress, peaceful, delicate, almost fragile. Like those dead flowers in the library.
I blink the sore ache away, rolling over onto my stomach, hugging the cloud like pillows.
Roman locked the library, which to my best efforts, I have failed at even coming close to opening. He also locked every other door.
Fucking asshole.
I stayed in his room to possibly trick him into trusting me, but as much as I wanted to distance myself from him, and how I was so quick to enjoy his fingers, I think it was better he wasn’t around. I haven’t seen him since that night he left me bandaged up. The only sign of him, if it was him, is my duffle bag being on the bed the morning after. It makes me wonder if I was really waiting to make him trust me, or if I was craving his touch with how much I was thinking about him.
It could possibly be both, because like the stories we hear of in fairy tales, there was always something brewing in the background. The other perspective, the; there are two sides to the story . I’m just somehow stuck in the middle, spiraling into confusion. It’s like a pop of red and ash that derails the original tale, like the blood he smeared across my arms last night, in which he fucked me with those same fingers too. There was no happy ending for him though, not if I can help it.
The empty hallways and paintings of forgotten glades were peaceful, but the creak of the kitchen doors, and the bubble of the coffee pot, were becoming my only friends at this point. I was ready to get back to Sarah and real human interaction.
A painful growl twists my stomach. I need food, coffee and a one way ticket out of this hell hole.
The first sip of coffee, the one that touches your soul, warms my insides. The light rain patters against the window as I close my eyes, wondering if anyone would remember that today was my last day.
Out beyond the court are men standing at their posts in their rain jackets. Standing, waiting, watching through their hoods, shadowing their faces.
The sound of the squeaking double doors makes my hand rock, spilling coffee on the forearm of my navy sweater. “Son of a–”
“—Good morning.” Roman says with a smug smile. His lips plump, even when they stretch to the corners of his mouth.
I set my coffee on the counter and shake my sleeve. “Yeah, morning,” I say irritated, darting my eyes to his bare feet.
He is wearing gray sweatpants, which were tight in all the right places, but I am trying with all of my might to not look at his cock protruding through the thin material. His tattoos cover his entire chest, his stomach and all the way to the V that settles low on his hips.
“Did you eat?” He asks.
“No, but I could before you take me home.” I glance at his bare chest of interlacing tattoos of thorns and goddesses trailing down, “Did you sleep here last night?” I sip my coffee, nervous he would reprimand me for prying about what he does in his free time.
“Why? Did you miss me?”
And there it was.
He sulks around the island to me, pointing his chin down and out, smirking.
“I…”
He reaches behind me for a knife out of the block, backing away from me as my breath hitches. The tug of his lip fades as he waits for me to respond.
I scoff, “I didn’t say that.”
“No, No, you didn’t,” he says, nonchalantly taking out a cutting board from the lower cabinet and an apple from the fruit basket. He is unbothered by his spats of venom as he peels the apple, “How about a smoothie and then some bacon and eggs?” He raises his eyebrows with a slight smile.
“Sounds delicious. But you are not going to make me one of those green smoothies are you? They have a texture like liquid concrete.”
“How would you know what the texture of liquid concrete tastes like?” He laughs.
“You know the ones with just green stuff. The… fiber I guess…” I shrug my shoulders as I sit on the bar stool, opposite from him. I felt stupid, like it was a stupid question, even if he was making light of it. I dip my head down, fumbling with my sleeves.
I don’t know how to make small talk with a man I want rotting in prison, but also has the ability to turn me on and make me orgasm.
He leans over the black granite island and brushes my hair behind my ear, licking his lower lip. His voice is low and face serious, “There is never a stupid question.” He holds my chin firm between his forefingers, “You will not shut yourself down like that, or I will go and get the whip, not the books,” he says with playfulness. “And no, it will not be a cement smoothie.”
“Concrete,” I retorted.
“Oh, yeah. Concrete. ” The way the corner of his mouth lifts slightly makes me grin but I quickly stop when I realize I was.
He releases my chin and goes back to chopping the apple. My smile creeps back up as I watch him care enough to feed me.
Or he is trying to lure me in with apples and mangos like a hunter lures their prey into a trap.
“Are you taking me home?” I ask.
“No, Igor will drop you off.” He didn’t elaborate, concentrating on pulling out more ingredients, the blender, eggs and bacon.
“Why won’t you?”
He ignores my question, placing the fruit in the blender, “Stepan isn’t here by the way and he will be away for a few until…” He stops, like he was revealing too much.
