20. Mila
MILA
After the last “adventure” of trying to get information about Gregori and Yusef Antonov, and where they might be to set up surveillance of them, it seemed like Lev and I would both need to let off some steam.
All the Volkovs and Bratva men who accompanied me and Lev were probably just as frustrated with the lack of intel.
It didn’t matter who they talked to or which informants they wanted to question.
No one knew where Gregori or Yusef Antonov were hiding and operating from, thus hindering the Volkovs from being a step ahead of them.
Every time the men meeting with the Volkovs noticed me and asked where they could find a sidepiece like me, my renewed anger lit hotter. It would never be someone seeing me and asking how I had found Lev. It was always the other way around.
Bucking against the fact that this violent world was forever and always a man’s world, I hated how I would never be equal to a man. Just inferior.
Because I was a woman, my words would never matter. I would never be worthy of respect and power. Like I was just an insignificant thing.
No matter how many tests and trials I did, how many tasks and races I aced and came out on top, I wouldn’t be “good enough” for respect.
It shouldn’t matter if it was a man or a woman.
Someone’s strength and ability to survive were measured in the scale of their determination.
Deep down in the marrow of my bone, I knew that I was strong, fast, and smart enough to work for any crime family.
On a good day, I could internally gloat that I was stronger, faster, and smarter—conditioned to be like that from the need to survive the grim life that I had been forced into.
Having those men at the last meetup look at me like they wanted to take me and use me was nothing like what I was coming to experience with Lev.
Since the day that he had taken me on the mat and ordered me to tell him what I wanted, it was harder and harder to see him as only my owner. I viewed him not as the person who bought me from the Hernandez Cartel. I struggled to label him as my owner and boss.
Now, I could categorize him as a man I cared about.
As a man a woman would want to belong to in all the ways that counted and surpassed what a contract paper said.
The more he took me with him everywhere under this loose title of being his assistant, I saw him as a man I simply wanted to work with and be with.
He had taken me. He bought me and owned me.
There was no dispute about that. But it was a multi-layered concept since he didn’t just own me with the contract in his hand.
He owned my body with how easily he could make me shudder and shiver under his touch.
He owned me with the ease by which he could complete me under the press of his lips on mine.
Lev hadn’t been happy when that one man at the last meetup had tried to make a pass at me. I had a good hunch that after he spoke with Maksim and saw him out of the house that he would come out here to the training facility and burn off some of that energy working out.
I tried not to look into it too deeply so that he wasn’t taking his energy out on me. Or with me.
Sure, I lusted for him.
Yet, I was too busy basking in how I had been included so far.
Not as an accessory or a thing to show off like a trophy, but as a part of this mission against Gregori.
Every time he brought me along under the guise of my being his assistant, I felt like I was contributing—even as backup when he asked me what I thought of what we heard and didn’t hear.
I felt like I was a player on the team, not just someone hanging off to the side.
Reminding myself that I was only a slave to him felt like a lie.
When I moved on toward the weights, I wondered if it could ever be true. If I could be seen as just a member of the strong family I’d found.
“I don’t know about you,” Nikolai said as he approached, apparently just getting done with some reps at the bench press, “but I could have sworn we were about to have a blood bath at the club yesterday.” He raised his brows. “When that idiot actually put his hand on your shoulder…”
I turned toward him, hesitating to wait on my warm-up for a workout. “I’m still surprised it didn’t end like that.”
He laughed once, ever the charmer. Of all the Volkov men, he was the most laidback and easiest to approach. Not that I approached any of them and tried to act like they were my friends or relatives. I was still going through the learning curve of acclimating to Lev being more than my owner.
“I can’t blame him.”
I furrowed my brow at him.
“No. Not that Konstantin moron.” He shook his head. “He had no right to act like he could touch you at all. I meant my cousin.”
Lev had practically attacked the other man for looking at me for too long. When the man put his hand on my shoulder, he’d vibrated with rage.
“I don’t blame Lev. He’s made it clear that you’re with him.”
I cringed, lowering my gaze toward the weights and dumbbells on the racks. “I’m not.”
