Sinful Betrayal (The Antanov Bratva #2)

Chapter 1

IVY

The days have begun to blur together.

I’ve stopped marking them on the wall near my bed and in my head because the climbing numbers only make it worse.

The numbers remind me of how long it’s been since I’ve last seen Leo’s face, and touched his hair, kissed his forehead goodnight or sang him to sleep.

The numbers make the ache in my chest sharper, make it harder to breathe through during these long days and nights I’ve been forced to spend all alone in this godforsaken room.

But I’m forced to count time in other ways, anyway.

By the meals slapped down on the bed by my feet, just far enough away that I have to strain to get them because they want to see me struggling and humiliated, begging for the scraps they feed me.

Sometimes, I’m allowed bread, but it’s always stale around the edges.

The meals come twice a day, just enough to keep me alive, never enough to keep me energized.

All by design.

I measure time in the showers I’m uncuffed and dragged out of my bed every morning for.

Always ten minutes, no more, before I’m pulled from the stall regardless of how much soap I’ve managed to wash off my body.

But there’s never enough that can scrub away the fear, the helplessness, that I feel being at the mercy of these people.

And then, I’m always shackled back to the bed like an animal. The click of the key in the lock is a sound that’s become more familiar to me than Leo’s laugh.

None of them talk to me.

They don’t even look at me.

Even when the nurses with their masks pulled up over the bottom halves of their faces when they come in to check on me say nothing. Their cold fingers poke and prod at my body, checking the bruises still left from the crash, the slowly healing gashes on my arms from where glass sliced me open.

They never spend long with me. Not that they want to in the first place.

The worse out of all of this? I haven’t seen Leo since the crash.

I don’t even know if he’s alive.

That’s the worst part—the not knowing.

I replay every possibility until exhaustion claims me. Is he being kept safe? Crying for me? Is he nearby, locked in some other room, just as scared, just as alone? Or did Mikhail send him off to some frozen corner of the earth just to twist the knife? To punish me for belonging to Maksim?

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? A message. A reminder. Being Maksim Antonov’s woman, bearing his son, this is the price I’m forced to pay for jumping into bed with a Bratva leader.

At night, I lie awake staring at the ceiling, listening to the shuffle of footsteps outside the door and the murmur of voices that are always too low to make out what they’re saying.

I always wonder if tonight’s the night. If the door will open not for food, not for more restraints to chain me to the bed, but for an ending. If a bullet will be my final goodnight instead of the steady clicking of the air coming in through the vent above my bed.

So far, it hasn’t happened. They just let me sit in this limbo instead, suspended in the in-between.

I can’t do this anymore.

That thought grows louder each day, carving itself into me until it’s a brand. I’ve had enough of the silence, enough of the waiting for someone else to decide whether I get to live or die. Because if no one’s coming for me, I’ll have to get out of here myself.

I don’t know how yet.

I don’t know if I’ll even succeed, or if my first step toward freedom will also be my last.

But I do know this. I won’t rot here. I won’t let Leo wonder why his mother didn’t fight to get him back.

I take my shower like usual.

A guard waits outside the door, his silhouette visible through the frosted glass.

I scrub myself clean under barely-there water pressure, pretending I don’t hear the faint beep of the surveillance system watching me from overhead.

I’ve long since gotten used to having no privacy anymore. At this point, I’ve lost all shame.

Today, I move slower than usual, my gaze drifting again and again to that spot in the far corner.

The grout dips just slightly there, leaving the tile more bowed down than the rest. I’ve noticed it every morning when I step into the shower, have watched it fill with a shallow puddle of water each time I flick on the faucet overhead. I’ve cataloged it the way I’ve cataloged everything around me.

And today, I finally use it.

It doesn’t take much to force myself to slip on the collected water.

One wrong shift in balance, combined with the excess soap I used to slick the surface, and my entire body collides with the wall, my arm cracking against it with a hard knock.

I twist mid-fall to make sure I don’t break anything, but I land hard, yelping as pain explodes through my shoulder.

The door slams open so hard it ricochets inside the small room, the metal handle clanging against the tiled wall.