“Until…?” I parrot.
Ignoring me again he places the bacon on the sizzling skillet. Maybe it was a deal that he didn’t want me to know about, but something seems off.
He tenses his muscles, “Do you like honey?”
I squint my eyes at him, “No stupid questions. So why won’t you tell me?” It felt good to stand up to his hot and cold bit. I catch a glimpse of the reflection of my stone face in the silver refrigerator door. A striking resemblance to my mother when she would make me watch how to interrogate others for information. She would send me into another room and shoot them between the eyes, walking away like it was another day at the office. I soften my brows when the memories of her flood in.
I am not like her.
The top of the blender clicks into place, “He is getting married soon. There will be a wedding. Not that big of a deal.” He turns on the blender, closing the gap of any chance to tell him it was a big deal if he was trying to keep it from me. Not that I care, if anything, that gave me more reign when I returned. Less Volokhovs, means a quicker outcome. But I still had one in my way, and he was staring me down like he was about to pounce.
Roman
The space between her full lips when she parts them makes my cock tense. I love how she pries asking me questions, but if I find out who made her second guess and doubt herself about asking simple questions, or just being her-fucking-self, their eyes will be hanging from their skull— kinda like a member of the Bratva from last night.
Poor bastard thought he was climbing the ladder when I asked him about the girls he just sold to the ruling Bratva in Houston, and to meet me for drinks to congratulate him on the delivery. I was going to make it quick and just slice his neck open, until he opened his fucking mouth about Ava. I had to listen to him drone about since her parents have been dead and gone, nobody has taken their role.
I kept him talking because he piqued my interest in understanding some background about My Little Rabbit. How he convinced them to marry her off to him when she was seventeen because he was my father’s fourth cousin. Then he explained he couldn’t take her whines for him to stop when he was trying to, and I quote, stick his finger in her ass at a party , so he ended the deal with her parents because he wasn’t going to have some prude.
Well, his stench of cheap body spray did not mix well with the blood draining from his body.
When I carved the rabbit head on his back his whines were slow and delightful and possibly my best work of art yet.
“Roman!” Nikolai yells down the hall interrupting me, glorying in last night's suffering. I turn off the blender. “You just had to kill him like that and plop him down in the middle of traffic, didn’t you! And–oh– and forgot to mention it to me!” Ava is sipping her coffee, eyes wide. Nikolai has yet to enter the kitchen but is approaching quickly. “I get it, but traffic? Really!” I texted him when I completed the task, and we agreed short and sweet this time, but I’m guessing he caught wind of his branded back somehow. “All over the fucking news!” The double doors swing open. Nikolai is with Alexei, bouncing their heads back and forth between Ava and I.
The oh shit expression they have on their faces makes me smile, “Concrete?” I say, holding up the blender.
Alexei grips his hands inward to his chest, twiddling his fingers as he walks to the stove, “Oh, breakfast!” He snatches a piece of bacon, fumbling it to and fro between his hands and ignoring how Nikolai just threw me under the bus. Not like I cared, I told her who I was, what I am, but not that she is the reason I mark my kills with her symbol of peace. I am grateful he didn’t give that away, because then she would also know I was the one watching her.
Even these past few days I was there. I would sit and watch the rise and fall of her tits through her shirt when she slept, making sure she didn’t have any more nightmares. How she would look at one of my mother’s old paintings for hours and write in her journal in between her trance like states.
I wanted to be her shadow as long as I could.
“I’m sorry, what ?” Ava sputters, choking a little on her coffee. She was messing with her sleeves, again. Her eyes shift between Alexei and Nikolai. I lift my eyebrows toward the door at Nikolai and Alexei to leave us.
Nikolai tugs on Alexei’s gray henley to follow him, but when Alexei starts collecting more bacon, Nikolai’s face turns red with frustration at him like when someone calls for their own mischief to simmer down. “Let’s go.” Nikolai hisses at Alexei.
Alexei waves a piece of bacon in the air behind his head as he follows Nikolai, “Well, it was nice seeing you!”
I wait for the swinging doors to stop as the silence and tension rises at a rapid rate.
Rounding the island, I sit the smoothie on the counter as she keeps her focus on me. Her cheeks are flush and beautiful, complimenting her green eyes behind her glasses. The cold smoothie is dripping down the sides as I swipe my fingers along the frosted glass, collecting the blended fruit. I plunge my fingers in my mouth and suck it off, just like how I sucked her sweet come off of them.