Chapter 10 - Sera
SERA
Don’t fucking kiss him.
Alik’s hand is hot and heavy on my inner thigh, every exhale intertwining with mine. That smell of his—like earth and sweat and power mixed into one, with that odd hint of lilac trailing behind—is making me lightheaded.
Or maybe it’s the blood loss. Who the hell knows anymore.
What I do know is that this Hail Mary plan of mine isn’t going to work if I give into sick temptation and actually kiss him.
“What do you think you’re doing, Marya?” Alik’s blue eyes, which had started to melt, are back to being ice cold.
“Repaying your kindness by not shooting you.”
“Very thoughtful, moya voitelnitsa.”
I don’t know what those last words mean but he’s said them before, and like before, I hate that I find the combination of his native language and gravelly voice so freaking attractive.
Cazzo. His voice. I hear it in my sleep.
If you can count nightmares as sleep. The cuts on my hands and leg throb just thinking about tonight’s episode and how much damage my memories can inflict when I’m not even awake.
The doctor explained that she’d sedated me during the first part of my recovery so my body had a chance to heal, but now that I’m off the medication, I can’t get my brain to stop replaying everything Rocco did to me.
It’s my own personal horror film that never ends.
When I close my eyes, the images start to play, faster and faster until I wake up screaming, dripping sweat and tearing at my wrists, trying to break free of manacles that aren’t there.
On the rare occasions I’m able to go back to sleep, Alik’s voice is what calms the noise in my head.
Pulls the weight off my chest so I don’t feel like I’m suffocating any more.
Somehow my subconscious has turned him into a source of comfort, a safe space.
Which, right now, makes me even more eager to pull the trigger, because how dare he haul me out of that hellhole only to lock me in another prison.
I tap the gun’s muzzle against his forehead. “Time to let me go.”
His expression narrows. “Is that what all this is? Another escape attempt? You weren’t satisfied with trying to crack my skull open, you decided to hurt yourself too?”
“I-I don’t need to tell you what happened. It’s none of your business.”
“My carpet is wearing your blood. That makes it my business.”
I bite my lip, struggling to ignore the pain in my hands and leg that’s getting worse the more we talk about it.
“What were you doing on the balcony, Marya?” Alik presses. “Bleeding and barely dressed. You could’ve frozen.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Alik spits something out in Russian, his expression angrier now than when I put the gun to his head. “Bullshit. Of course it matters.”
“Why?” My voice is shaking. I’m running on next to no sleep, have possibly hurt myself more than I realized, and am holding a violent man hostage with his own gun.
It’s becoming obvious I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but that doesn’t stop me from asking, “Why does what happens to me matter to anyone, let alone you?”
For one second, I think he’s going to give a real answer.
The idea that he cares about what happens to me does something funny to my stomach.
For the past three years, no one has given me a second thought.
From the day after I graduated high school, the Pagano clan cut me off from everything I’d loved about my life.
My friends. My soccer team. My plans to go to college. My future.
I’ve been isolated for three years, considered nothing but property for so long I don’t remember what it’s like to have anyone care about me. But with Alik still so close that his body heat is making my blood simmer, I am suddenly, achingly desperate to matter to someone.
For just one person on this planet to give a shit about what happens to me.
The feeling is fierce and all-consuming, overwhelming my nervous system. Electricity flashes up my arms and the gun wobbles in my grip.
Without warning, Alik plucks it from my hand, engaging the safety and setting it on the coffee table. I lurch for the weapon, panicked at losing the only bit of leverage I have, but I’m too slow. Alik stops me, manacling both of my hands in one of his, locking them in my lap.
He takes what little space there is on the edge of the sofa, crowding me into the corner. I’m trapped again and I hate it—hate everything—and I can’t stop the tears that spring to my eyes. “Just let me go.”
Alik sighs. “I will not.”
“Why?” My voice breaks and I hate that too.
“I’ll disappear. Vanish into thin air. No one will know you took me.
No one will know you betrayed my family.
There is no scenario in this world in which I would ever go near them again, but even if I did, even if I told anyone what’s happened, no one would believe me.
I’m nothing, nobody. Not to them, not to you.
I’m not worth keeping here, Alik. Let me go. Please, just let me go.”
I feel Alik’s attention on my face, the weight almost unbearable. I swear he’s visually dissecting me, picking me apart bit by bit until he can see down to the bone.
I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I keep my chin tucked, my hands clenched in fists beneath his, waiting for his verdict. He delivers it so quietly I have to lean forward to hear him. Devious fucker.
“There are many parts of your argument that we will discuss in the future, but for now, I’m willing to make a deal with you, Marya.”
“No, no. Fuck a deal. I just want to leave.”
“I understand what you want, just like you need to understand that you’re not going to get it. Not right now.”
