Chapter 1 #2
She’d learned to do unspeakable things at an age when no young girl should, but she’d never learned the most basic things that teenagers usually learn.
She’d never learned to drive or how to use a computer.
She’d never graduated from high school, been to a school dance, seen a hockey game, or had a crush on a boy.
But more, she’d never learned to assert her own opinion or make decisions.
Until Alexi had cut the chain off her ankle, her life had been all about surviving one day to the next.
It was hard enough to focus on keeping a sliver of her soul intact and not becoming fully indoctrinated by the Program.
She didn’t have the ability or the freedom to think independently.
Now, thanks to Alexi, she does. She’s allowed to think for herself, be whoever she wants to be, yell, scream, laugh, or cry.
In her first few days with Alexi, she’d tested him to see his reactions.
She’d smashed vases, screamed in his face, and even stolen a knife from the kitchen.
Alexi’s reaction? He’d ordered one of his men to give her his gun and to show her how to shoot it.
He didn’t try to cage her or control her.
He armed her with a weapon and the knowledge of how to use it.
It was probably at that moment that her crush first materialized.
Until that second, when he put that pistol in her hand, she’d thought she’d never be attracted to or like a man.
But she’d been wrong. And now, like some silly teenage girl with her first crush on a boy, she can’t seem to get him out of her head.
And thanks to her new freedom, she has all the time in the world to daydream about him. It’s annoying and embarrassing.
She shakes her head at herself and forces her feet to keep walking.
This new freedom and autonomy are amazing, but they’re also overwhelming. She’d nearly panicked the first time Alexi had asked her what she wanted. He offered her the world, and all she could think to ask for on that first day was mashed potatoes with dinner.
Thankfully, he’d taken pity on her. He arranged for the cook to serve the creamiest, smoothest mashed potatoes she’d ever eaten, then asked her to come up with at least one new desire every day.
From that, it had become their evening ritual to have dinner together.
They’d sit down at the massive table in the overly decorated grand dining room, and she’d tell him one thing that she wanted.
She knows she’s come a long way in the past few months, and she’s slowly learning how to be… human again. At first, her requests were basic because she struggled to voice the deeper desires within her. But recently, an idea has begun to take shape. An idea so big, it scares her a little.
Her idea is beautiful in its simplicity—she wants Alexi to help her experience all the things she missed out on in life.
She wants to learn the skills necessary to be independent and self-reliant, yes, but she also wants to experience the joys of life.
She wants to eat ice cream on a hot summer day, walk barefoot in dewy grass under a full moon, swim in the ocean, play fetch with a dog, learn to cook, and so much more.
Yesterday, she’d told Alexi that she wanted to learn to drive. She’d looked him square in the eye and demanded that he give her a driving lesson. He’d blinked once, grumbled about how he should have thought of that weeks ago, and piled more mashed potatoes on her plate. And that was that.
This morning, he’d knocked on her bedroom door—something else she was getting used to—and had told her that her first driving lesson would start in half an hour.
She’d been giddy with excitement. And nervous.
She’d never let anyone see her anxiety, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a riot of butterflies in her stomach.
She lets that sense of excitement wash through her again, then, with a smile on her face, she pushes the front door open and steps out into the sunshine.
She lifts a hand to shade her eyes from the bright sun and scans the front of the estate for Alexi.
Soon, she spots him on the other side of the large driveway, leaning against a sleek car.
She walks across the expanse of ornate, basalt pavers and past the fountain in the middle of the motor court-style driveway.
As she gets closer, her belly flutters with more than just excitement about driving.
Leaning against his fancy car, Alexi is a sight to behold.
He’s wearing a white dress shirt rolled up to the elbows and unbuttoned halfway down his chest, showcasing the fascinating ink sprawled across his muscled forearms and chest. Darkwash jeans hug his thighs.
And his look of refined machismo is completed with black leather biker boots and aviator sunglasses.
Ulayna bites her lip. The man is just so damn attractive. It’s almost hard to look at him. Even the slight graying at his temples and the salt and pepper running through his trim beard make her want to run her fingers through it to see how soft it is.
