Chapter 10
Varvara
The soup is good. Potato and leek. The bread is homemade and deliciously fresh. The butter is expensive, and the real stuff and the tea makes me groan out loud.
I don’t care.
I’m fucking starving. I figure if he wanted to poison me, I’m a captive here anyway and probably going to end up dead at some point. Might as well go out with a full stomach if it’s tonight.
Glancing around the room, I take it in. It’s too big, polished and male with its dark wood and navy everywhere. The bed could sleep four people and still have room for everyone’s emotional damage. The lamp by the bed throws a warm pool of light over expensive sheets and a blanket at the foot.
I spoon soup into my mouth like it’s about to go out of fashion, and when the bowl is empty, I wipe the bread around the last bits.
Sitting back in the armchair by the window, I stare out of the sealed window.
It looks out over a courtyard with a fancy fountain and extensive gardens beyond.
I had no idea properties existed like this in the centre of the city.
It probably cost millions. Millions of pounds of Bratva money.
What the fuck? I know who the Bratva are in theory, but meeting them, learning it’s real, is completely different.
Not a story whispered over too much vodka at weddings.
Not a warning muttered by old Russians who still think London is clean if you wear a suit and pay council tax.
It’s this house. That man. The blood on my throat.
The lock on the door.
I set the tray aside and get up, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet. I don’t know where my shoes are, maybe in the wardrobe. My knees still hurt from the alley, but by morning, it’ll be fine. My neck stings every time I turn my head.
The delayed fear response has settled back to a simmer, and now I’m just angry.
Angry at that man who used me to drop his USB drive.
Angry at Voronov for cutting me, abducting me, and locking me up.
I brush over the fact that if it weren’t for him, I’d be shot dead in an alley. That isn’t the point.
Or is it?
My brain is too fuzzy to sort through this information dump with any clarity.
I need facts. That usually helps.
Staring out of the window, I make a list. One: I’m in a rich gangster’s bedroom.
Two: he is obsessive, armed, and apparently decided I’m his now, which can fuck right off.
Three: somebody out there wants me dead because of a USB drive I never asked for and never even saw until it landed in his hand.
Four: I’m exhausted enough to make stupid decisions.
That last one annoys me most.
I move to the bathroom and switch on the light. Black marble with gold fittings. Why am I not surprised? It has a massive shower. Bigger bath. Heated towel rail. A mirror so clean it feels judgemental.
I stare at myself in it and pull a face. I’m a mess.
My hair is wrecked. My eyes are swollen from crying.
There’s a thin red line at my throat with ointment shining over it, which in retrospect doesn’t look that bad.
My white shirt is creased and marked from the alley and is missing a button, so the middle of my bra is on show. My skirt is twisted and dirty.
I look like a woman who got shot at in a filthy alley near some bins and then abducted by a hot psychopath and then fed artisan soup.
Hot. I hate that for me. Why couldn’t it be an ugly old vor instead of a good-looking tattooed man, probably in his mid-thirties?
It would make it much easier to hate him then.
My brain ticks over why that is. Why do I trust him more because he’s hot and weirdly restrained than if he were a dirty old letch?
Grabbing a flannel, I run cold water over it and clean up as best I can. Blood has dried in a faint track down my neck and along my collarbone.
Fuck it. I need a shower. I’m hot, sweaty, sticky and dirty. He must look at me and feel nothing but pity and disgust. But when I turn to the shower, I remember his words. He jerked off in there, thinking about me after I tried to blind him.
“Freak,” I say and turn the water on anyway. One hopes it’s been scrubbed since then. I’d imagine it has been. Everything else is spotless.
I strip fast. The shirt first. I pull it off and drop it.
Then the skirt, unzipped and stepped out of in one motion.
I leave my bra and knickers on for exactly three seconds before deciding that’s stupid too and get rid of them.
I pile them up on the counter, with little choice but to put them back on after I’ve cleaned up.
The water comes down hot and hard.
I stand under it with both hands braced on the black tile and shut my eyes. It hits the back of my neck and shoulders and runs over the cut at my throat. That stings enough to remind me this is real.
I scrub at my skin with soap from a bottle and a sponge.
I assume it’s his, seeing as it’s the only one in here.
That’s a kind of intimacy that is bordering on unhinged.
But I try not to think about it. I wash until the panic sweat is gone and the grime from the alley goes down the drain.
I wash my hair twice with a shampoo that smells of money.
I rinse and stand there, breathing in the steam, for a minute longer than I should.
My thoughts keep circling back to him.
Not because I want them to. Because my brain has clearly decided tonight wasn’t overloaded enough and needs one more terrible hobby.
Lev Voronov.
Even his name is obnoxious. Too short and direct. Although it suits him.
I tip my head back and let the water hit my face. He said I belong to him now. The universe doesn’t just sign off on that.
That isn’t how consent and respect work. Two things that are in short supply here. I turn the water off before I can stand here long enough to start making excuses for him and remembering the pillow and blanket he brought for my wardrobe meltdown.
Steam clings to the mirror. I wipe a patch clear with my palm and stare at myself again. Cleaner now. Less like a victim dragged in off the street. More like a woman trapped in a gilded cage who needs to get her head on straight.
A towel hangs on the rail beside the shower. Thick. Black. Expensive. I dry off fast and eye the pile of ruined clothes on the counter with immediate hatred.
I wrap the towel around myself and step back into the bedroom, hair dripping down my back.
I go straight to the dresser and pull out one of his tees that I spotted earlier when I was having a root around for something to defend myself with.
It’s navy. What a shock. I pull it over my head and let the towel drop.
It swamps me, but it is so soft, it should be illegal.
Maybe it is. Bratva, after all. I rub the towel over my hair and then take it back to the heated towel rail in the bathroom and start prowling again.
If I’m trapped in here, I may as well gather information.
The bedside table offers me nothing useful except a lamp, a Russian book, and an unopened bottle of water. The drawers in the dresser are neatly arranged with t-shirts, underwear, socks, and a collection of watches that make my mouth drop open.
I shut that drawer very carefully and move on.
The wardrobe is bigger than my kitchen. I avoid looking too hard at the corner where I hid earlier.
I’m not in the mood to think about what he must make of that.
Instead, I check the shelves. Suits. Coats.
Shoes in a row so neat it’s almost a personality disorder.
A safe tucked into the back wall. I close the doors and look around, my gaze landing on the bed.
It must be creeping up on the early hours now.
I pick up my phone and try to turn it on, but nothing happens, so I chuck it on the bedside table and then sigh.
Crawling onto the bed, I suppose that’s where I’m meant to sleep.
Unless he expects me to sleep on the floor or in the wardrobe.
Well, he can get fucked. I’m going to sleep in his bed like a starfish, just to be ornery.
I hope to fuck he doesn’t think he is sleeping in here with me.
That thought chills me and sits on my chest as I curl up.
My eyes close, and despite the threat of everything around me, I feel myself dragged to the edge of oblivion.