Highhanded prick. I yank my hands out of his grip. He lets me go. Obviously. I’m not delusional enough to think I’m stronger than him. But the fact that he’s trying to placate me makes me even angrier. Earns him a solid shove in the chest. “Stop talking to me like a fucking child.”
“Then stop acting like one,” he grinds back, bracing his arms against the high back of the sofa, one on either side of my shoulders. He’s so close I can see where the old part of the scar on his cheek ends and the new one begins.
Don’t you dare touch it, Sera. Don’t. You. Dare.
“I thought I made myself clear before,” he says, “but apparently, I need to repeat myself. Like I am talking to a child. There is still a price on your body, Marya. If your family isn’t the one to cash in, someone else will.
You are also a Pagano, which makes you valuable to me.
” The edges of his words turn razor sharp.
“If I can’t get the answers I need from your uncle—who is alive, by the way—I might have to interrogate you. ”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re mine until I’m done with you.”
It’s his voice. It has to be. That’s the only way my reaction to his statement makes sense. It’s a Pavlovian response to what used to be my one source of comfort. A voice now tinged with possessiveness.
My brain is still in fight mode, but I feel the burn in my limbs twist and turn into something much more tantalizing. More potent.
More dangerous.
No one has ever considered any part of me sexy, but you wouldn’t know it by the way Alik is studying my mouth, his eyes darkening as I repeat, “Yours?”
“Until I say otherwise.”
I hate how his breath coasts across my neck. Hate it so much heat flares between my legs. “Or until I finally manage to run away.”
Alik’s answering shrug is so unbothered I start to shove him again. And stop when he brings the gun to eye level. “Now that we understand each other, let’s get back to the deal I was talking about.”
I stare at him.
“A trade. You tell me what happened tonight and I’ll give you this.”
What?! “Why?”
“Why to which part?”
“The gun part.” Obviously.
“Because,” he says, carefully setting his weapon in my lap. “You’ve had a lot taken from you, Marya, and while I can’t give you back your freedom, I’d be a negligent asshole if I didn’t give you a way to protect yourself.”
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I want to laugh. Really, truly laugh. “But I could shoot you.”
“You could. You could do it now. Kill me in cold blood and walk out that door. But then, in addition to being broke and alone, two things would happen.”
“And they are?”
“You’d have more than just what’s left of the Pagano family chasing you down. You’d be running from my family as well. And, for the sake of transparency, my bratva is much better at their job than yours.”
He has a bratva. Alik is Russian mafia. Of course he is. As if this situation couldn’t get any worse. “And the second part?”
“You’d lose your chance at revenge.”
Revenge. The idea slips and slides across my skin, seeping into my pores, seeding itself just beneath the surface. Simmering there. “But how? Against who? You said most of the Paganos are dead. Except…you’re questioning Rocco? He survived the attack?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Alik looks every bit a ruthless mobster that I now know he is. “He’s alive for as long as I need him to be. Until he gives me the information that I want.”
“You’ve set a ticking clock on Rocco’s life and a huge chunk of the Paganos are already dead, killed in the Cerreti attack. So…who do I get my revenge on?”
“Easy, moya voitelnitsa. The men who wanted to buy you.”
Revenge. Those seeds burrow deeper, through muscle, down to bone. They settle, start to root. “Just so I’m clear—I tell you what happened tonight and, in exchange, I get to keep your gun?”
“Da. And if you stop trying to run away, I’ll help you get your revenge.”
Revenge. I want it. Badly. For the first time in a very long time, I am excited about something. Looking forward to something. Homicidally excited, just the way the Paganos raised me. “Yes. Deal.”
“Khorosho. But you will need to be patient, moya voitelnitsa. The timing needs to be right. I decide, not you.” Alik is eating up all the air between us, his gaze intense as he reads my reaction.
His body still so close I can practically taste the sweat and salt of his skin.
“There are things I must finish first, before anything else happens.”
“How long will that be?”
“As long as it takes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” Alik drags a finger across my cheek, tucks wayward hair behind an ear. “You’re not in charge, Marya. Everything will be much easier if you remember that.”
Alik’s finger vanishes and I hate that he’s left a vapor trail of sensation behind. “So…I do what? Just sit in my room like a good girl until you say otherwise?”
“Good girl,” Alik repeats, voice low and liquid, whisky searing a path through my chest. He grips the back of my neck with one hand, the touch even more commanding because I can feel all the strength he’s not using.
“Yes, moya voitelnitsa, you will be a good girl and stay exactly where I tell you until it’s your turn. That is the deal we’ve made.”
I can’t stop staring at his mouth. At lips that tip up in a self-satisfied smirk. A smirk that’s begging to be slapped off his face. Or kissed. Fuck.
“A deal with the devil,” I say, forcing my thoughts away from all things kissing-related.
“That’s the only kind there is in our world. Now—” Alik pulls back, stealing his body heat away. “Your turn.” He indicates at tonight’s injuries. “What the fuck happened?”