When her belly flutters with desire, she blushes. She doesn’t know what to make of her body’s reaction to him. Suddenly feeling shy, she tucks her chin.
—
Grateful for his sunglasses, which hide his roving eyes, Alexi takes a deep breath and attempts to calm his racing heart.
As a skilled sniper, he knows how to slow his breathing and his heart rate so he can take his shot with steadiness.
But Ulayna’s tiny cutoffs are showing off miles and miles of bare legs.
The sight would make any man’s pulse skyrocket.
Mentally, he chastises himself. His lustful thoughts are no better than those of the men who previously enslaved and used her.
At nineteen, she’s practically still a child, and he has no business noticing the creamy paleness of her thighs or how adorably sexy she looks in her oversized sweatshirt and Converse.
Forcefully, he wrangles his thoughts into submission.
He promised her she would never again be subjected to the whims of a man’s desire, and he means to keep his word.
It doesn’t matter if he’s inexplicably attracted to the mix of her innocent beauty and the worldly knowledge he can see in her eyes.
No matter what, he intends to keep his hands to himself.
“Good morning, Ptichka.” He greets her with the Russian term for little bird.
The term suits her perfectly. If you don’t look too closely, a little bird might seem frail and inconsequential.
But some little birds are also fierce predators.
The Northern Shrike, a tiny songbird native to Russia, is known for viciously attacking insects, lizards, and other small birds, then impaling its prey on thorny bushes and barbed wire, where it stores them to be eaten later.
In his mind, Ulayna is a shrike. She is a little bird buffeted by the harsh winds of fate. But she is also vicious and fierce and capable of so much more than she realizes.
She may only be nineteen, but he is in awe of her.
Her tenacity and fortitude in the face of true horror are nothing short of humbling.
He’s seen some truly fucked up things in his life—after all, Boris was his father.
But he’s never seen anyone, man or woman, pull themselves out of the ashes of that horror and embrace life the way Ulayna has.
Despite everything she’s been through, it seems that she’s hung onto her humanity through sheer grit.
And that force of will, that stubbornness, and that refusal to just say die… Well, for some reason, that seems to be more alluring and arousing to him than any set of bedroom eyes or pouty lips could ever be.
When Ulayna steps in front of him with downcast eyes, he tucks two fingers under her chin to tip her face up.
Assessing her, he once again sees those flashes of terrible knowledge in her gaze.
She may look young and doll-like on the outside.
But her eyes tell a different story. A story of pain and fear, loss and suffering.
But also a story of survival and resilience.
And if he has any say in it, before too much longer, her story will include vengeance as well.
“Good morning, Pakhan,” she says, tugging her chin out of his grip and ducking her head to hide her flushed cheeks.
It doesn’t escape his notice when she blushes. He knows she’ll never admit it, but she likes it when he calls her Ptichka.
Her use of his title, however, annoys the hell out of him. It shouldn’t, but it does.
As the leader of the Bratva in Chicago, he is the pakhan, or boss.
The day he overthrew his father, he earned that title.
It’s the title his men call him as a sign of their respect and deference.
But coming from Ulayna, it sounds wrong.
He’d much rather hear his given name from her lips, even if it is considered incredibly informal in Bratva culture.
She’d originally called him Master, which had infuriated the hell out of him.
He couldn’t stand the idea of her calling him the same title that she was previously forced to call her captors and tormentors.
Those sick fucks who stole her childhood and tried to turn her into a warped version of a geisha may have gotten a kick out of the subservient title, but it only made him want to burn the world down in her honor.
The first and only time she’d addressed him as Master, he’d painstakingly explained why he couldn’t tolerate it. He’d been careful not to demand anything of her. Demanding even something that small would have been an attempt to control her, which he swore he’d never do.
He vowed he’d never force her to do anything she didn’t want to, so if she’d insisted on continuing to call him that horrific title, he would have sucked it up. Thankfully, she hadn’t.
He’d asked that she call him Alexi, but she’d refused. After several minutes of deep thought, she’d compromised with Pakhan.