He huffed that amused laugh that suggested he wasn’t fooled. “You are.”
I jerked my head up to face him. “I’m just his…”
“His.” He nodded, like he was proud of a child for catching on to what one plus one equaled.
“His—”
“Assistant?” he suggested.
“Yeah.” Technically, that was what Lev had stated. That I was his assistant. And I was accompanying him everywhere to assist with… whatever he wanted from me.
But other times, he’d wanted me. To kiss me and worship my body, all while not even pausing to glance at or acknowledge the scars that littered my back and stomach.
“Is that all?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and scrambled for what to say.
“What do you mean?” If he was asking me if I was fucking his cousin, was I supposed to lie and keep it a secret?
It was forbidden to even lust after my owner and boss.
Was I supposed to tell the truth? My words still felt like all the power I could hold, and I wasn’t sure if I could or should wield them.
“Are you only his assistant?” he asked calmly. “Or is that just the most convenient label he can give you while you become something more?”
“I…” I shook my head. “Those are questions you should ask him.”
There. Deflect and let Lev handle this.
That was smart.
“I’m asking you.” He lowered his hand and shoved them into the pockets of his shorts. Relaxed and non-threatening like this, he didn’t intimidate me. His questions did, though.
“You are committed, right?”
I blinked once, surprised.
“I mean, after how you wanted to make sure Elena and Carina were sheltered, it seems sort of dumb of me to ask you that.”
That did seem like a turning point. But it wasn’t at the same time. “It was just my instinct. I detected danger and they were the vulnerable ones around, pregnant and unaware of their surroundings.”
He shook his head. “I’m not convinced it was just instinct. It seemed like your loyalty was showing.”
“I am loyal,” I said.
“But not because of how Lev got you here.” He raised his brows as if daring me to argue about that. “I realize they’re still trying to find a ‘job’ that suits you here, but I’m wondering if I’ll be the first one to call that bluff.”
“How so?”
“Because you are committed. I can see it every time you and Lev are near each other. I watched it in how he was so furious when that man put his hand on you. You’re his.
Not just someone he brought here to work for us, but something more.
That’s why I’m asking you to make sure I’m not seeing something that’s not there.
You are committed to the family. As an employee of some kind.
But do you see yourself committed to Lev, too? ”
I licked my lips, unsure of what to say. For the first time, someone was putting me directly on the spot to say what I saw of my purpose here.
I had feelings for that control freak who’d whisked me out of that standoff in the desert a couple of months ago.
My heart was getting involved with the thoughts I had of him.
It wasn’t a simple matter of reminding myself that I was here to work.
That I should be here to obey and look out for the first opening of escape.
Oh, my God.
I couldn’t recall the last time I’d even thought about getting away.
I’d been spending so much time thinking about how else to fit in.
I woke up looking forward to what Lev would ask of me.
I went to sleep with memories of all the little looks, touches, and sighs that both of us experienced together as we “worked” with this investigation into Gregori and Yusef Antonov.
How can I be this… stupid?
That was what it felt like. It had to be wrong and foolish to let Lev surpass escaping in terms of my priorities.
I’d been trapped and stuck in a life of servitude for ten years.
I had to be free. I couldn’t fully submit.
I owed it to myself to fight for freedom.
But in all this time here, and especially when Lev made me feel so good, I couldn’t really claim that I wasn’t free.
Conflicted with what I was supposed to think anymore, I lowered my head and neared a low-burning panic of what to tell Nikolai.
Of how I could dodge his pointed questions.
I couldn’t understand how I could let my heart—or my body—rule all the decisions for me when deep in my mind, all I had ever known to do was operate in survival mode.
“I see.”
I jerked my head up and frowned at Nikolai. He was wearing one of those shit-eating, aha smiles. “You see what?”
“I see plenty,” he said. “Enough that I don’t think it’s worth wasting my time to wonder if you’re committed to being a part of the Bratva’s organization.” He smirked, moving so as to leave me be. “Or a part of my cousin’s life.”
He sauntered away with those last words, damning me to try to muddle through the warring debate of whether he was right or wrong about me.
About me and Lev.