The guard storms in first, his gun already half-drawn. His eyes cut through the haze of steam, and for a beat, he takes everything in—the water pooling across the floor, my shivering body crumpled under the spray, the sharp hiss of the still-running shower.

With a curse in Russian, he lunges for the faucet and twists it off, the hiss dying instantly.

His voice rises, clipped and authoritative, when he barks something over his shoulder and out into the hallway.

The words are fast and harsh, but I don’t need to understand the language to know what he’s doing—summoning backup.

Moments later, one of the nurses appears, breathless from running.

With her, she carries a small case of supplies clutched against her chest before she abandons it to reach for me.

Her fingers clamp around my wrist, dragging me upright before I can blink.

My body is sluggish and uncooperative, water still sluicing down my body in cold rivulets that plaster my hair to my face and neck.

She crouches in front of me, the penlight that’s retrieved from her scrub pocket snapping open between her fingers. The blinding beam waves over my pupils once, twice, three times. Her words tumble out in quick Russian, sharp consonants cutting at me like glass that I don’t understand.

I groan anyway, letting my head loll slightly to the side, forcing my voice to rasp. “Shoulder… I–I slipped…”

My good hand drifts up toward the injury, fingers tapping gingerly against the tender area. The wince I give her is real enough to sell the lie.

For a moment, she studies me, suspicion flickering in her eyes. But before she can press further, the guard shoves her aside with little more than a grunt. She stumbles back and almost slams against the tiled wall, nearly dropping her light. Clearly, his patience for my theatrics is gone.

He doesn’t care about a diagnosis. He simply wants to regain control over the situation.

He bends, his massive hands engulfing my good arm. In one smooth motion, I’m yanked upright, my legs buckling beneath me. Then the world tilts as he throws me over his shoulder like I weigh no more than a single sack of grain.

Ow, fuck!

The pain explodes, hot and violent, when my bad shoulder jostles against him. It takes every scrap of willpower not to scream at him or claw at his face until he drops me. My throat burns with the effort of swallowing it down, and instead, I grit my teeth, forcing tears to blur my vision.

At least those are real.

If I look weak, maybe they’ll lower their guard when they bring me back to my room.

I need every ounce of acting I have in me to pull this off.

The nurse makes a desperate attempt to shield me from the indignity of being carried into the hallway still naked, managing to fling a towel over my body before the guard bullies her out of the way again.

His shoulder digs into my ribs, each step jarring me like blows as he carries me back down the hallway.

The trek is short but brutal. The fluorescent lights blur above me from my tears, floor tiles flashing past one after another until the heavy door of my room looms into view. It bangs open when he kicks it, and then I’m airborne, unceremoniously tossed onto the mattress with little care.

The impact rattles me, makes the springs groan beneath me, and my injured shoulder screams in protest. A sharp, strangled sound slips from me before I can choke it back.

The guard doesn’t care. He’s already turning, barking another command into the hall while retrieving a set of cuffs from his waist belt. The nurse rushes in after us, her expression caught somewhere between irritation and worry.

She shoos the guard away from my bed with a curt flick of her hand, and when he’s gone, she snatches up the towel to dry me. Her hands are brisk and impersonal, scrubbing at my damp skin like she’s somehow trying to punish me. Her touch isn’t cruel, exactly, but there’s no kindness in it either.

When she’s done, she tosses it aside and pulls a thin, scratchy blanket over my shoulders to cover me.

It barely offers me any warmth, but I huddle beneath it anyway, clutching the edges around my body tightly.

She says something to me in Russian before turning around again and heading for the door.

Another nurse appears then, a set of handcuffs dangling between her fingers.

My heart pounds, so loud I’m sure they both must hear it.

They both exchange another set of words, and then the first one leaves the room, pulling the door shut behind her. My eyes are pinned on the second one, tracking her movements so keenly that I’m practically going cross-eyed.

When she reaches me, she leans over the side of the bed with the cuffs. One hand is reaching for the metal bar attached to the bedframe, the other for me.

I don’t think, I move.